“I love it! It's a super cool display, I use it as a spotify controller because it already comes with buttons. Colors are good as well as the image. Highly recommend!”
“Works great and lots of support online for any projects or ideas. I used mine as a elnk frame to randomise a new NFT every day! I'd recommend using with a power management hat but beware of any conflicting GPIO pins.”
“This is a fantastic display that is best used for static images, photos or text. I’m still amazed that the image holds after power shutdown! Pics in the right times are exceptional!
There are Python libraries to aid image manipulation. I’m developing an info station, but am having fun sampling and displaying pics in the background. I look forward to even bigger, high resolution displays in the future.”
“This e-ink screen, which I’ve used in a combination "changing portrait" and "weather station / clock" project, offers an interesting blend of strengths and limitations. When it comes to displaying images, particularly those with a bold, and graphic design like Lichtenstein-style pop art, comic strip illustrations, or vintage Soviet posters, the screen is great, and the images look brilliant. The colours are vibrant, and the overall look is impressive. However, it falls short when it comes to high-resolution photographs, as it tends to make them appear grainy.
In its role as a weather station, this e-ink screen shines. When displaying large static text, the screen makes it easily readable, and it looks professional. For applications that don't require rapid screen refreshes like calendars or stock and bitcoin trackers, it’s also very good. It makes my little project look like a store-bought device. However, if your application needs fast switching between different screens of information, this screen wouldn’t be suitable, because each refresh takes around thirty seconds.
For video output, gaming, or animations, this e-ink screen is also not suitable, and an alternative screen would be necessary. For the purposes of my project, as a small portrait and weather station, it excels. It is reliable, easy to use, and the colours are visually good.
As far as battery life goes, I’ve tried and failed to write scripts which put the Pi Zero W (Not Zero W 2) into a state where it uses less power and is still able to “turn back on” to change the image or to switch to the weather screen. I wanted to take the “temporarily shut down and restart” approach to reduce battery usage because the e-ink screen doesn’t need power to maintain the image, so while the approach doesn’t work with a Pi it would work well with another microcontroller.
I’ve done various things to try to keep the battery usage of the project low but using the hardware I’ve used has meant that batteries don’t last very long. I’d suggest using something other than a PI to control the screen, but it would take a lot of work and I don’t know that I would be successful. The screen is very much set up for PI, the header is a 40-pin PI header, and the software is written to run on PI. For indoor projects like mine that allow me to keep the PI plugged into power, battery life isn’t really a factor and I was very much experimenting to learn rather than being dependent on batteries for my application to work.”
“Lovely to play with colour eInk at a decent size. A few of the colours are very weak/washed out and some completely missing (blue) so a way off showeing full colour images yet.”
