What do you use the OLED screen on your node for?

[thatSFguy]

Many nodes include an OLED screen, such as the Heltec, TLORA,. techo, tbeam, etc.
2 Questions:

• What do you use the screen for?
• What would you like to see on the screen,that it doesn't show today?

[kiam001]

i would like to be able to see my heltec stick v3 display which is not yet supported

[thatSFguy]

Hey @kiam001, if it did work, what would use the display for? (besides getting the Bluetooth pairing code, to sync with your phone)

[kiam001]

Hi i use the https://heltec.org/project/wireless-stick-v3/ this have a Onboard 0.49-inch 64*32 dot matrix OLED display, if i use the WiFi LoRa 32(V3) Firmware display turn on but only with the 64*32 dot matrix so the most is missing, its recommend than to install the "wireless-stick-lite-v3" firmware so display dont turn on and the pin is default fixed on 123456 thats i edit, to own after setup.

if i use the WiFi LoRa 32(V3) Firmware need setup via web serial and change to fix pin and only whan i use the option Flip Screen on one site i see the battary state but this is usless for me.

[thatSFguy]

@kiam001 sounds like you need a separate thread, probably an "issue", to troubleshoot this. In this tread I'm trying to discuss if anyone is using the screens, besides for getting the pin. This discussion area is a replacement for discourse. Good luck with getting your issue resolved!

[madeofstown]

At first I thought they would be useful for a quick glance at messages or battery status but I can just use the app for that. I have stopped considering nodes with screens as I feel they don't serve much purpose other than to drain battery.

[thatSFguy]

I agree. The screen has lost value for the folks that understand how to ensure that their phone is connected via Bluetooth to their node.

[kalestew]

This is exactly why I think most users would be best served through a new "homepage" format for the display. By default, a single page that displays things like RF activity, last packet SNR/RSSI + time, battery status, bluetooth/wifi connection, GPS status, and small graphs/indicators for other useful statistics or metrics would make the display more useful for nodes that mostly just connect to apps. Button presses can page to more detailed statistics and/or the traditional node info displays.

[thatSFguy]

I started giving away window nodes that people can stick in their window and help with coverage in certsin areas while being unobtrusive. Most will probably never connect to the node, but just a screen that shows the status would be helpful, since some nodes need an occasional reboot.

[easytarget]

For a remote and/or solar nodes, unplug the screen or buy a screenless device and enjoy the low power drain.

For permanently powered home nodes a screen showing status etc is useful. If you have a Wifi or BT connection being able to view messages is probably irrelevant, but seeing the network status, radio status, throughput & connected nodes summary etc.. would be very nice. Especially the wifi status :-)

A lot of devices do have screens, and the current attitude of 'provide basic info if screen present, but do not make screen mandatory' seems sensible. My office node has a E-Paper display, it's nice to just look at it to see if anything interesting is happening. My portable node is a T114, it has a hi-res hi-color TFT display. Not all screens are OLED these days.

AFIK there are GUI changes in the pipeline; so I'm in wait-and-see mode.

[thatSFguy]

For my solar nodes, I'm using the nRF52 RAK nodes without a screen. The Android app has come such a long way with so many features, that it's hard to live without anywhere from node configuration to troubleshooting ;)

On the flip side, you need a basic understanding of how the node connects to the phone and making sure it is actually connected when you are sitting in your living room and the node is in the bedroom, etc. Not a problem for me, but less techie people it is, so just being able to view messages on the node would be definite plus. One guy in the local mesh named is node "Mark's Pager", which I thought was an interesting analogy :-)

I wasn't aware of UI changes coming, I thought the changes were geared toward the T-Deck, which I'm running the experimental UI on. Hopefully the updated screens, will have a "simple" version for less techie folks.

[kalestew]

For my eink nodes I have around my desk, a messages list would be a very welcome 'app page' to have for the standard display. In a large urban mesh, all the node info pages provide little value and displaying only the last message is just a waste of beautiful eink real-estate.

[kalestew]

I have always wanted a better realtime visualization of what the node is receiving or transmitting; making channel utilization more prominent on the display, across all views would be really cool. I was thinking that using the outermost pixels on some of the edges to reflect the 15s/1min/15min channel utilization and maybe an edge to reflect airtime with a simple animation occurring during tx.

I just recently got started with Reticulum network Rnodes using some extra Heltec V3s I had laying around and the 'waterfall view' is really informative. I don't think such a complex realtime display is needed for Meshtastic but having some static UI elements that persist across views to convey airtime and channel utilization would be really useful.

For most instances, I really do not like the emphasis on the node list (sorting through 80+ nodes is useless on non-tft nodes using the OLED or eink). A "Homepage" would find much more value IMO by displaying things like RF activity, last packet SNR/RSSI + time, battery status, bluetooth/wifi connection, GPS status, and other useful statistics or metrics that could be indicated with a glyph or graph.