Introduction: Getting Started With E-Paper Display Modules

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About: Electronics enthusiast, vlogger on youtube.

In this video I'm gonna show you how to load a custom image on the e-paper display. Let’s see how easy it is to get started working with one of these e-paper display modules and an the Arduino environment. You can use pretty much any Arduino compatible board for this project, even an ESP8266 board will work.

Step 1: Checkout the Video!

The video describes the entire process of connecting the display to the arduino board so I recommend watching the video first to get an overview of the project. Then you can come back and read the following steps for a more detailed explanation.

Step 2: Parts List

Here you can find a list with links to all the parts I used in the project. Feel free to adjust and make changes according to your own needs. Like I mentioned previously you can use any Arduino board, even a wemos ESP8266 board or one of the newer ESP32 based boards.

You can also find these e-paper display modules in other sizes and colors, for example here is a 3 color e-paper display module with Red/Black/White.

Step 3: The Wiring

If you plan to use the provided demo code you will need to follow this pin-out for connecting the display module to the Arduino board. If you feel confident enough to make this kind of changes, the code can be adjusted to accommodate a different pin-out wiring.

  • e-paper 3V3 -> Arduino 3V3
  • e-paper GND -> Arduino GND
  • e-paper DIN -> Arduino D11
  • e-paper CLK -> Arduino D13
  • e-paper CS -> Arduino D10
  • e-paper DC -> Arduino D9
  • e-paper RST -> Arduino D8
  • e-paper BUSY -> Arduino D7

Step 4: Compile & Upload Demo Code

Here is a link where you can download the Arduino library plus demo code for this display module. Once downloaded, extract the archive and inside the arduino directory you will find the demo code plus the library. Rename the "libraries" directory to "epaper" and copy to "/documents/Arduino/libraries". Next copy the directory named "epd1in54-demo" to "/documents/Arduino". Now you should be able to see and load the sketch named "epd1in54-demo" inside Arduino.

Hit Compile & Upload and in a few seconds you should see the demo code being displayed on the e-paper module. This proves the module is correctly wired to the arduino. If you can't see anything changing on the display after uploading the code please go back to the wiring step, check if you have any errors, also it helps checking the terminal inside Arduino for any error messages.

Step 5: Show Custom Graphic on the E-paper Display

For showing custom images on the e-paper display we are going to use a software called Image2LCD which will help us translate a monochrome bitmap image into a C array that we can store in the Arduino program memory. Use the link above to download and extract the software and then follow the step by step instruction from my video to finalize this step.

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