its a known issue with the color e-ink displays, due to the different polarities of the red color versus the black it has to clear the screen like you said, then the pulsing to coax the red pigment into the right position, if you used a plain black and white e-ink display the refresh for 16color gray can be as low as a few seconds with only minor flashing, another thing to keep in mind is that most controllers also allow for a partial screen update so as long as you are only update the black text/imagery in a area you should be able to tell the controller to update that one area at a much faster speed and tell it to do a full refresh every 24 hrs or so just to keep the screen supple the e-ink displays can get ghosting after a while if the controllers aren't turning off power to the display all the way
There are multiple update modes that not all displays are compatible with. Per pixel update(can cause ghosting even when compatible), region refreshing(a squared area will flash and refresh), and full screen refreshing.
The flashing is because the display is electrophoretic. Basicaly, it's physically moving charged particles through a fluid. The different "colors" have different masses, so some move faster, while others move slower. The flashing basically refreshes all the particles to a "default" position so it can render stuff more reliably. I think there are ways to eliminate the flashing, depending on what display/libraries you're using. I have a smaller one that wipes, like a slow-moving horizontal scan line (paperTTY is the software I'm using - it lets you run a bash shell on an e-ink display).
The kindle has an option to not erase the screen when flipping pages and it works OK, but leaves some ghosting from the previous page sometimes. Makes page turns superfast though.
"Pretty good viewing angle" saying that about e-ink display is like saying "This book has pretty good viewing angles" :D e-ink is basically like paper in almost every viewing aspect
I get what you mean, but you have to take into account that there is a coating on the display itself, which adds some reflection, hence the impact on viewing angles.
"I wanted to have a weather display component" Okay I get that... "And I live in California" Wait what? The weather component now seems redundant given the weather is: 99% sunny / maybe some clouds or 1% rain / forest fire
Hah! Mostly I like to see just how HOT it is so I can avoid it. But I like to say we have three seasons in CA similar to popular hot sauces. Hot, Mild and Fire.
@@ericalvarez9345 Have you ever been to CA? It's not a giant sprawling metropolis like NY or something. The northern half of the state is pretty sparse as far as population goes. Plenty of forests and lakes... mountains, volcanoes... CA has a little bit of everything
Yes, that flashing is definitely for clearing the display. This particular E-Ink display is used for signage, like showing the price in a store etc. It is not meant to be updated that often. Even every 6 minutes is too often.
The flashing is there to clean the image. E-ink displays work by switching the polarity between two substrates to attract the different colours to the different substrates. IF you want an area to be black, attract the black pigment to the substrate close to the user, want it to be white, attract the black pigment to the bottom substrate.
I don't know what the process is internally (ie the flashes and what they're doing), but full refresh for that module is 16 seconds. I timed it via video pause and it looks like that's how long it took to complete the display cycle. I am guessing it's a bit like charging a capacitor but it needs 2 voltage levels, one for black and one for red? Cool project either way. I have something similar planned, and it's good to see Pi + waveshare kit working as intended.
Seeing how much you used the Red, I would stick to the two color version of the e-ink panel as the updates are much faster. It may also support partial updates allowing a clock updating every minute to be added. Nice project though! Now where’s my e-ink display....
Jaroslav Pšenička I’ve been playing with a slightly smaller B/W panel and I could get it updating using partial updates with periodic wiping refreshes with much quicker updates.
Neat. But wait: 1) Hanging it would mean the display is then upside down. How do you rotate it? 2) How do you clear items that have been done? No touchscreen?
Pretty cool idea. I'd probably tweak the code to make the display only physically refresh if the data has actually changed instead always every 6 minutes, just to avoid the display flashing distracting me out of the corner of my eye.
The problem with using a rPi for this project is that it doesn't really leverage the zero power e-ink display's 'standby' mode. I.e. The rPi can't go into a low power mode like the display can. I'd use an Arduino instead, as you can use a watchdog interrupt to place it into a very low power mode. I can see why you used the rPi for this project, as setting up timers and low-power Arduino based systems can be a bit outside the scope of this project, as well as getting connectivity on an Arduino can also be complicated and requires more hardware. Not an argument _against_ your methods, so much as an observation, perhaps for those wanting to take the next step.
As far as I know the arduiono doesnt have enough memory to run the composition of the display. I also settled with an Raspberry Pi, but zero. What can you do?
I've had a project like this on my list for years. I even thought about throwing my old android tablet at it. Eink is a great idea! Good job on the software making it modular!
3:30 E-ink Spectra, which was originally designed for use in retail store price displays, but repurposed by Waveshare and other companies for DIY projects. However, a few months ago, Waveshare started offering E-ink Carta displays in the 6, 7.8, and 10.3 inch sizes, however, the hardware to drive it seems to be more complex, and they're more expensive, so I can see why a number of people still prefer to use the Spectra (black/white/red and black/white/yellow) and Aurora (black/white) displays.
Před 4 lety
I didn't know this. Thank you for sharing. Have you got a e-ink screen from Waveshare?
@ No, but I had planned to buy some of their Carta display kits (at least the 10.3 inch, so I could start by sending over some screenshots from my Likebook Mimas), but decided to wait out for newer e-paper display technologies, also because my software project is still in the conceptualisation and design stages.
@@kbhasi hey man, did you actually build your own e-ink organiser or something like that? I'm planning on starting this project with a friend and we're currently looking for the best display to start with. The display is basically just supposed to display a to do list for starters, do you have any recommendations? You seem to be well informed, so I would really appreciate if you could help me out! Thanks mate
@@petermuller6658 I kinda have been planning to create something vaguely like that. However, I'm still in the process of designing it privately, and want to keep as much details as I can as secrets.
That's a pretty cool project. I would probably have added som server uptime data, where the RPI pings the domain and says if it's up now, how long it's been up for, and last time it was down. I'd probably also get it to read some switches on my windows and doors, to see if they're open or closed. The calendar feature is pretty cool, I'd keep that for sure.
dual purpose the rain and snow gages. When accumulation is zero, display % chance of rain/snowfall within the next 1 or 3 hours. Once there's actually an accumulation to count (and thus % chance is either 100% or moot (depending on how you view that data), count the accumulation.
We have at work esl (electronic shelf label) since a few years, as I know we where one of the first retailers using the eInk Display with red as an additional color , they update much faster then this it take less then 1 second. But the cycle is the same, first black and then red fades in.
Pi doesn't have power management features unfortunately - if it's plugged in, it's consuming power, and being idle doesn't change that much. So if you want it to periodically power up, then shut down until the next cycle, you'd need additional hardware to do that. (And that doesn't get you wake-on-LAN or wake-on-keypress, for instance) Unfortunately the add-on kits I've seen to add timer-based power management to the Pi aren't cheap either.
I would be inclined to go with the UDOO RYZEN Bolt V8 as it is easier to write 80586 assembler in AT&T format with some C++ code to link everything together and it can be very fast.
Nice simplicity to the design of the case. Thanks for describing the rationale. Could be good to better present how the code runs as a long running process. Many ways to do that.
i had the idea (even though i have NO idea how to accomplish this...) of using a similar setup to hold information for my D&D game. Its mostly to look up spells as looking through multiple manuals and sheets is infuriating sometimes. maybe chuck in a dice roller for added fun idk. Essentially a really neat digital notebook. I really like the idea for an E-ink display too.
To elaborate: I do mostly hardware work and some repair. I have literally zero experience in programming...i could probably whip together a box with a keyboard and a screen, but there's no way i could put together a program that would you know...do what i want it to do
Do you need to generate your own image via your software to push to the display, or is there a way to have the display just show a website in a kiosk browser using the same hardware? I've been wanting to do something similar but with the off-the-shelf nature of DakBoard so I don't need to program anything.
Looking at some of the prices for the Delkin SD cards, I would guess that they might be SLC flash. That is considering the applications you mentioned them used in. SLC is the best but also very expensive.
I would like same harware but with a 14'' portrait display or 2 X 7" displays, to show PDF mail attachment, if not mail content, to simulate paper sheet like letters. THK Paul
I’m not sure what the purpose of these videos is. It seems you guys go out of your way to make sure that the viewers learn nothing. Is that because you assume we are watching this channel for entertainment and would rather not be burdened by details?
@@tetsujin_144 for sure, it's helpful if you're not aware of the properties if e-ink, so I understand why they show it. If you are familiar with e-ink it sounds funny though :)
@@tetsujin_144 Although EPD (e-paper) is such a vastly different display technology, and I don't think I'd ever personally buy an EPD _smart_ device (that's not strictly for reading or writing), I think it's important that it be compared to contenders such as LCD and LED. Even if it could only ever hope to displace those technologies in areas where it is obviously superior, such as e-book readers, art tablets and static billboards. Simply because it needs to prove that it is, in fact, superior. For instance, I don't think the industry is half as concerned about the health benefits of EPD as it should be. But I argue that, even if we don't see it today, the properties of EPD may extend to nearly the level of light transmitting display technologies in terms of colour accuracy and refresh rate. There are no physical or electrical limitations of such; the processing just gets way too complex, volatile and unjustifiably expensive for anyone to ever buy it.
I’m using a 7.5 inch waveshare Display with 800x480 resolution. But I’m having problems achieving clear font lines. The only readable font I can find are bitmap fonts. But even though my text is much larger it doesn’t look as clear. Which font are you using?
I would like to make one like this that has touch capabilities, as well as being about 15 to 24 inches in size, as I want to be able to walk up to it and click off this ToDo's I've completed, along with having a bluetooth keyboard to add ToDo's to it, or adding ToDo's through my phone to a central server.
Nice project! What Im gonna looking for is - and maybe somebody can give me a hint - is a to do list for my employess to be shown on a big touch monitor where they can check and set check marks for things to be done before they leave. Any ideas?
Sure that could be handled in several different ways. As much as I am fond of overengineering projects for myself, it would be easy enough to get a big touch monitor and set up a full-screen google task on it or look into proper project management software. But if you are determined to do it the hard(fun) way... Big touch screen monitor, raspberry pi, some software development, an inordinate amount of time and voila!
I really wanted forecast, and that was in the original plan, but weather API's start charging for forecast data. Current is in the free tier. That's why it didn't make it...
Would that be possible to use that screen at a regular screen ? So that you ouse use that screen as your regular computer screen, given that you don't do much else than writing on word ?
I work at a clinic and have been trying to find a solution that involves putting the providers schedule on a screen. Now we print their schedules on paper, which goes through 200 pages per month. My idea is having a raspberry pi zero or something with an eInk display and either sending the schedule to the screen by the pi appearing as a printer on the server and then the pi takes the print file and displays it, or somehow uploading a pdf or something to the screen. I'm not sure how to do this. Any tips on how to get started?
So does that blinking happen every time the screen updates or only after the initial boot? This wasnt clear in the video and left me on the fence before attempting this project. Thanks! Looks dope
@@kalebclark5826 that would get old real quick. I hope you find a way to limit that. I can see every 1/4 hour refresh being ideal though. Seldom are appointments every 5 minutes
@@TurboCapriRS I've since upped the interval to 15m. The placement of it at my workstation is in my periphery, so its not too bad. After a few days, I don't notice it all anymore.
I'm not sure Sean, I have another single color from the same manufacturer and it behaves the same way (except for the red refresh of course). I have not used the yellow colored one, but I would assume it is similar from the two that I have used.
Hi there, no idea if there is still someone reading questions here. I'm Python really beginner and never used an e-ink display before. If we want to test the stuff before buying a e-ink display, is it possible to use a HDMI display ? Which part of the code has to be changed to tell to output the result to HDMI port ? Thanks, and best regards
Yes, I stripped it down to just the provided python driver as well as put debug code in the driver so I could see each function as it fired. That's why I am pretty sure it's in the IC.
9:15 Ben Krasnow (Applied Science) posted a Waveshare display teardown about 2 years ago. czcams.com/video/MsbiO8EAsGw/video.html (Jump to about 8 minutes to hear his explain of this)
well done ! very good descrition and structure of the vid. iam looking for an e-ink display that allows me to control a TFT (connected with HDMI) by choosing a film from a browser of an external USB-media by using the e-ink (gpio). but 4.5 secs refresh seams to last long browsing a list of hundrets of filenames ... ;-( got any idea for me ?
it wouldn't be very practical for UI, but i'm currently using a 2.7in variety on my orangepi running armbian in a Linux process. It's working really well once you explicitly enable GPIO support. I want to see if I can launch an early running process to act as a "Linux booting" status. and then have functionality similar to this project (weather, reminders, calendar, etc. ) I compiled Waveshare's ePaper libraries as a static lib so i could reuse it easy throughout the system. C is my language of choice, but i acknowledge python is easier for quick web interfacing. my c app has pages that change the display. one such page option is python enabled so i have the best of both worlds.
Giant eink monitor for big advertisement ... can it be used as Dasung monitor? E ink corporation are paid by pharma corporate to not produce for Human Good Health ? And are very expensive?
Yes! You can find the .stl files in the resources Zip file on Element 14 website here: www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-94108/l/episode-422-raspberry-pi-e-ink-task-organizer
Looking great 😃👍! I'll just throw two ideas into the ring here: 1. You're not the only one who was fed up with the flickering about during the updates - Applied Science has a video where he's hacking the lookup tables: czcams.com/video/MsbiO8EAsGw/video.html shows how to get just below 3 fps of update frequency, on a black-and-white-only display (using an edited version of the Arduino library - but it should give you a decent starting point, at least). I don't know if something similar would work on the two-color displays like yours, and from what I read last, the 7.5 inch variants don't seem to want to take user-defined lookup tables (yet?), but maybe I'm just out of date on that info... 2. Cool project, but at least technically, even a Pi Zero (W) seems like absolute overkill for this 😉. If you want to go really small: Waveshare sells boards with a ESP8266 or a ESP32 with the display connector on it - 'just' switch out the 'Pi Hat' board with one of those put your program on there, and you can get by with much less power usage. And if you want to stay with Python: there's a microPython port for both of those processors, so you should be able to re-use at least part of your code. Okay, there's one problem: a microPython library for the Waveshare displays _does_ exist, but again, from what I read, it's a bit 'work in progress' at the moment, and I'm unclear if the three-color variants are even supported yet (I'm just starting with microPython myself, more or less, and my Python isn't really worth a damn, yet 🤣, so I'm a bit out of my league for stuff like that...)
Of course, it is particular to the manufacturer of the display... But the reasoning he gives sheds a lot of light on what is happening and why it is slow.
Go or Rust are modern, fast alternatives when you need performance. C and C++ with manual memory management are insecure due to manual memory management (Microsoft said 70 % of their security bugs come from manual memory management - nobody can write safe C), and is a wrong answer for everything but an OS kernel or microcontrollers without malloc()
@@joonasfi That means all OS are insecure, in which case, may as well give up. Anyway, aren't Go and Rust are written in C++? How can they be secure, then? Write your own automatic memory management! Don't be so lazy!
@@simpletongeek no it doesn't mean that they're entirely. OS is made of multiple components. And OS != kernel. But yes, the kernel component because it's C is insecure with regarding to memory management. Linux kernel has had plenty of such vulnerabilities. So has Windows kernel. All of those memory safety issues go away if one uses memory safe language. There's no reason a performant kernel couldn't be written in a modern language. Look at Redox OS. It doesn't mean one should give up. Security is a spectrum, not a binary state (= either full secure or fully insecure). Who would in their right mind argue that the security issues are so bad we should abandon technology altogether? Go compiler is written in Go, not C. Rust compiler is written in Rust. It's called bootstrapping - look it up. You can't write automatic memory management for C/C++ that prevents you from accidentally making vulnerable code. You can't write that in a language that is vulnerable on the language level. Don't you think that would have been made already?
@@kalebclark5826 It's not the controller, or rather it is and it isn't. Have you watched the vid by Applied Science? Anyway Python is not that much of a constraint, but the library design very much is.
its a known issue with the color e-ink displays, due to the different polarities of the red color versus the black it has to clear the screen like you said, then the pulsing to coax the red pigment into the right position, if you used a plain black and white e-ink display the refresh for 16color gray can be as low as a few seconds with only minor flashing, another thing to keep in mind is that most controllers also allow for a partial screen update so as long as you are only update the black text/imagery in a area you should be able to tell the controller to update that one area at a much faster speed and tell it to do a full refresh every 24 hrs or so just to keep the screen supple the e-ink displays can get ghosting after a while if the controllers aren't turning off power to the display all the way
@joshua kregg not if you are looking for fast updates
There are multiple update modes that not all displays are compatible with. Per pixel update(can cause ghosting even when compatible), region refreshing(a squared area will flash and refresh), and full screen refreshing.
Kilometers per second!!! Holy wow!
Well Kilometers per second would give very low numbers for wind speed :) We typically use meters per second for wind speed here.
The flashing is because the display is electrophoretic. Basicaly, it's physically moving charged particles through a fluid. The different "colors" have different masses, so some move faster, while others move slower. The flashing basically refreshes all the particles to a "default" position so it can render stuff more reliably.
I think there are ways to eliminate the flashing, depending on what display/libraries you're using. I have a smaller one that wipes, like a slow-moving horizontal scan line (paperTTY is the software I'm using - it lets you run a bash shell on an e-ink display).
The kindle has an option to not erase the screen when flipping pages and it works OK, but leaves some ghosting from the previous page sometimes. Makes page turns superfast though.
"Pretty good viewing angle" saying that about e-ink display is like saying "This book has pretty good viewing angles" :D e-ink is basically like paper in almost every viewing aspect
I get what you mean, but you have to take into account that there is a coating on the display itself, which adds some reflection, hence the impact on viewing angles.
I've wanted to build my own e-ink tablet for years, so really impressed with this project. Maybe this'll be my project over the Christmas holidays!
How did it go?
I’ve been wanting to make an eink small laptop for writing/researching only (no extra apps)
I think we have all sorts of other problems when the day comes we need to display wind speeds in km/s.
"I wanted to have a weather display component"
Okay I get that...
"And I live in California"
Wait what?
The weather component now seems redundant given the weather is:
99% sunny / maybe some clouds or
1% rain / forest fire
Hah! Mostly I like to see just how HOT it is so I can avoid it. But I like to say we have three seasons in CA similar to popular hot sauces. Hot, Mild and Fire.
Forest fire lol more like suburban/highway fires 🤣
@@ericalvarez9345 Have you ever been to CA? It's not a giant sprawling metropolis like NY or something. The northern half of the state is pretty sparse as far as population goes. Plenty of forests and lakes... mountains, volcanoes... CA has a little bit of everything
More like 50% forest fire huehuehue
Been there… I’ll stay when I’m at thanks.
Yes, that flashing is definitely for clearing the display. This particular E-Ink display is used for signage, like showing the price in a store etc. It is not meant to be updated that often. Even every 6 minutes is too often.
The flashing is there to clean the image. E-ink displays work by switching the polarity between two substrates to attract the different colours to the different substrates. IF you want an area to be black, attract the black pigment to the substrate close to the user, want it to be white, attract the black pigment to the bottom substrate.
"The over complication of this project is broad"
Hey, I'm already hooked; no need to oversell it. 🤣
:)
I don't know what the process is internally (ie the flashes and what they're doing), but full refresh for that module is 16 seconds. I timed it via video pause and it looks like that's how long it took to complete the display cycle. I am guessing it's a bit like charging a capacitor but it needs 2 voltage levels, one for black and one for red?
Cool project either way. I have something similar planned, and it's good to see Pi + waveshare kit working as intended.
Seeing how much you used the Red, I would stick to the two color version of the e-ink panel as the updates are much faster. It may also support partial updates allowing a clock updating every minute to be added. Nice project though! Now where’s my e-ink display....
Good point IMO, I wonder how the display updates when using two colors only. The initial render was pretty fast.
Jaroslav Pšenička I’ve been playing with a slightly smaller B/W panel and I could get it updating using partial updates with periodic wiping refreshes with much quicker updates.
Where's the code, or is release delayed until it works on Python 3? (Python 2.7 will become unsupported at the end of the year.)
Neat. But wait:
1) Hanging it would mean the display is then upside down. How do you rotate it?
2) How do you clear items that have been done? No touchscreen?
You said over engineered; I say it's a personal custom built catered to yours truly.
We are not the same.
Pretty cool idea. I'd probably tweak the code to make the display only physically refresh if the data has actually changed instead always every 6 minutes, just to avoid the display flashing distracting me out of the corner of my eye.
The problem with using a rPi for this project is that it doesn't really leverage the zero power e-ink display's 'standby' mode. I.e. The rPi can't go into a low power mode like the display can. I'd use an Arduino instead, as you can use a watchdog interrupt to place it into a very low power mode. I can see why you used the rPi for this project, as setting up timers and low-power Arduino based systems can be a bit outside the scope of this project, as well as getting connectivity on an Arduino can also be complicated and requires more hardware.
Not an argument _against_ your methods, so much as an observation, perhaps for those wanting to take the next step.
As far as I know the arduiono doesnt have enough memory to run the composition of the display. I also settled with an Raspberry Pi, but zero. What can you do?
@@dhyanais AFAIK it depends on the display. Good point though.
@@dhyanais What about an esp32? It should have enough ram, and also supports "deep sleep" modes. :)
I've had a project like this on my list for years. I even thought about throwing my old android tablet at it. Eink is a great idea! Good job on the software making it modular!
Thanks Joshua!
3:30 E-ink Spectra, which was originally designed for use in retail store price displays, but repurposed by Waveshare and other companies for DIY projects. However, a few months ago, Waveshare started offering E-ink Carta displays in the 6, 7.8, and 10.3 inch sizes, however, the hardware to drive it seems to be more complex, and they're more expensive, so I can see why a number of people still prefer to use the Spectra (black/white/red and black/white/yellow) and Aurora (black/white) displays.
I didn't know this. Thank you for sharing. Have you got a e-ink screen from Waveshare?
@
No, but I had planned to buy some of their Carta display kits (at least the 10.3 inch, so I could start by sending over some screenshots from my Likebook Mimas), but decided to wait out for newer e-paper display technologies, also because my software project is still in the conceptualisation and design stages.
@@kbhasi hey man, did you actually build your own e-ink organiser or something like that? I'm planning on starting this project with a friend and we're currently looking for the best display to start with.
The display is basically just supposed to display a to do list for starters, do you have any recommendations?
You seem to be well informed, so I would really appreciate if you could help me out! Thanks mate
@@petermuller6658
I kinda have been planning to create something vaguely like that. However, I'm still in the process of designing it privately, and want to keep as much details as I can as secrets.
I've totally needed one of these and I always need to add to my list of projects! Awesome job man, glad to see everything is going well!
Thanks buddy!
That's a pretty cool project. I would probably have added som server uptime data, where the RPI pings the domain and says if it's up now, how long it's been up for, and last time it was down.
I'd probably also get it to read some switches on my windows and doors, to see if they're open or closed.
The calendar feature is pretty cool, I'd keep that for sure.
Very interesting. Add touch capability to that and for me it'd be a neat display on a Pi running Octoprint.
I like that colour coming out
This is what I hoped the Google home display would do
So cool and nerdy! Love it.
dual purpose the rain and snow gages. When accumulation is zero, display % chance of rain/snowfall within the next 1 or 3 hours. Once there's actually an accumulation to count (and thus % chance is either 100% or moot (depending on how you view that data), count the accumulation.
Good idea! That would give me a bit of room to add something else.
We have at work esl (electronic shelf label) since a few years, as I know we where one of the first retailers using the eInk Display with red as an additional color , they update much faster then this it take less then 1 second. But the cycle is the same, first black and then red fades in.
Will the PiZero do? And have the Pi power up only every hour to update and save energy inbetween?
Yes, the zero will work. not sure about having it power up for the cycle. Ive got it on a 15min cycle currently.
Pi doesn't have power management features unfortunately - if it's plugged in, it's consuming power, and being idle doesn't change that much. So if you want it to periodically power up, then shut down until the next cycle, you'd need additional hardware to do that. (And that doesn't get you wake-on-LAN or wake-on-keypress, for instance) Unfortunately the add-on kits I've seen to add timer-based power management to the Pi aren't cheap either.
@@tetsujin_144 an esp8266 with a relay would probably do the trick.
@@jaret217 the ESP8266 or ESP32 could probably do all parts...
Sunrise and sunset on a task organizer... but no clock.
I absolutely need at least 2 of these
Maybe a bit of padding from the border for the text content - otherwise blown away!!! This is AWESOME! I NEED one :) (in pieces to build of course :)
I would be inclined to go with the UDOO RYZEN Bolt V8 as it is easier to write 80586 assembler in AT&T format with some C++ code to link everything together and it can be very fast.
Awesome project :)Would it be easy to add a glass-screen infront the of the e-ink panel, to make it easier to keep clean?
Sure, Would only have to modify the front 3d printed part to accommodate the glass!
Wow!! Ive seen a lot of electronic projects. But this one is awesome!!
Thanks Frank!
Nice simplicity to the design of the case. Thanks for describing the rationale. Could be good to better present how the code runs as a long running process. Many ways to do that.
Thank you! As simple as it gets, CRON.
Would not a Raspberry Pi Zero W, be better for this?
i had the idea (even though i have NO idea how to accomplish this...) of using a similar setup to hold information for my D&D game. Its mostly to look up spells as looking through multiple manuals and sheets is infuriating sometimes. maybe chuck in a dice roller for added fun idk. Essentially a really neat digital notebook. I really like the idea for an E-ink display too.
To elaborate: I do mostly hardware work and some repair. I have literally zero experience in programming...i could probably whip together a box with a keyboard and a screen, but there's no way i could put together a program that would you know...do what i want it to do
Do you need to generate your own image via your software to push to the display, or is there a way to have the display just show a website in a kiosk browser using the same hardware?
I've been wanting to do something similar but with the off-the-shelf nature of DakBoard so I don't need to program anything.
Looking at some of the prices for the Delkin SD cards, I would guess that they might be SLC flash. That is considering the applications you mentioned them used in. SLC is the best but also very expensive.
I need to get my shit together like this guy.
I would like same harware but with a 14'' portrait display or 2 X 7" displays, to show PDF mail attachment, if not mail content, to simulate paper sheet like letters. THK Paul
Nice Project Kaleb! Would make a superb 'Bat Signal' /overhead projector! lol =D
haha! Thank you!
I’m not sure what the purpose of these videos is. It seems you guys go out of your way to make sure that the viewers learn nothing. Is that because you assume we are watching this channel for entertainment and would rather not be burdened by details?
Great project. Will you be sharing the code?
10:53 "viewing angle" it's literally black and red pigments on a plastic sheet hahaha
It's like checking viewing angles on a printed paper :D
Yeah that's kind of the point, though. These properties are par for the course for e-ink, but not for computer displays in general.
@@tetsujin_144 for sure, it's helpful if you're not aware of the properties if e-ink, so I understand why they show it. If you are familiar with e-ink it sounds funny though :)
@@tetsujin_144 Although EPD (e-paper) is such a vastly different display technology, and I don't think I'd ever personally buy an EPD _smart_ device (that's not strictly for reading or writing), I think it's important that it be compared to contenders such as LCD and LED. Even if it could only ever hope to displace those technologies in areas where it is obviously superior, such as e-book readers, art tablets and static billboards. Simply because it needs to prove that it is, in fact, superior. For instance, I don't think the industry is half as concerned about the health benefits of EPD as it should be. But I argue that, even if we don't see it today, the properties of EPD may extend to nearly the level of light transmitting display technologies in terms of colour accuracy and refresh rate. There are no physical or electrical limitations of such; the processing just gets way too complex, volatile and unjustifiably expensive for anyone to ever buy it.
Awesome and beautiful
time to build my own e-reader
I will love to see a Audino if doable with a Epaper displaying Crypto and Stocks -
I’m using a 7.5 inch waveshare Display with 800x480 resolution. But I’m having problems achieving clear font lines. The only readable font I can find are bitmap fonts. But even though my text is much larger it doesn’t look as clear. Which font are you using?
is there any chance e ink display can be used for scifi movies?, it looks kinda interesting
I have been thinking about building something like this. e-Ink, Raspberry pi zero.
I would like to make one like this that has touch capabilities, as well as being about 15 to 24 inches in size, as I want to be able to walk up to it and click off this ToDo's I've completed, along with having a bluetooth keyboard to add ToDo's to it, or adding ToDo's through my phone to a central server.
Nice project! What Im gonna looking for is - and maybe somebody can give me a hint - is a to do list for my employess to be shown on a big touch monitor where they can check and set check marks for things to be done before they leave. Any ideas?
Sure that could be handled in several different ways. As much as I am fond of overengineering projects for myself, it would be easy enough to get a big touch monitor and set up a full-screen google task on it or look into proper project management software. But if you are determined to do it the hard(fun) way... Big touch screen monitor, raspberry pi, some software development, an inordinate amount of time and voila!
HM. Modify this to house a pi zero and a battery pack along with some tac switch buttons to make an ereader or just ot cycle thorugh data displays?
have you tried making a diy e reader with one of these larger displays? it may be worth trying to make one that reads PDFs properly finally.
I would of added a few day forecast along with a daily hi and lo for the weather..and maybe a notepad function.
I really wanted forecast, and that was in the original plan, but weather API's start charging for forecast data. Current is in the free tier. That's why it didn't make it...
@@kalebclark5826 open source weather forecast data would be cool...
very interested to know what syntax highlighting are you using? it's minimal and i love it. if you don't mind to share.. :)
Would that be possible to use that screen at a regular screen ? So that you ouse use that screen as your regular computer screen, given that you don't do much else than writing on word ?
I work at a clinic and have been trying to find a solution that involves putting the providers schedule on a screen. Now we print their schedules on paper, which goes through 200 pages per month. My idea is having a raspberry pi zero or something with an eInk display and either sending the schedule to the screen by the pi appearing as a printer on the server and then the pi takes the print file and displays it, or somehow uploading a pdf or something to the screen. I'm not sure how to do this. Any tips on how to get started?
I love it!! But there must be a way to make a faster refresh. If you have guts, your new solution will be in ASM. ;)
Can we display Maya software rendering time left on this ...?
I really want to implement this, but I have the V2 version of the Waveshare e-ink screen, and that doesn't want to work.
So does that blinking happen every time the screen updates or only after the initial boot? This wasnt clear in the video and left me on the fence before attempting this project. Thanks! Looks dope
Unfortunately, it happens on every screen update.
@@kalebclark5826 that would get old real quick. I hope you find a way to limit that. I can see every 1/4 hour refresh being ideal though. Seldom are appointments every 5 minutes
@@TurboCapriRS I've since upped the interval to 15m. The placement of it at my workstation is in my periphery, so its not too bad. After a few days, I don't notice it all anymore.
this needs a touchscreen. could then run it as a single page web browser in kiosk mode.
Awesome project, shame about the screen refresh though. Are all the multicolour displays like that?
I'm not sure Sean, I have another single color from the same manufacturer and it behaves the same way (except for the red refresh of course). I have not used the yellow colored one, but I would assume it is similar from the two that I have used.
great video :D thanks !
Thanks Max!
I loove it!
Hi there, no idea if there is still someone reading questions here. I'm Python really beginner and never used an e-ink display before. If we want to test the stuff before buying a e-ink display, is it possible to use a HDMI display ? Which part of the code has to be changed to tell to output the result to HDMI port ? Thanks, and best regards
Nice project! Question, in your python code how do you send the PIL generated image to the e-ink display?
Something is very, very wrong with screen update. Are you sure the python code does not performs multiple redraws in a row?
Yes, I stripped it down to just the provided python driver as well as put debug code in the driver so I could see each function as it fired. That's why I am pretty sure it's in the IC.
9:15 Ben Krasnow (Applied Science) posted a Waveshare display teardown about 2 years ago.
czcams.com/video/MsbiO8EAsGw/video.html (Jump to about 8 minutes to hear his explain of this)
well done ! very good descrition and structure of the vid. iam looking for an e-ink display that allows me to control a TFT (connected with HDMI) by choosing a film from a browser of an external USB-media by using the e-ink (gpio). but 4.5 secs refresh seams to last long browsing a list of hundrets of filenames ... ;-( got any idea for me ?
Make a dual display tablet lcd e ink display
Isn't the Raspberry Pi designed for use with M2.5 mounting screws, not M3 ?
I should probably keep a larger stock of those. They seem to go fast around here!
someone try this display on a raspbian? I mean, use as a normal display on a graphical destkop?
it wouldn't be very practical for UI, but i'm currently using a 2.7in variety on my orangepi running armbian in a Linux process.
It's working really well once you explicitly enable GPIO support. I want to see if I can launch an early running process to act as a "Linux booting" status. and then have functionality similar to this project (weather, reminders, calendar, etc. )
I compiled Waveshare's ePaper libraries as a static lib so i could reuse it easy throughout the system. C is my language of choice, but i acknowledge python is easier for quick web interfacing. my c app has pages that change the display. one such page option is python enabled so i have the best of both worlds.
I have an old e ink reader with Android. Could I use that also for something like this?
awesome
wait, you got me excited. Where could I get that e-ink display?
Answer it myself here, it's from Waveshare
Is a pi zero w enough for this project ?
Yes, a pi zero should work just fine for this project!
Nice
Is the code somewhere open to get inspired?
github.com/KalebClark/InfoWindow
Giant eink monitor for big advertisement ... can it be used as Dasung monitor?
E ink corporation are paid by pharma corporate to not produce for Human Good Health ?
And are very expensive?
do you use a weather api to grab the weather for it?
Make this with a rasPi zero W n stick it side of your PC running Bashtop with your PC s status
I would have added faster refresh.
air pressure humitty
Is there a place where I can find the 3d models? I have no experience with 3d modeling, but i'd really like to make one of these :)
Yes! You can find the .stl files in the resources Zip file on Element 14 website here: www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-94108/l/episode-422-raspberry-pi-e-ink-task-organizer
How do you add tasks?
this surprised me! I was doing something REALLY similar for a project lul
Can I do it with an old kindle?
Is the code posted somewhere?
Can we display a PDF file?
Why use a Raspberry Pi? Isn't that a bit overkill? An ESP-32 could do all that. It's cheaper and runs a dialect of python.
Given the prices involved I don't think it's worth the effort to optimize the CPU for cost.
WHO ON EARTH STILL USED PYTHON 2 IN 2019
Some people still use Python 1..
Airbag888 really ?
@@datmesay I forgot why I said that 2 months ago :p
Looking great 😃👍! I'll just throw two ideas into the ring here:
1. You're not the only one who was fed up with the flickering about during the updates - Applied Science has a video where he's hacking the lookup tables: czcams.com/video/MsbiO8EAsGw/video.html shows how to get just below 3 fps of update frequency, on a black-and-white-only display (using an edited version of the Arduino library - but it should give you a decent starting point, at least). I don't know if something similar would work on the two-color displays like yours, and from what I read last, the 7.5 inch variants don't seem to want to take user-defined lookup tables (yet?), but maybe I'm just out of date on that info...
2. Cool project, but at least technically, even a Pi Zero (W) seems like absolute overkill for this 😉. If you want to go really small: Waveshare sells boards with a ESP8266 or a ESP32 with the display connector on it - 'just' switch out the 'Pi Hat' board with one of those put your program on there, and you can get by with much less power usage. And if you want to stay with Python: there's a microPython port for both of those processors, so you should be able to re-use at least part of your code. Okay, there's one problem: a microPython library for the Waveshare displays _does_ exist, but again, from what I read, it's a bit 'work in progress' at the moment, and I'm unclear if the three-color variants are even supported yet (I'm just starting with microPython myself, more or less, and my Python isn't really worth a damn, yet 🤣, so I'm a bit out of my league for stuff like that...)
Which weather API are you using?
Hi TJ, I am using Open Weather Map for this project.
Sweet, thanks!
Speed it up with python is this a joke?
Here is a detailed explanation and solution to the update speed of the eink: czcams.com/video/MsbiO8EAsGw/video.html
Of course, it is particular to the manufacturer of the display... But the reasoning he gives sheds a lot of light on what is happening and why it is slow.
News updates and weather adviseries and amber silver etc alerts.
I wonder if Python slows down things. Have you tried it using C programming language?
I *think* the slow part is in the firmware on the controller IC. But C would def speed other things up. Also, I am not as proficient in C as python.
Go or Rust are modern, fast alternatives when you need performance. C and C++ with manual memory management are insecure due to manual memory management (Microsoft said 70 % of their security bugs come from manual memory management - nobody can write safe C), and is a wrong answer for everything but an OS kernel or microcontrollers without malloc()
@@joonasfi That means all OS are insecure, in which case, may as well give up. Anyway, aren't Go and Rust are written in C++? How can they be secure, then?
Write your own automatic memory management! Don't be so lazy!
@@simpletongeek no it doesn't mean that they're entirely. OS is made of multiple components. And OS != kernel. But yes, the kernel component because it's C is insecure with regarding to memory management. Linux kernel has had plenty of such vulnerabilities. So has Windows kernel.
All of those memory safety issues go away if one uses memory safe language. There's no reason a performant kernel couldn't be written in a modern language. Look at Redox OS.
It doesn't mean one should give up. Security is a spectrum, not a binary state (= either full secure or fully insecure). Who would in their right mind argue that the security issues are so bad we should abandon technology altogether?
Go compiler is written in Go, not C. Rust compiler is written in Rust. It's called bootstrapping - look it up.
You can't write automatic memory management for C/C++ that prevents you from accidentally making vulnerable code. You can't write that in a language that is vulnerable on the language level. Don't you think that would have been made already?
@@kalebclark5826 It's not the controller, or rather it is and it isn't. Have you watched the vid by Applied Science?
Anyway Python is not that much of a constraint, but the library design very much is.