Interfacing 1.54 Inch E-Ink Display Module with Arduino

E-ink technology in early e-readers works by using tiny micro capsules that are suspended in a liquid placed within a film layer.The micro capsules, which are about the same width as human hair, contain both positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles.Applying a negative electrical field causes the white particles to come to the surface. Conversely, applying a positive electrical field causes the black particles to come to the surface. By applying different fields at various parts of a screen, e-ink produces a text display.E-ink displays are especially popular due to their resemblance to printed paper. Besides being considered by many as easier on the eyes than other display types, e-ink also boasts lower power consumption, particularly when compared to traditional backlit liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. 

This product is an E-paper device adopting the image display technology of Microencapsulated Electrophoretic Display, MED. The initial approach is to create tiny spheres, in which the charged color pigments are suspending in the transparent oil and would move depending on the electronic charge. The E-paper screen display patterns by reflecting the ambient light, so it has no background light requirement. Under sunshine, the E-paper screen still has high visibility with a wide viewing angle of 180 degree. It is the ideal choice for E-reading.

Features

  • High contrast
  •  High reflectance
  •  Ultra wide viewing angle
  •  Ultra low power consumption
  •  Pure reflective mode
  •  Bi-stable
  •  Commercial temperature range
  •  Landscape, portrait mode
  •  Antiglare hard-coated front-surface
  •  Low current deep sleep mode
  •  On chip display RAM
  •  Waveform stored in On-chip OTP
  •  Serial peripheral interface available
  •  On-chip oscillator
  •  On-chip booster and regulator control for generating VCOM, Gate and source driving voltage.
  •  Available in COG package IC thickness 300um

Specification

  • Operating voltage: 3.3V
  • Interface: 3-wire SPI, 4-wire SPI
  • Outline dimension: 48mm × 33mm
  •  Display size: 27.6mm × 27.6mm
  •  Dot pitch: 0.138 × 0.138
  •  Resolution: 200 × 200
  •  Display color: black, white
  •  Grey level: 2
  •  Refresh power: 26.4mW(typ.)
  •  Standby power: <0.017mW
  •  Viewing angle: >170°

Communication Protocol

We are using SPI protocol to communicate with the display. Different from the traditional SPI protocol, the data line from the slave to the master is hidden since the device only has display requirement.

  • CS is slave chip select .When CS is high the chip is disabled and when it is low CS is enabled.
  • DC is data/command control pin, when DC = 0, write command, when DC = 1, write data.
  • SCLK is the SPI communication clock
  • SDIN is the data line from the master to the slave in SPI communication.
  • SPI communication has data transfer timing, which is combined by CPHA and CPOL.
    1. CPOL determines the level of the serial synchronous clock at idle state. When CPOL = 0, the level is Low. However, CPOL has little effect to the transmission.
    2. CPHA determines whether data is collected at the first clock edge or at the second clock edge of serial synchronous clock; when CPHL = 0, data is collected at the first clock edge

    Hardware Connection

Pin Description

 

There is an option on the backside of the display for 3 line SPI or 4 line SPI. The 4-wire SPI consist of serial clock SCLK, serial data SDIN, D/C#, CS#. In SPI mode, D13 acts as SCLK, D11 acts as SDIN.

The 3-wire serial interface consists of serial clock SCLK, serial data ADIN and CS#. In 3-wire SPI mode, D13 acts as SCLK, D11 acts as SDIN, The pin D/C# can be connected to an external ground.

You can shot the connection on the needed side.

Getting Started

  1. Copy the downloaded file to documents/arduino/libraries, where can be specified by Arduino IDE –> File –> Preferences –> Sketchbook location.
  2. Click the button Upload to compile and upload the program to your Arduino board.
  3. The screen displays strings and shapes after whole screen refresh.
  4. The screen displays images and the time after partial screen refresh.This demonstrates the partial refreshing capability

Resources

 

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