Back in December of last year I backed a Kickstarter campaign by Soldered Electronics for the Inkplate 2 - a 2.13" e-paper display with an ESP32 microcontroller.
I received my unit about a month ago, but have been busy with design challenges and didn't have a chance to try it out until now.
The unit arrived with a picture of a ladybug and a QR link to documentation (plus an attached WiFi antenna).
The backside has all the electronics.
A poster view of the specs:
The good news is that the Inkplate designs are open source and there is a github repo for the Inkplate 2 hardware design that contains PCB files and schematics and even 3D STL files for a case.
Inkplate 2 case top
Inkplate 2 case bottom
I printed a case which is shown below with the digital clock example program. Good news is that the WiFi seems okay with the antenna scrunched behind the ESP32 shield.
It's been a few years since I did a 3 color e-paper project and I had forgotten about the long refresh time (about 15 seconds) compared to 2 seconds for a black/white display. This particular display cannot do partial updates, so it really can't be refreshed faster. Still it's a great low power display for projects that don't need updating more than once every few minutes.
The previous 3 color e-paper design I did was a door indicator to warn if my laser was operating - Laser Operating Sign. That design used a separate ESP8266 board to drive the e-paper display.
Another nice thing about Soldered Electronics is that they provide lots of examples and projects for the Arduino IDE - Inkplate Arduino library.
One example pulls random images from the web which have an artsy appearance due to the low display resolution.
I'll need to come up with a good application for this display. It has LiPo battery support and a QWIIC interface which would make for a great portable sensor display.
