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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : MM-all: E-ink display drivers
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| matherp Guru  Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 10067 |
19 is SPI-OUT so should connect to the IN pin on the display |
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lew247 Guru Joined: 23/12/2015 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1702 |
Thanks Peter |
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| MipsyKing Newbie  Joined: 12/02/2015 Location: ItalyPosts: 17 |
I'm interested in e-ink display because I want to project a portable device readable and with low power. Unfortunately all these e-ink displays around since few years (on ebay or banggood) are too expensive and very limited. Strange... because they are used since years by some other devices and they are performing great on them. Kindle apart, I have a Yota 2 smartphone with a marvellos ultra-fast e-ink display... Why, instead, the ones we can buy around are so slow? Because they born for a different purpose: to be the "shelf label" with the price of the product. This is why they often offer a third color (mainly the red, since is important to show the discounted price) By the way, the third color is just a bigger size of ink pigment. It's carried to surface with a trick and so it's always slower than black pigment. In other words, it's an attractive addition to your images but if you planning a dynamic use, like a "color game", forget it! Unfortunately, as "shelf label" the refresh rate doest care, and they are slow and usually come with very limited controllers. Also they have microscopic flat cable, impossible to use, and if you want the standard connector they cost 30% more... In this ebay auction you can see a table with refresh times: Link 8..15.. and even 27 seconds to refresh the screen? No surprise you are going to be very disappointed by them... What's the use of a display if you cant even show a time clock, because you cant refresh every second? And worse, in some datasheet is stated that, despite the refresh time, you cant refresh the screen more than 3 times in a minute! In my opinion, E-ink display are usefull ONLY if the controller has the "partial refresh" feature. In other words, it let you to refresh a part of the screen without the global clean-and-reload procedure. On YouTube there is a guy updating a value on the screen smootly and without strange flashing-reverse effects. If you look again the table, you will see the "partial refresh" is N/A (not supported) or 0,3 second. Aka 3 times at second, this is reasonably good. The question for matherp would be: is possible to drive a partial refresh, with MicroMite? For example, user may define the box to refresh... |
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| ceptimus Senior Member  Joined: 05/07/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 130 |
I did a 'partial refresh' demo on a 1.54-inch E-ink using an Arduino. I guess I could port it to MM. Here's the video. https://youtu.be/ZyCFZLZkgoU Is the 1.54-inch one of any interest? I bought a larger display to experiment with, but found that it needed a different driver and couldn't be refreshed nearly as fast - I sort of lost interest at that point. |
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| MipsyKing Newbie Joined: 12/02/2015 Location: ItalyPosts: 17 |
Yai! You were brilliant in the "partial refresh demo". This fully demostrated the concept. Definitely I would see you with a "3 color e-ink" display. This seller offer interesting items: Here They are all SPI, but I will avoid non-pcb mounted version because -apart the problem of the microscopic flat cable -I suspect they need some complicated external circut to generate hi-voltage. The first "pcb-ready to use" color model is then the 1,54" (red or yellow) wich, at $10,5 free shipping, is probably the cheapest ever seen till now. Unfortunately, the seller doesnt say (intentionally?) the refresh times and if can be partially refreshed. At $16 there is the RED 2,9" model, 296x128px with SDD1675A controller. I'm not sure, but reading the datasheet a "partial refresh" is named... More study is needed... In this video, anyone can see how disappointig can be a display born for show just static images, and not for a generic use: Link |
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| MipsyKing Newbie Joined: 12/02/2015 Location: ItalyPosts: 17 |
Hello again after some research. About cheap e-ink displays there are two main chinese manufacturer: WaveShare and GoodDisplay. The bad news is that NONE of the 3 colors models have "partial refresh". I vaguely remember a model from GoodDisplay, years ago, being "not so bad" with his Global refresh (but a the time I had no idea how to drive it) anyway new models are even worst. Much slower and flickering. You can have a idea of what I mean in my previous link (at minute 7:25). In general, I found WaveShare site rather poor about this, not giving clear info about refresh rate and modes. The god news is the site of GoodDisplay: they instead are targetting clear this crucial point. I dont know if with 3 colors model you can use only the black and use a fast refresh. Meanwhile I consider them not-usable except for showing static images "sometimes". But I found interesting some BW models, pretty fast and with some gray tones. For example, take a look at GDEW0213T5: it costs 5$ but you need at least one interface, so the bundle costs $12.7 : Link  Fast refresh and driver is the same as Peter displays: the IL0373 (And don't forget to watch the YouTube demo video inside!) Edited 2019-09-07 06:04 by MipsyKing |
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