Dear friends welcome back!
I am Nick from educ8s.tv and today we are
going to see how to use the 4.3’ E – Paper
display with Arduino.
The big advantage of this display is its power
consumption, it can display text and graphics
even if it is not connected to power!
Without any further delay, let’s get started!
Electronic paper and e-paper are display technologies
that mimic the appearance of ordinary ink
on paper.
Unlike conventional backlit flat panel displays
that emit light, electronic paper displays
reflect light like paper.
This make them more comfortable to read, and
provide a wider viewing angle than most light-emitting
displays.
Many electronic paper technologies hold static
text and images indefinitely without electricity.
That’s why I wanted to test an e-paper display
with Arduino.
I would like to find out if it can benefit
our Arduino projects so I chose to test the
4.3’ e-paper display that I found on Gearbest.com.
The display costs around 61$ and Gearbest.com
webstore was kind enough to send me a sample
unit in order to test it and share my opinion
about it with you.
You can find a link for the display in the
description of the video.
As you can see the display is big.
Its resolution is 800x480 pixels, it can display
graphics and text and it can display 4 shades
of grey.
We only need to connect 5 wires in order to
make it work with Arduino.
Vcc goes to Arduino 5V.
Ground goes to Arduino Ground.
DOUT pin goes to Rx pin of the Arduino Uno.
DIN pin goes to Tx pin of the Arduino Uno.
Lastly Wake_Up pin goes to digital pin 2.
The software side of the project is very easy
as well.
All we need to do is to use the library that
comes with the display and load the demo sketch.
That’s it.
The library provides all the basic functions
in order to display text and graphics on the
display easily.
Let’s watch for a few seconds the demo sketch.
As you can see, the display is able to display
graphics, it can draw shapes and it has a
couple of fonts installed, English and Chinese.
The refresh rate of the display is low, it
can take up to 3 seconds to update, so we
have to forget playing animations on it.
The big advantage of the display is its power
consumption.
Check this out.
If I remove power from the display, the text
does not disappear!
We don’t need power to display something
on the display!
We only need power in order to update it!
Great!
But how much current do we need in order to
update it?
Let’s find out!
At the back of the display, we can find something
interesting.
We can find a big ARM processor that runs
at 72MHz!
There is also 128MBs of FLASH memory for image
storage and an SD card slot.
It is like having an Arduino Due to control
the display.
That’s not promising at all about the power
consumption.
Using a multimeter we can see that the display
needs around 110mAs of current when it is
updating, and about 4mAs when it is sleeping.
The sleeping current is not bad for big display
like this but too big for battery powered
projects.
So, in order to use this display in a battery
powered project, we have to disable it every
time it is updated using a transistor.
This way we can reduce the current down to
zero for the display.
Since the update current huge for an embedded
project, this display is ideal for battery
power projects that update the display rarely,
let say once a day.
I am looking forward in building a project
with this display in order to see, how long
we can make it last on batteries.
That’s my first experience with an e-paper
display and I think that the e-paper technology
is a very promising one.
I would like to hear your thoughts on that.
What do you think about this display?
Can it be useful to your projects?
Do you have any projects in mind that will
benefit from a display like this?
Please post your comments or ideas in the
comments section below.
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In this channel I post videos about DIY projects
every Saturday.
I build projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi,
I build robots and simple electronic circuits.
I love making things and helping people doing
the same.
I hope that you will join our community.
Until next Saturday, Watch, Learn, Build!
