Electronic paper finally arrives for microcontrollers, with this breakthrough that is designed to facilitate the addition of a tricolor eInk screen. Chances are you've seen one of those new e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook. They are equipped with huge static electronic paper screens, which means that the image remains on the screen even when the power is completely off. The image is also very contrasted and very legible in daylight. It really looks like printed paper!

We have loved these screens for a long time, but the breakouts were never designed to be used by manufacturers. Finally, we decided to make our own!

We start with this small 1.54" tricolor screen. It has 152x152 pixels of black and red ink and a white background. Using the Arduino library, you can create a frame buffer with the pixels you want to activate and then write it on the screen. Most simple cards stay there. But if you do the math, 152 x 152 x 152 pixels x 2 colors = 5.7 KB. What does not fit into the memory of microcontrollers. Heck, even if you have 32KB of RAM, why waste 6KB?

So we did you a favor by throwing a little SRAM chip in the back. This chip shares the SPI port used by the eInk display, so you only need one additional pin. And no more frame-buffering! You can use SRAM to configure what you want to display, then mix SRAM data with eInk when you are ready. The library we wrote does all the work for you, you can simply interface it with it as if it were an Adafruit_GFX compatible screen.

For very low power uses, the built-in 3.3V controller has the Enable pin output so you can turn off the power to the SRAM, MicroSD and display.

We even added a MicroSD so you can store images, text files, anything you want to display. Everything is compatible 3 or 5V safe logic so you can use it with any and all microcontrollers.

Delivered assembled and tested, with a connector. You will need a soldering iron to fix the connector.

Product dimensions 43.6mm x 43.0mm x 5.0mm / 1.7" x 1.7" x 1.7" x 0.2".
Product Weight: 9.0g / 0.3oz

Documentation

Adafruit eInk Display Breakouts