So one day after a long time without touching my pinecil (BMT and stuff) I picked it up again and the OLED screen was super dim. The kind of dim where I couldn’t even see what’s on screen at all unless I bring it under my table, in which case I could only barely see it.
It was actually quite unusable.
But getting a new pinecil is like S$60 minimum!!!
So I took it apart. It was quite visible that the OLED was damaged, there was this diagonal crack / line where one half was lighter than the other. I needed a replacement for it. It looks a bit like the 0.91" OLED I used for my sofle keyboard, for which I had some spares, but a side by side comparison makes it obvious the pinecil OLED was smaller than that.
The actual size you need is 96x16 (0.69"). See this pinecil datasheet.
Which was quite a pity, because the most common OLEDs you can find online are the 128x32 (0.91") or the 128x64 ones. In fact, as of writing, I can’t even find them on Shopee.
I ended up buying it on Taobao. this one worked for me (I only tried this). There’s a bunch of other listings for 96x16 OLEDs that talk about using SSD1306/SSD1315/SSD1316 driver ICs. SSD1315 compatible OLEDs should work too, based on what I searched up it’s an upgrade of SSD1306. And the listing I bought says it works with both 1306 and 1315.
Good as new! For the low low cost of 5 yuan!
Well hopefully someone out there facing this exact issue stumbled onto this post and found it useful 😁