Multiple ESPaper ?

Question

Hi!

I've just bought a 2.9″ ESPaper Plus Kit for testing our project to use it as a digital label for our dispensing lockers.

As we have to change the labels a couple of times per week for different uses, we want to find a digital solution to easily change the name of the 9 different compartment doors. We use these lockers as a drop box In/Out pickup and delivery of hard drive between our clients and us. Each compartment door have a project name assigned.

I wonder if it can be possible to build this kind of system with one master hardware connected to multiple Epaper.

Any hints?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi Alex

There's good news for your I think. We're working on a (dumb-)client (smart-)server model. It'll allow you to manage devices and their content conveniently through the browser. The ESPaper device will 

• wake up
• ask the server for new data to display, not knowing what it's gonna get
• render the image
• go to sleep again

I invite you to watch the sneak preview video at https://youtu.be/2bJ1w2_c_ek. Let us know if this would solve your case.

Some more teaser images at https://twitter.com/squix78/status/949336557332377601

Follow us on social media and/or subscribe to our newsletter to learn about the latest developments: https://thingpulse.com/contact/

Comments

Wonderful!! It’s exactly what we need. I would like to apply for beta testing. Im really exited to receive my kit!
 
Is it possible to get a discount if we buy 8 ESpaper Plus?
Thanks!

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Cool, we're happy you like what you saw! There's a signup link in the tweet and in the YouTube description.

We're sorry to say that our margins are too low to support volume discounts for anything below ten.

Answer 2

Hi,
The epaper displays have a Chip-Select pin (CS) so it would be possible, but using an ESP8266 would be a challenge as the number of available (spare) pins to control individual displays is currently limited to about 2, but with some careful I/O pin management this could be expanded or a 2-4 line decoder added to the support boards or serial to n-port selector for many epaper displays.

There are therefore three solutions:

1.  A limited ESP8266 version with perhaps 8 epaper displays wired to it using the current spare I/O lines including the TX0/RX0 lines (3 in total).

2. Adding a hardware line extension so a 2-4 line or 3-8 line or 4-16 line decoder or a serial version.

3. Using an ESP32 with it's extra pins an easy to implement solution.