Kevin Sidwar's Particle P1 E-Paper Dev Kit Makes Compact Low-Power IoT Display Projects a Cinch

Kevin Sidwar has released a quick-start developer's kit for a low-cost 1.54" ePaper electrophoretic display, based around the Particle P1 module — including a 3D-printable enclosure.

ePaper displays are based around electrophoresis: Rather than requiring a constant supply of power, like a liquid-crystal display, an electrophoretic display needs power only when it's changing state - and comes with the added benefit of high readability even in direct sunlight, though at the cost of a refresh rate most commonly measured in seconds-per-frame rather than frames-per-second.

Sidwar's latest design aims to help people get started building compact IoT gadgets featuring an ePaper display, by combining Particle's P1 module with a 200x200-pixel 1.54" ePaper display panel.

"I recently redesigned the hardware for a consumer product I created and was left with a small amount of boards from the previous revision," Sidwar explains. "Instead of throwing them away I thought they might be useful as a prototyping dev kit for others that are interested in using the P1 module in a production design or a hobby ePaper display project."

The design includes an ultra-low deep-sleep mode, which can keep the gadget ticking over for months using an optional lithium-polymer battery connected to the on-board charging circuit, and supports partial refresh — a workaround for the slow update of electrophoretic displays, allowing the user to fresh only a small portion of the display at a time.

Sidwar has developed three example applications for the dev board: One which showcases how to update the display using Particle's IoT cloud service; another which demonstrates partial refresh to update an on-display clock every second; and an application which pulls down remote date from a weather API and displays it on-screen.

The Particle P1 E-Paper Dev Kit is now available from Sidwar's MakerCrew Tindie store, priced at $30 solus rising to $45 with optional 3D-printed enclosure and 900mAh lithium polymer battery. The enclosure STL files and example applications are available on GitHub.