The Simplest Way To Start Playing With A Fascinating New Low-Power Screen!
The necessary schematic, board files, and test code can be found below. The entire design has been validated, and is set up for production using OSHPark's PCB service, with parts all available from Digikey.
The board was made using entirely 0805 passives to make hand-soldering possible. The connector can be attaching using the "flood-and-wick" technique ( use plenty of flux! ).
Thank you to all my supporters for helping bring my Adapter into the hands of makers everywhere! I'll be pretty busy cranking out example code and keeping up with my manufacturer, so stay tuned to this project page for more updates as we get closer to release :)
Hi everyone, thank you for your support in helping me bring E-paper to makers and hobbyists! My campaign still has 26 days left and it's already at 94% , and I'm eagerly putting together updates and examples to show off what you can make with the kit. I just published the first update with a little project that uses only what is in the kit. Grab yours now! https://www.crowdsupply.com/soniktech/e-paper-shield-kit
I started a campaign to fund the first batch of E-paper shields; get yours now!
I finished writing a few helper functions that should get you up and running with the Epaper display shield. It can be easily integrated into a larger graphics library like Adafruit's GFX for more intensive work. They're uploaded above in the Files tab. Good luck!
Excellent project! Any plans on creating a way to display bitmap images on the display? I believe one other display company uses XBM files?
I've used LCDAssistant to convert BMP to code and have had success that way. I wrote my own mini-library for rendering bitmaps and that works fine too, but now I'm looking at integrating this into Adafruit's GFX library so I can leverage their existing BMP rendering code and all the other drawing functions.
I see. And do you know if it's possible to perform partial updates with this display? That would help tremendously for animations and such.
It's possible, I'm just not allowed to release the code under NDA :( hopefully if enough people support this open-source project, manufacturers will be more willing to part with their LookUp Tables!
I have several Teensy boards, including the latest 3.6 which runs on 3.3V -
My most common use for the Teensy is driving mechanical keyboards. Adding a display to a keyboard is appealing, but I'd want:
1 - A bigger display [in dimensions and resolution], and
2 - A slimmer [low profile] layout.
So:
Does this run on a V3.6 [3.3V] Teensy?
Can I use the adapter with a different [larger] screen?
Can the adapter be connected beside a Teensy, instead of on top?
Yes, the E-paper Adapter does support the newer Teensy. I am writing an update and will post it to the CrowdSupply page soon.
I have not tested with a larger screen, but the driving circuits for the larger screens seem very similar to the circuit I'm using right now, but with different values for the capacitors and resistors. If this project gets funded, I'll take that as a sign that there is enough interest to look into bigger and more expensive screens :)
The pre-soldered adapter has female headers which accept standard hook-up wire, and the unsoldered version can be placed anywhere and have wires soldered to it that run back to your target microcontroller. In the gallery for this project you can see one example where I soldered male pins to the epaper shield and plugged it into a breadboard.
Great project. There are so many uses for displays like this, I want them to gain more popularity so there are more options. Good work, I will probably make a variation of your board.
Thanks for the kind words :) Add in a solar cell, a battery, and an aggressive power management strategy, and you've got a perfect platform for extremely-low refresh rate dashboards and info displays: https://hackaday.io/project/10000/log/43672-solar-powered-and-ready-to-last-forever
Hi @jarek319, is the resistor actually 2.2Ohm? That seemed like a low value, so I wanted to double check if it was 2.2KOhm.
yup, it's a 2.2Ohm resistor. It's likely used as some reference by the epaper's onboard regulator?
Inductor current feedback for the current-mode boost supply. It is used to generate the ramp for the PWM signal.
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First I got the reference schematic from the datasheet for the display, and I redrew the schematic in Eagle. Then I created a board from the schematic using Eagle's Board Editor, and then I sent the Board file to OSHPark for fabrication. When it came back in I soldered the components to the board and wrote a quick test program :)
Can you drive smaller displays with this driver board without having to tweak the values of the passives?
I would double check the datasheet of the display you want to use. I got the values for the passives from that specific display's reference schematic, and there should be one in the datasheet/online/from the manufacturer.
Are these difficulties also the reason you don't see e-readers with a large display?
I haven't played with larger ones yet, but that's because of cost... these things get a little pricey at larger sizes...
This article is interesting too:
http://essentialscrap.com/eink/software.html
Perhaps it's possible to drive multiple displays using a shared framebuffer?
you can actually get kindle displays relatively cheap -- possibly because of their popularity
A couple years ago I was interested in e-paper displays, but it was too expensive to buy the dev boards/displays for it and too much effort to work out how to drive them without one...thanks for this project, I'll definitely look into it if I have the time.
It would be nice if you uploaded a PDF or image version of the schematic, so it can be viewed without Eagle (I use Kicad).
The e-paper display is available from digikey at $16 USD, qty 1: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/pervasive-displays/E2215CS062/E2215CS062-ND/5975949
There is a image version of the schematic in the gallery, send me a msg if you can't make out some of the values and I'll upload a PDF too :)
ah sorry, I assumed the hackaday thumbnail images (which are cropped) represent the gallery images, but the gallery images are clearly full size and not cropped. There is even a "view full size" button on the bottom right which I have never seen before, and it shows the original image (which is huge!). Thanks!
jarek319
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Christopher Kratz
@jarek319 is there an EAGLE .lbr file with the Hirose connector? I'm trying to do a similar design in KiCad and SnapEDA can convert from EAGLE to Kicad if I upload at .lbr.
Thanks!
Drew