Big Character Demo with Arduino and BPP-440L

Building on the previous demo of print positioning for the BPP-440L, this Arduino demo shows how to use and format the display's big characters. These characters are constructed out of the LCD's custom-character set, and are a little trickier to work with than the larger font sizes on the GLO-series. On the GLOs, larger fonts work just like small ones in all respects, and don't interfere with the custom characters.

But like all text LCDs employing tricks to generate big characters, the BPP-440L must be finessed for best results. Fortunately, it's easy, and there's heavily commented code after the break. Here's the sort of thing we're talking about:

Print Positioning Demo with Arduino and BPP-440L

Seetron's serial displays have a rich set of features, but the workhorse is the ctrl-P position instruction. Consider this scenario: Your program is sampling several sensors and displaying their outputs on screen, something like this:

Label1: 1234

Label2: 5678

..etc.

As new data comes in, you could clear the screen and reprint everything, all the labels and data. The problem is that each update would produce an annoying flash as the screen goes momentarily blank before the contents are replaced.

GLO-416Y Big-Font Modes

A prospective customer requested more info on the differences between the big-font modes of the BPP-420L and the GLO-416Y. It's a good question, because the two are fundamentally different, and because it's an excellent opportunity to highlight the many improved features of the GLO-series serial OLEDs.