“This was my first e-ink hat I'd ever purchased for a pi before but wow am I impressed. Incredibly small and very good quality display. It responds very quickly to changes and has been clear to read. If you're looking for a cheap and great quality e-ink display try this”
“The Waveshare E-Ink Display pHAT - 2.13" is an amazing display and it works well when it is configured. The key is when it is configured. There was not labeling on the box to indicate which variant it was. V1, V2, V3 or V4. It took a lot of messing around and assembling / dissasembling the unit from the Pi to notice a V4 sticker under the display. A good 2.5 days were lost tinkering trying to find this. Why I found it, it was a face plant moment.
Some instruuctions would be useful”
“Connecting the screen to the Pi Zero is as simple as lining up the headers and pressing down. If you are using something other than Raspberry Pi there is an included cable to use rather than the headers.
Next was running the demo. The instructions were fairly easy. The link to how to identify screen version was broken but I found a V3 label at the bottom left at the back of the screen so went with this. I went with SPI connection and have yet to try I2C.
Having never worked with E-Paper before I wasnt expecting the full black/ white switching that clears the display ready for a new image this takes 1-2seconds. With the V3 at least you can do a partial display refresh that is much less obtrusive but has its own limitations. The python library was easy to use if you keep your .py in the same directory as the test, otherwise some modification of epd2in3_V3.py is required. The only thing I have not been able to do is to draw over an existing 1bit bmp but I suspect this is down to my knowledge not the function of the display.”
