Use ESPHome with e-ink Displays to blend in with your home decor!

It’s a bit hard to say without seeing your configuration, but it seems like the ESP32 isn’t properly fetching data from Home Assistant. A good starting point for troubleshooting would be to remove any if / else conditions in the display: section in your ESPHome YAML configuration that control what’s displayed on the e-paper screen. This way, you can test if the screen is able to display any data from the sensors at all. If it works without the conditions, the issue might be in the logic or how the data is being fetched from Home Assistant.

Also, double-check that the sensors in Home Assistant are providing updated values and that the ESPHome device is properly connected to your network and able to communicate with Home Assistant.

Feel free to share your YAML configuration if you’d like more detailed help!

DFRobot sell:

  • Firebeetle 2 ESP32-E (4mb and 16mb variants)
  • Firebeetle 2 ESP32-C6 (4mb)

For the Firebeetle 2 ESP32-C6, I got ESPHome working with the following board definition in the yaml:

esp32:
  board: esp32-c6-devkitc-1
  flash_size: 4MB
  variant: esp32c6
  framework:
    type: esp-idf
    version: "5.3.1"
    platform_version: 6.9.0
    sdkconfig_options:
      CONFIG_OPENTHREAD_ENABLED: n
      CONFIG_ENABLE_WIFI_STATION: y
      CONFIG_USE_MINIMAL_MDNS: y
      CONFIG_ESPTOOLPY_FLASHSIZE_4MB: y

Finally got this working, based on inspirations above and elsewhere:

Here’s is a portable, battery-powered 2.9" ePaper display of the current Bitcoin price from Coingecko, powered by ESPHome.

This is an ESPHome configuration for a Firebeetle2 ESP32-C6 with a Waveshare 2.9" black and white ePaper display. The configuration tells the Firebeetle2 to periodically wake up, update the display with sensor data, then go back to deep sleep. My device is awake about 8 seconds per hour, which I’m hoping will mean long battery life.

My YAML config is here:

Bitcoin tracking ePaper goes for £250 on Etsy, so I’m pleased with this!

Open to any improvements/critiques, or questions.

Hi,

Does anyone manage to write text and draw objects in gray-scale with this model?

My display definition is:

display:
  - platform: waveshare_epaper
    id: eink_display
    cs_pin: GPIO15
    dc_pin: GPIO27
    reset_pin: GPIO26
    busy_pin: 
      number: GPIO25
      inverted: true
    model: 7.50inV2alt
    reset_duration: 2ms
    update_interval: never
    rotation: 270°

Here is where I am so far:

Regards