The best low power display? E-Paper Tutorial

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In this video I will show you how commercial E-Paper displays work and how we can control them easily with an Arduino development board. Along the way we will discover their advantages and disadvantages and compare them to traditional TFT LCDs. Let's get started!
You can buy E-Paper modules here (affiliate links):
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Websites which were shown during the video:
www.waveshare....
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www.waveshare....
www.waveshare....
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Music:
2011 Lookalike by Bartlebeats

[@CoCoRiCoSC2]

I am currently building a weather station with the 4.2 display and a esp8266. So good ! Just be careful with the partial refresh. Each time you use it, each time it lower the darkness of the rest of the screen. So you need to do a full refresh some time.

[@gotj]

E-paper has another hidden trap for newbies: the e-paper runs on a quite high voltage (several tens of volts, often two rails a + and a -), and, every time you power it down (enter sleep/standby) you throw away the charge in its "high voltage" power supply caps. That's energy you have to put back into them the next time it comes out of standby. This energy isn't in the datasheet power consumption figures, and does add up to quite a bit when you do the math for say a year or two of display updates...

[@agarceran]

Is charging the caps such a lengthy procedure that you need to proactively charge them, and keep them charged, before you do a refresh? I guess a well designed system would only charge them when you are going to refresh the screen.

[@sugarbooty]

Could you provide some real world numbers?

[@gotj]

@SugarBooty For a clock updating the display once per minute, two rails of (+/-) 20 volts, 10µF caps: 365*24*60*(10e-6*20*20)/3600 = 0.58 Wh. To put it in perspective, that's ~= the energy in a CR2032.

[@sugarbooty]

@@gotj That's quite a bit of energy. Could the design be optimized to minimize the size of the caps, do you think?

[@Milamberinx]

@@sugarbooty the calculation is for a year's worth of updates, I don't think that's unreasonable. I have a musical instrument tuner that eats through a CR2032 in a few weeks worth of practice.

[@agarceran]

A local electronics store has started using little e-ink modules to put the prices on the shelves. I think the modules might actually be wireless and they can change the price, name, etc on the fly. As the screen uses no power while it is displaying things they could get away with using them and recharging them only after quite a while. Also, on an unrelated note, I am still waiting on the RGB displays we were promised Years ago. Seems like BW was good enought for most uses and if you want color you need to get a tablet. The tech also has become quite stagnant since quite a while ago, in terms of resolution or number of colors (or gray levels) possible.

[@lukasnoels]

Adria Garceran I used to work for a Belgian supermarket chain (Delhaize) as a student that had those, I looked them up and the brand is ‘Pricer’. I believe other stores have them as well, they’re pretty common around here. When there was a new product or the Pricer (we called them ESL) was broken/lost we could scan the product and the barcode with our smartdevice thingies and a few minutes later the price and productinfo would appear on them. So they work on some sort of wireless network in the store. Also, we never had to recharge them, they last for a long time because we only had to throw them in a special bin when the text started to fade away or when they wouldn’t respond when we scanned them.

[@konayasai]

Grocery stores have been doing this for years around here.

[@arthurmead5341]

I think those use VLF or something crazy

[@Derek_Read]

Waveshare actually suggests that usage for their e-paper displays: "ideal choice for applications such as shelf label". Interesting to see that someone is actually using it for this purpose.

[@SreenikethanI]

Hey! I just noticed those E-Ink displays as the price labels yesterday in a hypermarket!!!

[@peoplethesedaysberetarded]

I remember first hearing about eInk in 2003. I always wanted to mess with it, but it seemed just too far out of reach to custom-fabricate some interface board and write microcode. It's rad to see that we now have these boards and some microcode available. Thank you for the video!

[@Asu01]

E-paper sure is an _inkredible_ invention, can't wait to try it myself.

[@FunScientifix]

Labs lmfao stop

[@mickolesmana5899]

get out, just, get out.

[@SolarWebsite]

That's a nice _display_ of humor...

[@noname_atall]

inkreadable*

[@LoganDark4357]

Don't _draw_ conclusions ahead of time, you never know what _paint_ it'll cause

[@kilakila5431]

I learnt a new concept e-paper display (MED) Microencapsulated Electrophoretic Display ....

[@rklauco]

Micro Watt Henry? I think you've meant to say Watt/Hour, didn't you? :)

[@greatscottlab]

micro watt hour......mistakes happen.

[@BenCos2018]

Patrons get early access

[@giornogiovanna729]

Oh look, the dude made a deadly mistake. Better act smugly.

[@57F.K]

@@giornogiovanna729 i dont see the problem, he just corrected him and asked if he meant the other thing?

[@giornogiovanna729]

@@57F.K I'm pretty sure it's an spelling error. Not an actual misinformation. When you make a typo, do you really intend to say "corected" or you always meant the correct form of it? It's not like he got the values wrong or anything.

[@castortoutnu]

Dude absolutely all of your videos are so well made it's scary.

[@Brutaltronics]

damn, basically the arduino eats more power than the display, lol

[@greatscottlab]

True :-)

[@iisky1]

don't you expect it to though? its a tiny computer

[@TheActualTed]

I don't find it very surprising given how the eink works.

[@dega235]

@@iisky1 I think it uses like 50 mA 5V, so no, i didn't expect that

[@nrdesign1991]

@@dega235You can drastically cut power consumption by removing the power LED, applying a sleep mode when the CPU is not needed, and pull all unused pins to either LOW or HIGH. The only thing still consuming a few mA would be the USB interface., which can be omitted by using an Arduino without one, or better, just the bare MCU.

[@funny-video-YouTube-channel]

*The e-paper displays are great* for anything that is not video or games. Could work for many projects with the arduino.

[@CZghost]

Like e-books? Look at Kindle. It actually uses this technology. Those displays are monochromatic (white or black only), but with pixels so small it looks like printed image, you can make grayscale pictures...

[@electrodacus]

With the LCD display most of the power is used by the LED back light and 1W seems extreme (you will likely damage the LED's at that level). Each LED can be supplied with max 15mA and depending on LCD size you have maybe 4 or 6 LED's so 60 to 90mA typical at 3V that will be 0.27W (that is extreme already). In my projects I use a max 25mA and as low as 2mA for LED back light on 2.4 and 3.2" LCD's so 0.075W or less.

[@sugarbooty]

That number stood out to me too

[@gotj]

To me too

[@NoTengoIlusiones]

I have this in my Domotic Smart Thermostat and Valves by Netatmo ( great brand by the way). It even stays on after batteries removed ! E-Paper is a great invention !

[@jparky1972]

As always.... Well presented. Easily understandable. Thank you. Have a Merry Christmas.

[@douglasquaid1418]

And a happy new year!

[@user-jn6ko8ci6i]

@alysdexia ?

[@richardingle7540]

I ve been watching your channel for a while now and everyone of them has been facinating, i really love the latest buy or diy builds using the easy pcbs, you show all the mistakes youve made and fixes and then even after all your hard work some of them youve said better to buy , great videos , great projects keep them coming , oh , Merry Christmas 👍🍻

[@greatscottlab]

Thank you :-)

[@TugrulDuran]

Great Scott, great work! But you dont need an external program for BMP>C conversion. GIMP can do that. Just save as and select the right format that I cant remember now. :)

[@isprithul]

9 minutes 50 seconds video. GreatScott doesn't do it for the money. EDIT: Thanks for the likes.

[@garethronaldo8692]

hahaha

[@garethronaldo8692]

@Garlic Bread i hope he just buy a new tools to work with or his channel will die so fast i told him that in the last video and he only replay with " No "

[@Dejawolfs]

great scott probably makes enough money from his real job to not worry about such things.

[@hikotee]

what does 9:50 signify, exactly?

[@jonjohnson102]

10 minutes if you want ad revenue

[@CoolguyTheClone]

The more I learn outside this channel the more I undertand him and his channel

[@chenli9734]

Nice video, cannot wait to see this channel pass its 1 million milestone.

[@64_Tesseract]

This thing is cool... It'd be good for some emergency tool, maybe a small scanner that maps your surroundings thst you can refer to for up to a week.

[@sgtunix]

Almost 1M subscribers. It will be well deserved. Can’t wait for more content like this in 2019!

[@runforitman]

8:17 that’s what I like about the tft screens; they have an sd card where you can put .bmp’s to call from your code

[@BlueClefto]

this is the best for Ebooks and replacing traditional notebooks

[@mrrodgersphysics]

Who down-votes these? This guy's work is consistently awesome!

[@royan3312]

8:38 ''Micro Watt Henry'' ? , You meant to say ''Micro Watt Hours''?

[@greatscottlab]

Correct

[@Ramog1000]

oh dang xD I was like what is that unit I never have heard of xD

[@videolabguy]

Ah, yes. I knew him well. Oh! No. Wait. Watt hours? Never mind......

[@chipheadnet]

Awesome as always!

[@northshorepx]

indeed!

[@segoiii]

there is also a partial update function. You don´t need to refresh the whole display every time.

[@user-zlcksu4asdv]

I never thought I could buy e-ink screens! As always, this is a great clip and I look forward to seeing those forever! Thank you!

[@kbhasi]

Yep, these displays shown in the video were originally intended more for use as store price displays, but Waveshare repurposed them for DIY projects, and just a few months ago, they started offering e-paper displays of the kind intended for e-readers and paper tablets.

[@UttamKumar-ic4qh]

Sadness is that great Scott still don't have a million subscribers

[@pauljackson2126]

Imagine setting up your project in an expo and using this module as your ID card.

[@sasodoma]

Too bad that kindle like readers weren't more popular and didn't drive the price of these down.

[@TheActualTed]

I think they are and they did. Just look how expensive it was years ago.

[@peoplethesedaysberetarded]

I still own my PaperWhite 2. What a great device. I just wish I could (legally) move my PURCHASED BOOKS between devices when this one dies.

[@agarceran]

@@peoplethesedaysberetarded AFAIK You can move the ebooks you purchased on amazon between devices as long as you have both devices associated to the same account. Try the amazon reader app on a mobile phone or something, even on PC, and you should be able to redownload your purchased ebooks to that app. In fact I believe it lets you continue reading from the same point between devices.

[@pileofstuff]

@@agarceran Yeah, but only with another Kindle reader, not another brand.

[@peoplethesedaysberetarded]

Adria Garceran Rad, thanks! IIRC, at some point the DRM was tied to one device. Glad that’s not the case.

[@mrjn6940]

congrats mr great scott for 1 million subscribers

[@lrochfort]

I just ordered the 8 inch version of this myself! Perfect timing :)

[@ozule1782]

Merry christmas Scott!

[@greatscottlab]

Thank you

[@wenzelp]

Your description how the e-paper work is on point! Thanks :-).

[@pedrovelazquez6166]

if you are using the software Image2Lcd, set scan mode: vertical scan, check reverse color, insted of normal choose Mirror left-right and uncheck include head data ;) for the 2.9' BW model

[@jasonmhite]

Seems like some simple run-length encoding compression might save a lot of memory on images.

[@sligovolts]

Then you'd have to have code to decompress, and memory to store before sending to the library. If you were to write your own library it might be worth to decompress and send it without allocating that much of memory.

[@svevaservodio5351]

One of the best video I ever see on this argument !!!

[@e1ghthree]

Happy holidays sir! It’s so called outside ❄️

[@luna010]

called

[@EarlGray_kd7sjt]

It is always awesome to watch and learn from you. Thank you for another great video

[@NicksStuff]

The refresh rate surprises me, my e-reader doesn't seem to take that long

[@FantaBH]

It looks like you going to hit million subs soon. But hardly and sadly not this year. Good job , marry Christmas and happy new year.

[@ratchet1freak]

I really hope that lib lets you use PROGMEM directly to input an image instead of having to use RAM.

[@davidjohnson3163]

So close to one million subscribers

[@theenderman9042]

As you showed in the video E-Paper framerate is: 1 frame = 4s So, we gonna divide this to seconds 4/seconds = 0.25 FPS The E-Paper framerate is 0.25 FPS Hope i did correct calculations.

[@colin2390]

You should have been in KZbin rewind GreatScott

[@CopyniumPastenium]

YES, i am waiting for this tutorial! nice!

[@ranbeersingh4297]

you should make a video on PIR sensors and hopefully build a motion sensor or do a 'DIY vs BUY' video on it! Love your work!! Merry Christmas!!

[@carlosruizmora3111]

I *always* get stressed when you use a screw driver to point to and to touch on a screen. I'll have to send you some nylon sticks for Christmas, so you abandon that habit. But I still love every one of your videos. Cheers!

[@joopterwijn]

Thx for this vid, and Glückliche Weihnachten, und ein farbliche neue Jahr!

[@morg333]

just saying @ 4:33, it could be missunderstood that all coloured epapers are made with filters, applied science explained in his video "E-paper hacking: fastest possible refresh rate" timestamp 7:54 that there are different coloured particles, rather than filters. Ohwell, for the timeframe, and objective to bring epaper to everyone and not just scientists it is certainly a great video. thanks

[@gtxviper]

Another Great video. Thanks for the effort GS, keep inspiring! Happy holidays!

[@maicod]

now we need a touch e-paper display :)

[@elijahsantiana134]

Wow I hope your my science teacher

[@Eric-ip8hy]

Good video now i understand why my broken e book reader displays the same picture the whole tim!!!

[@brainfornothing]

Thanks for sharing and Happy Holidays !

[@user-le5pg7cp5z]

GreatScott, hello! Can you please add english subtitles to your great videos. I am your russsian subscriber and it can be hard sometimess to understand the unknown words and find them in the dictionary in order to understand your videos better. Thanks a lot!

[@greatscottlab]

The community can add subtitles but I do not have the time to do so. Sorry.

[@mpcrazyscience7097]

there are automatic subtitles

[@gtxviper]

@@cda32 I had no idea that this was possible!!! Im subscribed to a really good russian channel but had no idea what they were saying. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. I've reviewed the captions for this video. The spelling is Americanised but I agree, they are fine.

[@user-le5pg7cp5z]

@@urugulu1656 Hello. The main problem, that i am 15 years old and I am not good enough an electronics to understand all the terms especially in English. If i don't know the term i read the subtitles and look the word up. But sometimes the subtitles are not very good.

[@UNSCPILOT]

Pretty cool way to help learn a language I must say, especially since you also get to learn about cool tech

[@bennyboi0115]

Hello again mate, thanks for another awesome video! Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Maybe a tutorial on how to make a multiplexed Christmas tree?

[@PhillyStyle1026]

A little simple RLE (Run-length encoding) would go a long way with reducing the size of those monochrome images.

[@yatharthagarwal2041]

Have considered teaching in a college I'm Totally in for lessons!!

[@yatharthagarwal2041]

@El Mahdi Ettaleb he is really good at explaining though! It would be fun studying under Scott!!

[@yatharthagarwal2041]

@El Mahdi Ettaleb also in India we have calculus and differential equations in high school....😅

[@thecoder5550]

Great video as always!

[@TomCarbon]

@7:20, it's the opposite in fact! The encoded value corresponds to the amount of black, thus 00 means white and 11 means black... Hence the 'ink' analogy... And when using another screen with Red for instance, it means there are two layers: on for white(0)-black(1) and another one for white(00-red(1)...

[@williefleete]

next best thing is Sharp's memory LCD's, which I have had a play with, they use a small amount of power to hold a static image without the need to refresh and have somewhat higher contrast and viewing angle (and natural light visibility, no backlight) like e-ink and have a similar refresh rate to TFT LCD's, I would like a video on those if you can

[@sugarbooty]

I'll have to check them out

[@benjaminramsey4695]

Another great video! Man I wish I had an extra lifetime for all this tinkering!

[@AtomkeySinclair]

Great content as usual GS. Could you have just used the 3.3 volt out on the Arduino Uno? And why do you think these are slow compared to the ones Amazon uses in their Kindle e-readers?

[@DJkillstyler]

Yo GreatScott, i have some ideas for projects you can try/create to make a new video :D 1. a mobile car heating for the driver area and windows 2. a present card, and if you open it will play your music 3. a little spy cam with memory for videos Hope this are good concept s for you ;p

[@howellschan]

you can try a reflective type LCD which does not need a backlight, so power comsumption could be much lower

[@BenMitro]

Thanks - yet another great tutorial. Perhaps, one day JLPCB can take you on a factory tour? That would be super interesting. All the best for the festive season and the coming new year. Cheers!

[@Ch4grin]

In Gimp you can convert the image to XBM (X bitmap) format and skip the additional conversion utility.

[@runforitman]

4:39 that’s not how those 3 colour displays work... They have one colour that is much slower to move in them Applied science did a great video on that

[@MCsCreations]

Pretty nice technology, man... Thanks a lot! 😊 Merry Christmas! And take care with Krampus. 😉

[@armandoac1334]

Great video as always

[@surfacta]

Make a video about logic gates, and how to make them using diodes and transistors

[@sugarbooty]

That sounds like a cool idea, I did this when I was in my electronics class. I wish I had those resources again.

[@dside_ru]

To reiterate what was noted already: at 3:49 it's *not* an RGB display, it's "three-color", as in any pixel can be one of three colors (IIRC they manufacture screens with black, white and one extra yellow or red), but nothing in between.

[@rafaelmarroquin4429]

Excelente amigo, siempre explicas super bien vale cada maldito segundo ver tus videos :D Gracias

[@naitikshailendrakumaryadav2824]

"Namaste" from India. It is new subject for me. Can you make full tutorial vedio for new beginners ?

[@infsoftgmbh]

That looks very cool. Look forward to more videos!

[@y2ksw1]

Amazing technology! I never looked into epaper devices.

[@sebastiangregoroff3370]

As always , excellent video .

[@kikkobro]

Was just thinking about using one of these in a project, thanks for the Ali link!!

[@parameshpavin2708]

Awesome video on epaper displays gud to see this video👍💓

[@EeekiE]

What an awesome display technology

[@JanPawel3]

8:02 ctrl a and ctrl c and ctrl v

[@edwardfletcher7790]

I love these displays, I just wish they were cheap !

[@akratooos]

Could you also do a video about the flip-dot matrix?

[@greatscottlab]

I can put it on my to do list

[@bryceforsyth8521]

@@greatscottlab Wonderful!

[@CZghost]

Flip dot matrix is actually quite favourite technology for electronic informational boards :)

[@matuspospisil]

U are best youtuber, I love U!

[@manishrana3889]

Greetings Scott. Is it possible to scavenge a display or the camera module of a smartphone and use it with Arduino for a project.

[@gotj]

E-paper is *NOT* low power, updating the display requires *a lot of energy* . It's only "ultra low power" in standby mode: i.e. with a static, fixed image that's (almost) never updated.

[@greatscottlab]

LIke I said in the video, updating the screen requires around 17µWh. Still pretty low power.

[@gotj]

Hey, it's in the data sheet: 26.4e-3*4/3600 = 29.3 µWh. Do the math and you'll see that that quickly adds up to *a lot of energy* if you want to update the display "often". See my other comment here.

[@wolveric0]

@@gotj the refresh rate is 4 to 6 seconds for 1 frame, i doubt you'll like to refresh this kind of screen "often", i would use this for some kind of device that only have to refresh the information on demand or every not so "often".

[@KlockworXMusic]

@@gotj If you do the math its still orders of magnitudes less energy consumption then his LCD.

[@gotj]

@KlockworXMusic less than *the LEDS of the backlight* of his LCD. Lots of big LCD display clocks can run for a year or two on an AA alkaline, that's ~ 1.7mW, less than 1/10th of the power drawn by this epaper.

[@CZghost]

This is the Kindle stuff, right? Except that Kindle has a lot greater resolution on averagely the same size (in other words, the same pixel area is contained on a lot smaller area). This creates the monochromatic display to be able to display grayscales, simply using dithering techniques, like printers do with toner. Given the actual size of those microcapsule pixels being so small it's almost invisible alone, this dithering is unnoticeable, it seems really like a grayscale gradient. As with CMYK screens (because it doesn't use light to produce an image, it uses actually something like ink, so these displays are more like printed pictures), these microcapsules can contain five different colours (WCMYK). White serves as a base colour, while Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black are the basic colours to make the picture. Since microcapsule can be programmed only to two different states, four capsules need to make up single pixel. Each capsule having white and corresponding colour (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black - CMYK). Those colour displays naturaly have lower resolution, of course. But with the size of the microcapsule, I don't think you're going to notice that, actually...

[@JohnSmith-uh4eu]

unless your reading a calculation or something that has to do with subtraction, you read it as "dash" or "hyphen", not "minus"

[@aot2002]

great job greatscott

[@The_Weeezard]

I miss the old projects, used to learn a lot from them. Now it's just these "mandatory sunday videos", haha.

[@greatscottlab]

I have done tons of projects in the past which were easy to pull off. Now I have a long list with more complicated projects which obviously take more time to produce. I think you can figure out the rest by yourself :-)

[@Loundre3]

And doing them by yourself with minimal assistence is in a way admirable, but it does take quite some time. Why not get someone to assist you in your projects?

[@hakonsoreide]

While you cannot see them in the dark, it shouldn't be too hard to do what Kindle does and add a single LED that shines into a covering glass panel that illuminates the whole display. That would add one LED's worth of power consumption whenever it is on, which would still make it far superior to an LCD in terms of power consumption where you're - in effect - powering thousands of LED's.

[@zanpekosak2383]

This would be great for a low power weather station with a refresh every hour or so.

[@Allan-mf1he]

Great stuff as always, 1M is creeping closer! Would like to see some practical uses of e-parer. With the 4s refresh time touch screen option will be frustrating... Got a Nextion display sitting on the shelf, I should get round to that some time.

[@ask-wj2pf]

I was waiting to make this video since ages thanks man thanks 👍🏻👍🏼👍🏻👍🏼

[@gene_Code]

Subscribed just because of his accent.

[@avejst]

Nice review 😄👍🎅 Thanks for sharing 👍 Happy hollydays 🎅👍😀

[@hiteshkumarsingha5042]

Nice.. merry Christmas...Scott.:)

[@OM222O]

I think you should check out sharp memory LCDs. They are low power devices with mucu better resolution and update times compared to E INKs

[@LMF5000]

at 8:39 you said Watt-Henry but I think you meant Watt-Hour :). Great vid though - a colour e-paper screen would be awesome for something like a smartwatch that constantly shows the time but updates the display only once a minute to give it a battery life of days.