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by sho_hn 1201 days ago
True dat. I recently made this for my home, as a once-a-day automatic newspaper deco thingie (ticking all the latest hype boxes: wrote a custom Rust driver for the EPD controller, and it's now also using the ChatGPT API to trim and style-transfer articles and headlines -- this and also various layout/typography improvements not yet in that album): https://imgur.com/a/PqkhdGd

$400+shipping for the display panel (a competitive price from the shop). Even at volume (which an enthusiast keyboard won't be) it's still very expensive.

5 comments

Saw your project a few days back, absolutely loved it! Same-ish setup here, a massive e-ink screen hooked up to a controller and pine64 board. I hung it up next to my bed, displays my most important emails/weather/health-notifs etc., everything I need in the morning to get up and running

The cost of the panel makes me cry but there's nothing like e-ink :)

Very cool - I've been researching something nearly identical and it's nice to see your implementation of it. Unfortunately I'm not sure I want this bad enough for the $500 in hardware costs.
I was recently messing around with a very small eink display (and used it to display HN posts somewhat similar in concept to you). Out of curiosity, what display is that/where did you source it from?
It's a 13.3" 1600x1200 panel made by E Ink, from the Carta product line also used in Kindles et all, the ED133UT2. I bought it via Waveshare together with a little driver board featuring the ITE IT8951 controller: https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1/...

The ED133UT2 is also available from E Ink directly and from other shops, but I haven't seen a significantly better price. There are also some other boards with the same controller around. An alternative to using the IT8951 is to hook the display up to an MCU with an adapter board for the flex cable directly and then drive the waveforms from the MCU, this is more complicated however and a little controller talking SPI is quite nice to have.

There's also a 10.3" with an even higher resolution that is very nice for various applications.

Ahh thanks!
yea it's a shame that e-ink screens larger than 6in or so get so much more expensive, they're not practical for low-cost appliances and toys
Can you let me know where you sourced the screen?
See my reply to your sibling :-)