e Paper with Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Let’s see how to use e-Paper displays with both Arduino and Raspberry Pi. I’ll also show you a “no-code” method of building an e-Paper information panel with PaperPi.

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e-Paper displays are quite different from the types of displays we are used to working with. Unlike other displays, e-paper doesn’t emit light, it reflects it. It also has the unique property of retaining the last thing written to it, even when powered down.

These ultra low-current devices are perfect for portable projects, or those that require a display that can be read in a brightly lit environment.

We will be using a very common and inexpensive display from Waveshare that can operate as both an SPI device for microcontrollers and as a Raspberry Pi HAT. I’ll show you how to use it with both an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi.

After running a couple of demos, we will see how to write Python code to customize our e-Paper display.

And we will also look at a relatively new product called PaperPi. This application lets you create cool e-Paper display panels without writing any code, instead, it uses “plugins” to configure the display to your liking. You can build a clock, weather display or even a music player.

Here is the Table of Contents for today’s video.:

00:00 – Introduction
02:24 – How e-Paper Displays work
05:54 – Waveshare 2.7-inch e-Paper HAT
07:42 – e-Paper with Arduino demo
15:36 – e-paper with Raspberry Pi demo
19:14 – Coding e-Paper displays with Python
27:02 – PaperPi
36:16 – Conclusion

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that e-paper is not perfect. The displays are somewhat expensive (although the one I used was pretty cheap) and they aren’t suitable for video or full-color. But for some applications, they are just perfect.

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