Display Full Color Images on ESP32 + SSD1351 OLED

Here's how to display full colour images on an OLED display using an ESP32 microcontroller. I'm using the amazing Waveshare 1.5 inch OLED, which offers 16 bit colour in a resolution of 128x128 pixels. Although Waveshare have their own graphics library, this tutorial uses the popular Adafruit GFX Library (SSD1351 version). The images are also stored in RAM, and not on an external SD card or downloaded over Wifi.

00:00 - Introduction
00:55 - ESP32 wiring diagram
01:56 - Image conversion to 16 bit format
03:56 - Arduino IDE sketch
06:44 - Rotating the display
07:50 - Uploading and testing

The code here could potentially be used on an Arduino Uno, but images like these really gobble up memory, and the Arduino just doesn't have enough of it. So for graphics heavy Internet of Things devices the ESP32, ESP32 CAM or ESP8266 are better choices for full colour display modules like the SSD1351.

I believe the ESP32 memory can hold a maximum of 16 128x128 16-bit images. However this wouldn't need much space for application code. If you need to store more then it would be better to store the images on an SD card, then load them in as required.