Hi
I have quite few eInks displays that I struggle to use with HA since a long time.
At first I had started with ESPHome but it’s just a nightmare to build a proper layout with it, and same when you want to do any modifications…
I also tried a solution that was quite unreliable with a add-on that was doing a screen capture of a Lovelace dashboard to display on the eink. Not optimised at all and very unreliable.
Then I found out ESPHome Designer that made it a lot more simple but it still doesn’t support eInk displays I have (ESP32-c3 with 7.5" from Seeed).
I also gave a try at OpenDisplay but it goes nowhere. There is always a communication problem between screen and HA. Tried latest version but sorry to say that project is terribly managed. It flashes a firmware in display not compatible with current integration version. No problem I install the latest beta avalaible through HACS but still impossible to connect (communication error with display).
How do you manage your eInk displays ? and in a reliable way and not too over complicated for design and maintenance of layout.
Thanks
I use PhotFrame firmware to display images on eInk. There is alos ESP32 PhotoFrame integration available for this, that can be used to manages being displayed on screen and can be controlled from HA. Then I use on HA Puppet App that grabs the screenshot of selected dashboard ( you can configure separate links for different dashboard, so you are not bound to single dashboard). While it sounds a bit complicated, whole setup was ~30 minutes and since then is 100% reliable. I spend more time to customize dashboard to display properly.
Unhappy supports very few eInk displays and not mine 
Check out Tesserae: https://tesserae.ink/
Thanks but not compatible, it supports only ESP32-S3 and mine is C3. It’s very strange their website lists Xiao ePaper but with S3 processor which is wrong. Mine for sure is C3 as I can see it at begin of flashing when it detects the chip !
Oh apologies, I didn’t look close enough and assumed the Seeed 7.5" screen would have the same processor as their TRMNL screen (which I have one of), but the latter indeed has an S3, not a C3.
Another integration I came across just yesterday, which seems to have some reasonably broad compatibility: What hardware to buy · OpenDisplay, includes Seed HW.
Please read fully initial post before answering 
Ops… somehow missed this…
Hello, I’m the dev for Tesserae. I would love to add support for your boards.
I’ll get a build out in the next few hours if you’re able to test it?
Hi @dmellok
Thanks a lot for your offer and will be happy to test as soon as I have unbricked my eink display 
have to do that today or tomorrow
Okay, Support for your panel is in as of v1.16.0, so it’s on the flasher at tesserae.ink/flash now. Pick XIAO 7.5" ePaper Panel and not the XIAO ePaper 7.5" kit; those are the two different products that caused the confusion earlier.
Fair warning: I don’t own this panel, so this build has never actually run on one. The wiring came from Seeed’s graphics library and the driver board schematic, which agree, but you’d be the first to run it for real. If the screen stays blank, that’s a wrong pin rather than anything subtle, and a serial log over USB-C would let me fix it quickly.
Two things specific to your hardware: setup is through the captive portal rather than the phone app, since the panel only has Boot and Reset buttons, and it won’t report battery level because the board has no way to measure the cell.
No rush on the unbricking. If it helps, holding Boot while tapping Reset, then releasing Boot, puts the C3 back in bootloader mode and it should take a fresh flash from there.
Thanks a lot for the build and I confirm I have been able to flash that fw in my eink panel It now displays the onboarding page with Tesserae logo, a QRCode, and the Wifi name and IP to use for the captive portal. Only issue it asks for a password for Wifi that I can’t find anywhere in your documentations I tried Tesserae and Tesserae-Setup but not better and the QRCode is not recognised by my phone as one for a Wifi network. Something wrong ? or I missed something ?
Nothing wrong on your end, that one’s on me. The password is tesserae, all lowercase. It isn’t in the docs and, worse, it isn’t on the screen either, which is a genuine gap I’ll fix: the panel tells you the network name but not how to get in.
The QR is a standard Wi-Fi one, so some phones will join from it and some won’t; iOS generally does, Android varies. Either way you shouldn’t need it once you have the password.
Really glad it came up. You’re the first person to run that build on the actual hardware, so the display working at all is genuinely useful to know.
No problem
Strange as usually my phone has no problem with QRCode for Wifi but no big deal.
Happy to help and now I’m reaching an other issue. I have configured the display through the captive portal in Wifi to get url of Tesserae on my HA. It shows up in the app but impossible to associate it:
Also during the flash there is a warning message that should not show up stating I’m flashing an S3 firmware in a C3 device:
Both of those are issues on my end.
The S3 warning is a packaging bug: our release pipeline labels every image as ESP32-S3, so your C3 build got shipped with the wrong chip family in the catalog. The flasher was right to complain. The bytes it wrote were correct, which is why it booted, but I’ll fix the label so nobody else sees that.
The association failure is the server not yet knowing this panel. The display is reporting itself as a new hardware type and there’s no matching entry on the Tesserae side, so it registers but can’t be paired. That’s a server-side addition rather than a firmware one, and it’s next on my list.
Nothing for you to do meanwhile, and nothing wrong with your setup. I’ll post here when both are out. (should be about 30-45 minutes)
Thank you 
The server side is live so once you update (use edge) you should be good to go.
I’m also in the process of pushing a firmware fix too which should fix the 0% battery warning you will probably get.
thanks for the correction
no urgency, do it when you can
oki I’ll remove the standard version and install the edge one and let you know how it goes
check HA for an update. the docker container must still have been updating. edge should now be on v0.319.0.