ePaper Display from Waveshare controlled by any ATtiny -it is possible ? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Frank_MV
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2022, 04:07:15 pm
content: Hello Guys,I am interested in an ePaper Display ( Black, White, Red) from Wavesharehttps://www.waveshare.com/wiki/1.54inch_e-Paper_Module_(B)_Manual#ArduinoAnd thinking if I can control it with an ATtiny.I think I read somewhere that it needs a lot of RAM - is that true ?An ATtiny doesn't have much of it.Do any of you here have experience with this ?Thanks,Frank

author: bidrohini
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2022, 04:52:11 am
content: I think Attiny's RAM size is too small for it. I tried to use a waveshare e-paper display with Arduino UNO which was based on ATmega328P. I could upload the code. But the display was not running smoothly. The system was hanging. Then I switched to Arduino Mega(2560). After that I got satisfactory results.

author: PCB.Wiz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2022, 06:06:37 am
content: Quote from: Frank_MV on November 05, 2022, 04:07:15 pmThen why not choose a MCU with more resource ?The MCU is a fraction of price of any larger display, and there are lots of MCUs to choose from.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2022, 02:57:45 am
content: It depends what you want to draw on it. You can stream data to an EPD, it can be clocked as slow as you want.

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2022, 09:04:54 pm
content: On today's Hackaday:https://hackaday.com/2022/11/21/driving-e-paper-displays-with-memory-limited-mcus/

author: thomasx
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2024, 11:36:50 pm
content: HiI see this thread is a bit more than a year old, but since I have the exact same question, using the same display and an ATiny, I was wondering if you pursued this and how it worked out?I can't really see why it shouldn't work without a lot of memory, as long as you have/can generate the data that goes to the display. For my part I will only write digits, and depending on how I generate the digits output to the display, I figure this should not need much memory at all.

author: FrickelPit
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 21, 2024, 09:29:24 am
content: I am at the very same spot: ATtiny 412 and Waveshare 1.54 3-color display.OK, nice try. - Code space far too large.So I took a ATtiny3216, but still lacking resources to cope with necessary libraries. ~100kB plus seems to be the threshold on the memory side for driving such e-paper with non native code.Would be interesting to see, if there are lightweight libraries we could use.I am aiming on powering the setup with just two AA batteries.On the graphic side I am good with text only plus simple geometric drawings.Display update with the 3C 1.54 Waveshare is about 14 seconds. That looks irritating and I am planning with an update every 5 minutes. The 2C e-paper can update in about 2 seconds, which is much better!

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2024, 10:19:01 am
content: I'm not sure why you want such a limited microcontroller. You can power these with a very cheap ESP32 board, STM32 board or anything similar. The it's an outdated microcontroller in an outdated platform, without any standout features, and with bad pricing. The only reason I would consider using it is if I can get an entire project including firmware.