Sharp Memory display - 168x64 Monochrome 1.3"

A ultra-low-power display like eInk but with speed of LCD

Here a Memory LCD display, it is a cross between an eInk (e-paper) and an LCD display. This product is the 1.3" 168x144 SHARP Memory LCD featuring and ultra-low power usage of eInk together with the fast-refresh rates of an LCD.

This display has a gray background and black-on-gray pixels. This combination offers a nice reader type display with good reading contrast. This display does not have a backlight but it is daylight readable (on dark/night situation, you will need to illuminate the LCD area with external LEDs to read it).

The display use 3V for power and logic. Adafruit did make a breakout board with a 3V regulator and level shifter circuitry, so it is safe to use it with 3V or 5V power and logic. The display is connected to the board with a ZIF socket and a double-sided tape is used to adhere the display on the breakout.

The breakout board features 4 mounting holes to easily attach the display it to a box.

Requires 3K of RAM

The display is "write only", so only 3 wires will be needed to to send data (clock, data in and ChipSelect). This also means that you must store the entire image of the display inside the microcontroler memory (into buffer). As the screen makes 168x144, this represent 168x144 bits (3 KB) that must be buffered by the microcontroller driver.

This display cannot be use this with an ATmega328 (eg: Arduino UNO) or ATmega32u4 (Leonardo, Feather 32u4, etc). An Higher RAM chip is required like STM32, ATSAMD21 (Feather M0), Teensy 3, ESP8266, ESP32, MicroPython board. With such microcontroler, the display works great and looks wonderful.

Technical details

• Display dimensions (viewable): 24.5mm × 21mm, 1.33"
• Dot pitch: 34mm x 33.3mm
• Display size: 1.44" diagonal (36.6mm)
• Current draw depends on refresh rate: with 1Hz data refresh, its 12µW (4µA @ 3.3V)
• PCB Dimensions: 40mm x 39mm x 4.6mm
• Weight: 6g