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  • Hi there,

    I am new to all this DIY stuff and I certainly don't have any experience with hardware whatsoever. That's why I am asking the community for advice.

    I want to create a prototype device with e-Paper touch display, battery and solar panel(s). The device will be used to run application of some sort that will be shown on the display. This application will mainly interact with REST APIs via the WiFi. The main idea is to have this device AC independent. It should be able to run very long time without charging. I know (from what I've read briefly) that the e-Paper (eInk) displays require close to no energy when they are not actively used. After going through some other development boards, I've came across Omega 2 and it seems that it might perfectly fit in my plans. In theory this could be possible to create this device if the SOC support some kind of deep sleep, suspend or similar mode in combination with the power efficient e-Paper display.

    I have made brief (again) research and I've found the following quite promising in specs display: Good Display. It has drivers, schematics and what appears to be full documentation.

    I have no idea about batteries, solar panel capacities, displays etc. That's why I am asking if such device is at all possible and what I need to obtain in order to be able to assemble it.

    Any advises are welcome and very much appreciated and please pardon my newbie ignorance.



  • @Asen-Mitov
    E-paper display is not for inexperienced makers to play with.
    On that linked manufacturer,
    all 6" are parallel interface (not a great fit), and
    some other models have SPI interface versions.
    Note that such display requires lots of drive signals, together with SPI.
    Probably you had noticed that there are issues (with ugly work-around) on using SPI.
    Also Omega2 does consume quite a bit power, especially when WiFi is ON. And note that there is no sleep state and no APM for that.



  • Thanks for the swift reply. Although it is a bit disappointing.

    I am not that much worried about the display though. My major concern is that power management. I am wondering at the moment how this issue is being handled in a simple Amazon Kindle device? AFAIK it is Unix/Linux/Android based (not exactly sure) using 800MHz i.MX ARM processor and able to run for a whole month without recharging. Of course ever XX minutes it goes into deep sleep somehow. I will most probably continue the research with something like this, although the Omega was much more appealing with its 9$ price tag šŸ™‚

    Anyway ... thanks again for the reply and the involvement.



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