WeAct Display FS is an inexpensive 0.96-inch USB display dongle designed to add an information display or a tiny secondary display to your computer or SBC.
We’ve seen this type of information display with products such as the Turing Smart Screen, a larger 3.5-inch color display, or small OLEDs integrated into cases such as the Pironman 5 Max to disable text. The WeAct Display FS V1 may be tiny, but it’s also a full-color 160×80 resolution display that can be customized with software provided by WeAct.
WeAct Display FS V1 specifications:
- Display – 0.96-inch RGB565 display with 160×80 resolution
- Host interface – “Reversible” USB 2.0 Type-A Full Speed (FS) port showing as a CDC device
- Dimensions – 43 x 14.5 mm
Since you wouldn’t want to get a display only for it to face the wrong direction, for instance, the desk or the wall, the company made the USB-A port reversible, and the user only needs to install one of the two provided pads on the unused side of the port to avoid short circuits.
WeAct provides two programs for it. The first one is the WeAct Studio System Monitor based on a fork of Matthieu Houdebine’s Turing Smart Screen Python project. This allows users to create UIs/themes with text, images, weather, and other features… WeAct says the little device only works on Windows, but the open-source project is supposed to also work on macOS, Linux (including Raspberry Pi OS), and essentially any operating system with support for Python 3.9+.
The second program is called WeAct Studio Screen Projection, and as I understand it, it emulates an actual display, so you could move any window/program to the USB display. I’m just not sure how a desktop OS like Windows will handle a tiny 160×80 “monitor”… I suppose it could be used to play a full-screen YouTube video or display photos for whatever reason. That one only works on Windows, and there’s no source code.
You’ll find the WeAct Display FS V1 (0.96-inch) on AliExpress for about $2 plus shipping, but while looking for information, I also noticed a 3.5-inch variant with 480×320 resolution for about $11.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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