Support for Gicisky e-ink BLE ESL labels

Hardware
22

Unfortunately, I can’t find any store for the 4.2, 7.5 or 10.2 inch at all (sending to Germany).

The mentioned store as shown in the link is still close to the non-Black-Friday prices (it shows 24,39 EUR for the 2.9" bk/rd). Another one that I am tracking in my cart is 25,79 EUR).
I do have a 7+ inch android tablet for ~35 EUR in use. Hence I am still hoping that prices for the e-paper displays will get at least a little lower.

I sent an email to GiCiSky directly, asking for any chance to get their products directly to Germany. Answer pending.

23

Here is the response from GiCiSky.
I don’t know which norms and regulations deny GiCiSky the access to the German market. But it seems the are not allowed to ship here directly.

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24

I ordered 2x 2.9" from AliExpress to Estonia that arrived last week.

I am useless at coding or anything so I doubt I can be of any help :frowning:

25

I ordered the Gicisky 4.2" thing (https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005002398718886.html)

I was able to upload a custom image (via
ATC1441 BLE E-Paper Uploader)

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(Btw, I was using the “BLE Scanner” mobile app to find out the number that ChatGPT told me I have to find out.)

My OpenEPaperLink AP can see the device, but unfortunately is not possible to send anything to it. :roll_eyes:
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26

Ok, I went one step further. With this tool:
https://atc1441.github.io/BLE_EPaper_OTA.html

I was able to upload this firmware:

It seems that this was the wrong one, but it works a bit:

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Any ideas on where to find the correct firmware for the 4.2" device?

EDIT: As I found out, the device is not compatible.

27

There is a plan to add support to BLE only displays to ESPHome - Update home assistant integration to support ESPHome · Issue #143 · OpenEPaperLink/Home_Assistant_Integration · GitHub

28

What’s the battery life on these like? Suppose with an update every 10 minutes?

29

Just in case someone is interested. I just found this https://usetrmnl.com/
It allows to use it locally. Its more expensive than the gicisky ones but the firmware is open source. I just have bought one and see how it goes.

1 Like
30

That looks quite neat, but for the price there are quite a few options - probably my favorite so far is M5PaperS3 ESP32S3 Development Kit (960x540, 4.7" eInk Display, 235 ppi) | m5stack-store, and if you skip the touchscreen, you can go quite a bit cheaper, still.

The main issue I have with the ESP32 based ones is that battery life will be substantially lower than with properly optimized BT (in fairness, I am not a big fan of BT otherwise :slight_smile: ). TRMNL should throw in 5000mah given their price…

31

Some weeks have passed and I am still looking forward to using my BLE e-ink displays directly in HA.

Any progress in publishing?
Any expected timeline for an update?

32

So, I was too quick to buy a display and made a mistake, bought the “wrong” one from aieinksmart in aliexpress, who actually ship to germany (around 70 euros for 7.5" IIRC). As it looks like no one has bought one of these before, I have done some protocol juggling with help of LLMs (maybe the brand used AI to create it, hence the name?) and this is the result:

Disclaimer: works for me, maybe not for you, and I am not a SW guy. But if anyone is interested or has one, this is a good start.

1 Like
33

Looking forward to your output. This is exactly what I’m looking for.

Go ahead and publish as hacky – you may get some pull requests to help you clean it up…

34

I pushed some code to continue this effort- the code should work, but it’s not a finished product.

1 Like
35

I found this on GitHub

1 Like
36

Hello everyone and thank you for your work @magicus,

Finding ESL labels compatible with OpenEPaperLink at very low price seems very hard these days. Going for a Gicisky 2.1" seems a good options since they are readily accessible on Aliexpress with GICIsky Official Store.

With the actual development made with GitHub - eigger/hass-gicisky: Gicisky BLE Label Home Assistant Integration or with @magicus work, is it possible to dynamically display an input_text to a Gicisky ESL? I want to use ESLs to show the content of some barrels at home. I would use a drop-down menu to select the text to display on the Gicisky ESL.

Thanks in advance everyone.