Customer:
I received an Inkplate 2. When I run the example at Inkplate-Arduino-library/examples/Inkplate2/Basic/Inkplate2_Black_White_Red/Inkplate2_Black_White_Red.ino at master · SolderedElectronics/Inkplate-Arduino-library · GitHub I see excessive flickering. How can I get rid of it?
Originally submitted via email support on 25 May 2023. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.
Soldered Support:
The flickering is normal for ePaper displays - they flash the screen to correctly set the pigments in the eInk cells. The main advantage of eInk is zero power usage for the display after the refresh cycle completes, which enables battery-powered projects that update every few hours.
Customer:
I understand flickering is normal - I have other Inkplates. But this one flickers much more than normal and doesn’t have a stable image.
Soldered Support:
What do you mean by the image not being stable? The example you ran displays what it’s supposed to for each part of the code (“drawing two pixels”, “drawing random lines”, etc.). The longer refresh time is a tradeoff for the low price of the device.
Pro-tip: if you only use black and white pixels on Inkplate 2, the refresh time is reduced since no red eInk cells have to be turned on or off.
Customer:
Before text is displayed, the screen switches about ten times between white and black very fast. This happens every time something is written to the screen. I would expect maybe one switch between black and white to reset all eink pixels.
Soldered Support:
For this particular eInk display, it’s designed to work this way - it’s working as intended. Other eInk displays with faster refresh times are more costly and found on other Inkplate boards. The Inkplate 2 is slower but comes at a much lower price.
Attachment omitted in migration: inkplate2_refresh.mp4