Proper ePaper-Display Treatment in ESPHome

Hello fellow ESPHome-Users,

currently i’m trying to implement two TTGO T5 ePaper-ESP32-Modules (2.13 inch, V2.3 through the esphome-dev-branch 0.1.16-dev with model: 2.13in-ttgo-b73), which is working great so far.

I still need to implement proper DeepSleep (which on one of my module seems to fade out the epaper-display itself, but that is another topic) to get them to work for several weeks on battery-power.
I’ve encountered after now one week of usage (throughout without any sleep-functions) that the epaper itself is showing a lot of artifacts on the screen (like shadows of old content), which doesn’t seem to go away (even though im using full display refresh any 60sec).
Aditionally when completely powered down, both epaper-modules show different behaviours on screen: one goes almost blank-ghosting-mode (everything faded out), the other one is holding its information, but shows additional grey shadows between the letters on the screen.

As i’m planning on using the epaper-modules as small temperature-status-displays on battery power, i’m unsure if this will work properly with deep sleep mode.

I now read on an information-site (ePaper-Display infos) about epaper-displays that it is really important to treat the epaper-displays according to their specification and with special care (no direct sunlight, not powered on all the time, using sleep commands for the display itself, before powering it down). There are a lot things to keep in mind in driving these and i wanted to know, if anyone here is using special functions in esphome to keep their epaper-display “healthy”?

How do you drive your displays and how is the long term stability so far (especially with ghosting artifacts)? Are your models working fine with esp deep-sleep functions?

Currently i’m driving both of my units with the following settings:

display:
  - platform: waveshare_epaper
    cs_pin: 5
    dc_pin: 17
    busy_pin: 4
    reset_pin: 16
    model: 2.13in-ttgo-b73
    rotation: 90°
    full_update_every: 120
    update_interval: 60s
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