E-paper display

[Shultc (Konstantin Davidenko)]

@VikingBlod

I understand the possibilities, what I was trying to convey is that a dedicated display is typically only ever used for displaying weather or temperature information, not some of things you suggest. I suspect that’s because the examples shown have no or limited ability to interact with it.

E-paper displays are no good for interaction — update is ~4 seconds. So it is useful to display information, which does not change a lot. Most common type is, of course, temperature. You can update it once every 10 minutes, and yours e-paper display will not blink to often to cause you a seizure.

If you need interaction, it is better to use tablet, where display can normally update, based on your interaction.

[Shultc (Konstantin Davidenko)]

@Shultc

Dose anyone managed to user sensors platform: homeassistant with deep_sleep: ?

Regarding my old question: Solution is pretty simple. ESP board need some time to connect to the Home Assistant. If it is awake for 20-30 seconds, it will have time to connect to Home Assistant, and you don’t need use anything except platform: homeassistant. No MQTT needed.

Also, it is a good practice to use this setting:

wifi:
  fast_connect: true

It will connect ESP to specified network without searching for all available networks first.

[FreelancerJ]

Some things can be done interactively on e-paper well. Light switches and other things where the state can be set by single press controls (triggering a scene for example)
Partial refresh supporting displays are good for this…
I’d hate to see data entry on one though

[Shultc (Konstantin Davidenko)]

@Shultc

If it is awake for 20-30 seconds, it will have time to connect to Home Assistant

Some times it does not work. To not guess time, best solution will be, to disable Deep Sleep right after device wakes up, and reenable it, when last sensor is loaded and display is updated.

esphome:
# ...
  on_boot:
    priority: 600
    then:
      - deep_sleep.prevent: deep_sleep_1    # Disable deep_sleep

deep_sleep:
# ...
  sleep_duration: 10min
  id: deep_sleep_1

sensor:
#  - platform: homeassistant
#    ...
  - platform: homeassistant   #last sensor
#   ...
    on_value:
      then:
        - component.update: main_display     # Update Display
        - deep_sleep.enter: deep_sleep_1     # Go to deep_sleep

display:
  - platform: waveshare_epaper
    id: main_display
    update_interval: never       # Display will not update by itself

[goosst]

This page have only scheme, but no code.
I didn’t really understand, in which direction I should read this. Looks like “newer” and “older” on the bottom of the page leads to different articles. In them I found about MQTT and writing ESP code from scratch. Nothing about ESPhome and integration platform: homeassistant into it.

I should probably have linked to a level higher: http://users.telenet.be/goosst/epaper/

Home Automation is all about taking action based on one or multiple events and being able to remotely control a device. Is Home Assistant capturing any data that can be useful to display in a meaningful way?

• estimated commute time in the morning, to see if I need to hurry up (was useful before corona … )
• see in the evening what the lawn robot did (and isn’t stuck somewhere)
• in the evening it just shows some pictures to keep a peace of mind
• solar panel production of the day
• …

[Laurenthu]

Thanks for sharing this. I have the new Lyligo 4.7 screens and I am struggling to reuse your code with them. It looks like the routines you are using for BMP display are not working with larger BMPs and such a screen. I am faced with a very simple issue that seemingly nobody solved yet - except you for a 7.5 inch display and 2 colors BMPs : how do you simply download from a given website a BMP file and display it on an e-paper screen…

[brewston (Tim Jones)]

My first attempt, based on digitalurbans code and screen size. The presence icons change to outline when that person is away.

[digitalurban (Andrew Hudson-Smith)]

Another option I have been working on is grabbing an image from any website to display on an eink screen. At the moment i am using the inkplate 6 but the concept should work with any eink screen. Its not really HA-specific but as it’s been mentioned in a few threads i have put a tutorial online at:

https://connected-environments.org/blog/node-js-node-express-and-puppeteer-for-epaper-eink-displays-how-to-open-a-web-page-save-as-an-image/

The inkplate 6 also support HA in the latest update, its a lovely screen, has an esp32 built in and deep sleeps, a new 10inch one is available via their crowd funding page, ships in May. Mine has been running on a battery for 14 days now, updating every 15 mins.

Hope this helps some people,

Andy

[Laurenthu]

Thanks for sharing @digitalurban this is really useful. I have now found how to use my Lyligo 4.7 inch screen and I am essentially doing the same thing you are doing here, although a bit more complicated: i am grabbing the images I want to display here and there thanks to a RbPi, transform those images into 16 grey scale on the Pi and then display them on the Lyligo. The Lyligo library doesn’t allow for the direct display of images (neither JPG nor BMP) so I had to create a file format to feed the ESP32 with the right information. But it works.
I will look at your webpage grab script as it may become useful if I want to display something else!
Thanks again for your contribution…

[brewston (Tim Jones)]

My second project, many thanks to @digitalurban for printing me some cases

This required a custom font to get the strava logo and I had to figure out how to retrieve the unicode for the glyph.

The code for this one, if anyone is interested is here :

brewston/esphome/blob/6feeb9406317a7d444d05b3fd2d3b78db912ccc5/strava.yaml

[goosst]

how do you simply download from a given website a BMP file and display it on an e-paper screen…
I guess the downloading part is not the issue but you’re stuck somewhere in the displaying part?

[nickrout]

I guess your sample code is not enough spoonfeeding.

[Laurenthu]

@nickrout thank you for the kind words!
@goosst the downloading part indeed wasn’t the issue, the 4.7 EPD uses a new kind of library, different from the waveshare screens, where the image is stored on 4bits gray level with 2 pixel aggregated per byte. That gave me a hard time to decode the BMP in the right format, and I figured since I needed a few image manipulations before displaying I’d be better off doing it on my server (RbPi) with a python script then feed the transformed file directly to the EPD - which is what I ended up doing! But your code was a great starting point and inspiration.

[rak (Ralf Klüber)]

Hello,

I followed a different approach. I have a docker running which turns any lovelace dashboard into a png. The png is loaded onto the esp/eink. Doing so everyone can easily create any lovelace which appears on the eink display.

Inkplate6 to display Lovelace UI - Hardware - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io)

Yours sincerely.
Ralf

[krikk]

just wanted to share my own work in progress:

full code and basic documentation can be found in my repo: https://github.com/krikk/esp32_E-Paper_Display/

[GlennHA (Glenn)]

The wood looks way better than my print.

[nickrout]

@krikk

Custom build wooden Case (thanks to my father!)

Please put your father on github.

[Morbidserenity (Christian)]

Work in progress but information on Solar, Temp, Tempest weather station, water usage, mower and more

[paddy0174 (Patrick)]

Crispy! Looks great, what display is this?

[atomicpapa (Glenn Morrison)]

If that’s what I think it is in the bottom right (Robot Lawnmower?), I am exceedingly jealous!!!

edit: Oh, and the display looks sharp too!