EPDIY

(Probably useless, as Kindle or Sony E-ink hardware/drivers are not open source and will never be even for the older readers )

EPDiy E-Paper Driver (https://vroland.github.io/epdiy-hardware/)

EPDiy is a driver board which talks to affordable E-Paper (or E-Ink) screens, which are usually sold as replacement screens for E-Book readers. Why are they interesting?

Easy on the eyes and paper-like aestheticsNo power consumption when not updatingSunlight-readable

Ready-made DIY modules for this size and with 4bpp (16 Grayscale) color support are currently quite expensive and / or slow. The EPDiy controller can drive the bare display modules, e.g. from old e-Readers, which are available for 20$ (small) / 30$ (large) on ebay! Additionally, since it is based on the ESP32S3 (V7) / ESP32 (V2-V6) microcontroller, it features WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.

The EPDiy driver board targets a range of E-Paper displays, as shown in the table below. As the driving method for all matrix-based E-ink displays is more or less the same, only the right connector and timings are needed. The current V7 board has three different display connectors, other display will require an adapter board.

The controller is optimized for the use with LiPo batteries, featuring a LiPo charger and ultra-low deep sleep current.

This project supports a driver for the ESP-IDF and Arduino. For installation instructions, please refer to the documentation. Note that for epdiy V7, update speeds are significantly lower when using the Arduino IDE, because it does not allow to change the sub-optimal cache configuration.

Get Inspired

The examples directory contains some example applications like a weather station or a screen diagnostic test. If you want to build something more useful though, how about:

A serial terminal for connecting to a raspberry pi: video repository]A Music Player Daemon (MPD) dashboard: repository]An e-Paper picture frame: videoAnd more to come!

Building It

ED060KD1	6"	1072 x 1448 300 PPI	yes (should work as ED060XC3)	THD0515-34CL-SN	34	v5
ED060KC1	6"	1072 x 1448 300 PPI	yes (should work as ED060XC3)	THD0515-34CL-SN	34

ED078KC1

7.8"

1872 x 1404 300 PPI

yes, tested

FH12-40S-0.5SH

40 (I picked just all 300 DPI displays)