4.2 300×400 Monochrome or 4-Gray eInk / ePaper – Bare Display – SSD1683

Chances are you’ve seen one of those new-fangled ‘e-readers’ like the Kindle or Nook. They have gigantic electronic paper ‘static’ displays, which means the image stays on the display even when power is completely disconnected. The image is also high contrast and very daylight readable. It really does look just like printed paper!

Please note: this is the bare display element. You need to plug it into a board with a ‘standard’ 24-pin FPC e-paper connector. We recommend checking out and picking up a matching driver board:

• Feather RP2040 ThinkInk – solderless plug-and-play solution with Arduino or CircuitPython support. Definitely the easiest way to get started, and it is what we show in the demo above
• eInk Feather Friend – FeatherWing add-on for any Feather board)
• eInk Breakout Friend – breadboard-friendly adapter that gives you level-shifting and components for quick eInk connectivity.
• 24-pin eInk / ePaper Extension Cable + 24-pin FPC adapter – both together will give your eInk display a stretch so you can place it anywhere.

This is a 4.2′ monochrome/4-gray display. It has 400×300 black ink pixels and a white-ish background. It uses the SSD1683 chipset, so make sure whatever firmware code you are planning to use has support for it. The Arduino library we wrote does all the work for you; you can interface with it as if it were an Adafruit_GFX compatible display.

Note that you can put this display into a ‘4-gray’ mode, where you get two extra monochromatic shades. It’s not officially supported by the display, but it does kinda work. Check out our guide on dithering for how to get the best output from these panels.

Resources

• Datasheet

Package Contents

• 1x 4.2′ 300×400 Monochrome or 4-Gray eInk / ePaper – Bare Display – SSD1683