IoD-09 Display from 4D Systems

Peter Scargill4D Sysyems, IOD-0926 Comments on IoD-09 Display from 4D Systems

tmpEEA6You may recall some time ago I reviewed some displays from 4D Systems – using an ESP8266 together with a touch display – and very nice too.

Well, the company just sent me one of the new IOD-09 displays and it is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.

You will possibly be familiar with the little OLED displays I use a lot from the likes of AliExpress and Banggood (or Ebay for that matter) – the SSD1306 based units. They are amazingly small – but if course you then need a Nano or ESP8266 to drive them – boards invariably larger than the display by some way.

Well, IOD-Systems IOD-09 is TINY – only a little larger than the SSD1306 really…

0.9” – 80px by 160px full colour with WIFI…  at $19.95 it isn’t cheap but it is LOVELY – unlike the SSD1306 which is a PART and a pain to get a bezel for, the front of this is a nice black rectangle – ready to fit into a suitably sized front panel hole.  You can program it with Arduino Core or 4D Systems own software.

Amazingly they’ve also fitted into almost no space under the board, a microSD socket. 12 pads, 6 on each end for connecting to accessories.  About the only thing I could think of to gripe about is the 4Mb of FLASH (512K) which makes OTA somewhat difficult. I do wish people would stick with 4MB.

The board operates on 4v to 5v and my TH version is 31.8mm by 16.4mm by 11.7mm – there is an SM version at 37.0mm by 16.4mm by 5.9mm – here’s the datasheet.

26 thoughts on “IoD-09 Display from 4D Systems”

  1. Dear God – on RS Online in NZ these are $NZ86.00 incl GST (a VAT tax).

    And on back order, although so is pretty much everything in NZ at this time of the year.

    Our dollar is .70 US at the moment.

    1. THAT’s neat. Well, someone has to do something about that postage price…. the actual price of the display, it has some things going for it – the extra pixels, full colour, nice bezel and getting the whole thing into a small space. Looks like you’ve done a good job there.

    2. Ok you have my interest – you refer to an ESP8266-01 – but you have I2c – and USB – is this a different board to what I think of as an ESP-01 ? Link?

      1. No – the USB connector is strictly for power. I can’t find cheaper PSUs than phone chargers at £1 a pop! The PCB has a 1117 regulator & that’s it apart from routing connections.
        I2C is used for the display & there is a separate header for the many 4 pin sensors which follow the same pinout.
        PM me your address & I’ll send you something to play with.
        iansexton23[at]gmail.com

    1. Well yes, but again as I say to others – get onto them and TELL them it is unacceptable and ask for alternatives. I have sent a lot of old PCBs around Europe recently – keeping only the latest Orange Pis etc…. and typically, second class post from UK to Europe is under £3 – those prices are just rubbish.

      I do hope someone comes up with better solutions – I plan to use one of these displays, being full colour and with a nice bezel, in my upcoming I2c clock generator project (8Khz to 160Mhz) it will look GREAT and it would be nice if others can benefit.

    1. I have written to them – certainly I would not pay even remotely that for postage. And if it went via rogues DHL they’d add the postage charge before calculating additional charges. My new year’s resolution will be never to accept anything from them again.

      1. Mouser.com carries quite a number of 4DSystems’ displays (example https://www.mouser.co.uk/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=gen4-IoD-24Tvirtualkey57790000virtualkey971-GEN4-IOD-24T) and says free shipping for orders over 33£. I’m in Canada so don’t have a U.K. address to check with.
        I’ve been using one of their larger displays for a number of years with a RPi and thanks to a number of your other posts I’m just learning how to interface with it using node-red (much easier than C!).

    2. Hi There I wrote to 4D. They are kitting out suppliers like Mouser and Digi-Key so the shipping problem will go away. The reason for the price you saw is because they are in Australia.

      1. There head office is here in Sydney Australia, but they still want $16 US to ship locally.
        It appears the manufacturing facility is in the Phillipines, and both manufacture and postage out of there is dirt cheap, So there’s really no excuse for the price gouging.

    1. I have JUST made that comment back to the designers – OTA would have been nice but I suspect any but the simplest software in there will mean no OTA… however – I might be wrong.

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