Seeed Studio's ePaper Offerings Shrink — In Size, Not in Quantity: Meet the New XIAO ePaper DIY Kits

Embedded and hobbyist electronics specialist Seeed Studio has announced two new entries in its growing range of ePaper display products, both based around its XIAO thumbnail-sized development boards: the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE05 and EN05.

"Over time, we've received a lot of thoughtful feedback from our community: more GPIOs [General-Purpose Input/Output pins] for sensors and actuators, smaller boards for embedded projects, and more flexible options for low-power ePaper builds," Seeed's Liora Chen explains of the company's work on ePaper displays. "We've been listening carefully, and we're excited to turn that feedback into something real. Introducing the newest additions to the XIAO ePaper family: XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE05 and EN05."

Designed, Chen says, for increased flexibility over the company's existing ePaper display range, the new XIAO ePaper DIY Kits both support 24-pin electrophoretic ePaper displays — which require energy only when changing state, can retain the last-displayed image even in the absence of power, and are designed to offer a paper-like viewing experience in sunlight. Where they differ is in the bundled XIAO microcontroller board: the EE05 variant comes with the XIAO ESP32-S3 Plus while the EN05 has the XIAO nRF52840 Plus, powered by Espressif and Nordic Semiconductor microcontroller respectively.

Compared to the company's existing driver boards, the new models a considerably smaller — designed to be hidden behind the footprint of a 2.13" ultra-wide ePaper display. Both include connections for an optional 3.7V lithium battery, have a USB Type-C port for power and programming, a physical reset button, and three user-programmable buttons, plus expandable general-purpose input/output connectivity for additional hardware. Both kits include their respective driver board and a 2.13" monochrome ePaper display, and are also compatible with a wide variety of 24-pin ePaper panels from 1.54" monochrome displays up to a 13.3" E Ink Spectra six-color panel.

The new XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE05 and XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EN05 are now available on the Seeed Studio store, priced at $16.40 each; the boards are also available on their own at $9.90 each, if you'd prefer to supply your own display.