Inkplate 10 grey colors too dark and indistinguishable

TECHNICAL SUPPORT Inkplate
1

Customer:

I recently received a new Inkplate 10 - I already owned an Inkplate 6 and an Inkplate 10 from the Kickstarter campaigns. Unfortunately, there’s a problem with it. All rendered grey colors are far too dark and nearly identical in color. When rendering, only the lightest grey and complete black are really distinguishable.

I have two other Inkplates and have seen further Inkplates from friends in Makerspaces. None of those show this behavior.

I rendered bars of the different colors to compare with my other Inkplate 10, which clearly shows the difference and the inability of the new Inkplate to differentiate between shades of gray. I can send pictures if needed.

How should I proceed?

Originally submitted via email support on 30 September 2021. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.

2

Soldered Support:

The problem is in the panels. The first batch of Inkplate 10 panels is a different series/batch from the second batch. This happens when recycling and using refurbished panels. The issue is the darkness of the grey color.

There is a specific parameter VCOM, which indicates the special value for each panel in order to achieve the best possible differentiation between grey colors. Additionally, as the panels have been reverse engineered, the waveform was adjusted quite nicely for the first batch of Inkplate 10 panels, but it does not fit the new ones.

We need to find optimal values between factory-defined VCOM voltage and our waveform for the two different panel batches, without compromising the usability of our Arduino libraries. We are working on this.

3

Soldered Support:

We’ve confirmed the issue and its source. We’re working on implementing “LighterMode” for these kinds of panels.

4

Soldered Support:

We’ve fixed the issue with dark displays. You can download the Inkplate library with the fix from the DEV branch on Github. Once all fixes are complete, we’ll release it to master and you can download it normally.

5

Soldered Support:

We’ve fixed the problem with Inkplate and made a new release for the Inkplate library.

In production, VCOM voltage must be set for the panel. Because a batch of panels is darker, you need to change that voltage and use light mode, which has been added to the Inkplate library.

All steps needed are described at https://forum.e-radionica.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=407