What is it?

EPDiy is a driver board which talks to affordable E-Paper (or E-Ink) screens, which are usually sold as replacement screens for E-Book readers.

Epapers that supports this controller

The FPC connectors on board supports following displays:

• ED133UT2 13.3", 8 bit, 1600 x 1200
• All 9.7", 8 bit, 1200 x 825
• All 40 pin modern Eink.com / Waveshare / others, 16 bit, different resolutions. You need to add configurations, in displays.c, for different resolutions not all come pre-configured.

IMPORTANT Please read carefully: Those 3 are the only FPC connectors that are in the PCB.

There is no 6" ED060SC4 (39 pins) or ED060XC3 (34 pins, higher res) so do NOT buy this board if you want to drive a 6 inches epaper display. Buy this new epdiy v7 Kindle board that has more goodies for 6" Einks.

Why are they interesting?

• Easy on the eyes and paper-like aesthetics
• No power consumption when not updating
• Sunlight-readable

Use-cases

• Industrial signaling with sensors (room temperature, humidity, CO2)
• Custom ebook readers
• Digital signaling
• Photo frames with high resolution
• Full color epaper displays (DES supported from WF-tech)
• Make an USB device with ESP32S3 and fast Eink displays

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: epdiy uses open source timing waveforms that work mostly alright for all the supported eink displays, but do not expect this to be like a professional Eink controller (That would cost probably the same or in some cases 3x the display)

Why is that? Because official timing waveforms are actually delivered every time you purchase an EINK display officially and are tunned to that specific batch and display that you are purchasing. On top of that the controllers you get from them cope to that precise timings (microseconds) of the waveform. This timings specify how many "darken" or "whiten" phases (+15 or -15 V) are sent to each FET gate.

Well mostly epdiy open source waveforms work correctly for the supported epaper but are definitivaly NOT so fast or the grays not 100% perfect, for some einks, like the professional controller. And that's not my fault. This is open source hardware and if you buy this you really have to read and understand this disclaimer.

Things to take care of before purchasing an epaper

This kind of displays use some FETs that are need high voltages to let pass the +15 and -15 Volts that are used to let the Eink float up or down. Make sure to read the Datasheet and that the VGH (-22 V in this EPD) and VGL (+20 Volt), used to open the FET gate, are matching the voltages given in this PCB. If you cannot find the datasheet please ask or use only the tested models specified in the readme page of the epdiy project. Theoretically all parallel epapers have the same working principle but the detail is that epdiy uses open-source timing waveforms. And not models will get along with that perfectly well.

> Please mind orientation before connecting the display FPC cable, an always do with PCB powered off, since some of this 0.5mm pitch pins carry high voltages!

With some 16 bit models you will need an adapter cable. Make sure that the label 1 - 40 match the connector in the epaper. Otherwise you might give +15 volt to the EPD_VCC power input that does not support that voltage!
Would like to repeat this again because it is important: Please mind orientation of the connectors, all go with FPC connection pins down, and check it 3 times before powering it up.

NOTE: The ESP32S3 Module is soldered by hand so the soldering quality differs to the rest of the PCB. Sorry but switching to Standard PCB Assembly in JLCPCB would affect the price badly and I would like to keep it in the 70€ price range per unit.

NEWS

Version 7 of the PCB and supporting Firmware is now merged by VRoland in master branch. Additionally there is an epdiy-hardware repository where I will be collaborating and testing the updates.

New feature of 1.1.1 PCB version: USB CDC serial port. Act with your Firmware as an USB device. For example you can make a "Mass Storage" device. Just copy your images per USB instead of using high consumption WiFi.

This can be useful for advertising in shops or just to make an offline photo-slider for your office.

In case this product is out of stock: Make sure to add your email in the Wait-List so you are informed automatically when I add new tested PCB In the meantime I created a YouTube channel to publish videos about electronics and digital signaling.

Why did you make it?

Valentin Ronald designed it and featured it in Hackaday. Since I discovered it years ago I’ve been a big fan of the project and started helping on the firmware. I'm also a big fan of epdiy and a collaborator of the project, dedicating many hours each month to help, and guide other developers to build their products. This PCB, and all epdiy versions, are originally Vroland designs I just updated an FPC connector to make it compatible with 13.3” screen. Parallel epaper is the real display to make stuff! SPI ones are mostly to show prices in the supermarket. But this ones offer working partial refresh, 16 grays and much more possibilities.

What makes it special?

Powered with an ESP32-S3-wroom-N16R8 MCU with Octal PSRAM and capable of driving up to 16 bit modern 40 pin FPC epaper displays from providers like GoodDisplay (DES) and Eink.com this is the ultimate controller with provides all the nice things from Espressif like WiFi and BLE along with an added RTC to make nice panels that are aware of time.

RESOURCES

• Download STL 3D Model of the PCB (Placement or to design a case)
• Send me a message over Tindie with your email if you want to be added to epdiy Slack group. To get support is better than slow messaging over this platform
• Check epdiy WiKi there I will be documenting slowly tests we make, group the FAQs, and much more.

Keeping prices low as much as I can

The ESP32S3 SOC module, is soldered by hand, because Economic assembly (PCBA) has temperature restrictions and most ESP32 modules are risky to solder using the type of PCB Assembly according to JLCPCB. Optionally I will make an option to get the PCB without MCU soldered for a cheaper price since most of the people here solder better than me. Just send me a PM if you are good soldering SMD then I can sell this to you with the MCU unsoldered and will look for sure better than mine (you get a 10 USD discount Coupon)

CAUTION

Please consider that you need to be familiar with the epdiy concept / Firmware and also get familiar with ESP-IDF version >= 5.0 building process to try this latest version since it uses the LCD module to drive this parallel epapers. Do not buy this PCB if you are not willing to go through this learning part.

IMPORTANT: It will work in arduino-esp32 but you will have to downgrade the bus_speed in displays.c. This is because there is an IDF menuconfig setting: Data cache line size that needs to be set to 64 bytes. This does not comes as an option in Arduino IDE at the moment. Check this WiKi page to get started.

Send me please your desired updates for next revision

Here go mine:

• smaller PCB with support for 6” kindle like epapers ED06***, with cheaper footprint (No UART, just uart pins, built in USB to flash it)
• more precise DS3231-MZ and small coin battery as RTC backup (never loose time)
• touch support interface, kindle like

Support

It's been a pleasure serving all of you so far delivering securely every PCB, plus giving 30 minutes free support for every customer. If you got this product and want to have this half an hour of my time for free just write to me and I will help you get started.