Playing with e-paper
potatohead
Posts: 10,260
I picked up a couple e-paper displays. One really big one from Waveshare that I have set aside, until I learn more, and some little Pi-Hat style ones from Papirus. Pi Supply has them for something like $20.
Decided to drive it a bit fast and it was interesting.
Seems we can't upload a video file, or I have forgotten. Stand by...
Comments
Video attached.
Anyone out there exploring e-paper?
One thing I am looking for is Rev E of the datasheet associated with this guy:
https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/10.3inch-e-paper-d.htm?___SID=U
It is slow via SPI. Has quick USB capability, but that is NDA, or so I believe.
Meanwhile, the little display I am exploring works fast in python. Fun and easy, IMHO.
Cool, never seen e-paper do animation before. And, no, I've never had one. The faded trails is reminiscent of early LCD but they also faded the lead as well, so e-paper is superior in that respect.
Is that demo using USB for comms? Looking at the linked webpages, the parallel port option is presumably faster than SPI.
I wrote this P2 driver for a Waveshare 2.9" display.
A 2.4Hz refresh rate is the best I could manage.
That video was done on a Raspberry Pi with 20 MHz SPI comms.
Here is another one using an interleads technique where the action is run at a higher frame rate than the display is using.. the display is averaging 12 sometimes 13 frames per second.
Actually I keep getting a file size too large on this one so I will attach it a bit later.
I need to look at that parallel port option.
Oh, I just realized my confusion! The linked display is not the one I put some animation on.
https://www.arrow.com/en/products/pis-0265/pi-supply?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9vqyBhCKARIsAIIcLMGvFcLcajD2ZOYlqyQIDJzzqlZaebko9hffvCv6S0mroM71AP8zSnkaAvFfEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
That is the unit. Only $20 and you get a few displays and the PCB. There is a solid python library to get one started.