Build a WiFi Photo Frame with an eInk Display
LCD picture frames never really caught on: by emitting light, they didn't blend seamlessly into a home's decor like printed photos do. [Sprite_tm] decided to see if an e-Ink color display could do better and created a Wi-Fi enabled photo frame using a Waveshare display.
The part in question is a 5.65-inch screen with a resolution of 640 x 448 and is capable of displaying seven colors. It is not designed to display photorealistic images, but rather to display simple graphics with color blocks. However, with some dithering, [Sprite_tm] suspected he could do a good job. An algorithm that uses Floyd-Steinberg scattering and the CIEDE2000 color space takes regular RGB images and breaks them down into raster images that are displayed using the 7 available colors of the screen.
The version relies on an ESP32-C3, which drives the display and fetches new images daily via Wi-Fi. isn't updated, the whole setup runs on two AA batteries and a Natlinear LN2266 boost converter.
There are some limitations; the screen's color gamut is pretty limited overall and images don't look very high fidelity at such a low resolution. However, it does a job capable of displaying photos for a device that was never designed to do so. It looks pretty good all wrapped up like a 3D printed picture frame, and [Sprite_tm]'s monkey test pics are very cute.
The files are on GitHub for those who wish to launch their own. We've seen similar works before, like this e-Ink wall newspaper display that tracks the changing times. If you have your own version of neat e-ink, contact us on the advice line!
LCD picture frames never really caught on: by emitting light, they didn't blend seamlessly into a home's decor like printed photos do. [Sprite_tm] decided to see if an e-Ink color display could do better and created a Wi-Fi enabled photo frame using a Waveshare display.
The part in question is a 5.65-inch screen with a resolution of 640 x 448 and is capable of displaying seven colors. It is not designed to display photorealistic images, but rather to display simple graphics with color blocks. However, with some dithering, [Sprite_tm] suspected he could do a good job. An algorithm that uses Floyd-Steinberg scattering and the CIEDE2000 color space takes regular RGB images and breaks them down into raster images that are displayed using the 7 available colors of the screen.
The version relies on an ESP32-C3, which drives the display and fetches new images daily via Wi-Fi. isn't updated, the whole setup runs on two AA batteries and a Natlinear LN2266 boost converter.
There are some limitations; the screen's color gamut is pretty limited overall and images don't look very high fidelity at such a low resolution. However, it does a job capable of displaying photos for a device that was never designed to do so. It looks pretty good all wrapped up like a 3D printed picture frame, and [Sprite_tm]'s monkey test pics are very cute.
The files are on GitHub for those who wish to launch their own. We've seen similar works before, like this e-Ink wall newspaper display that tracks the changing times. If you have your own version of neat e-ink, contact us on the advice line!
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