2.9\” Flexible 296×128 Monochrome eInk / ePaper Display

Woah, the cyber-future is here! Flexible E-Ink has been demo’d at high tech events for years but now you can actually get your paws on it. This display is true E-Ink / E-Paper, once an image is displayed it will stay even once you remove all power. The image is also high contrast and very daylight readable. It really does look just like printed paper!

This flexible display sports a 2.9″ monochrome (black and white) display. It has 296×128 black ink pixels on a white-ish background. The monochrome displays also take a lot less time to update, only a couple seconds instead of 15 seconds. Use a UC8151D chipset driver to control this display.

Please note: this display is flexible but that doesn’t mean you can constantly flex it. 

• These displays should not be flexed/moved during a display update, you’ll get odd effects.
• Continuously flexing it will eventually damage the display.
• There’s no specification for how many times it can be flexed, so keep it minimal!
• We recommend affixing the display to a stable backing to reduce stresses. E.g. it can be attached to a stiff curved bracelet to make a watch.
• Don’t flex where the orange connector cable meets the eInk display – the chip is very delicate and you could crack the connections
• You can flex the orange connector cable a few times, its made of flex PCB with a 2-3mm radius.
• You can flex the eInk display with, perhaps, a 10mm radius… this isn’t documented, just experimental!

Using our CircuitPython or Arduino libraries, you can create a ‘frame buffer’ with what pixels you want to have activated and then write that out to the display. Most simple breakouts leave it at that. But if you do the math, 296 x 128 pixels = 4.7 KBytes. Which won’t fit into many microcontroller memories. Heck, even if you do have 32KB of RAM, why waste 5KB?

The library we wrote does all the work for you, you can just interface with it as if it were an Adafruit_GFX compatible display.

Note: This is just the display. You’ll want your own eInk Breakout Friend too!

Technical Details