Customer:
How long would the Inkplate 6 MOTION last on a single charge if used as a magazine/ebook reader with the rotary button for scrolling through pages?
Originally submitted via email support on 27 June 2024. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.
Soldered Support:
The CR2032 battery is for powering the RTC if the device goes in deep sleep, so that it retains the time written to it.
You can use this as a magazine/ebook reader by developing the code for it. The product is a development board with e-Paper, so what you want to make is entirely up to you. This use case is definitely doable - there are examples of people using Inkplate for this purpose: GitHub - turgu1/EPub-InkPlate: An EPub Reader for the ESP32 based InkPlate e-Ink devices. · GitHub
The board supports connecting a li-ion battery through a JST connector. There is a version of the product that comes with this battery (Inkplate 6 MOTION With Enclosure & Battery). It will automatically charge the battery when connected to USB.
On a single charge, the battery can last quite a while if deep sleep is implemented (we have code examples for this). For example, users with weather station type projects have observed a month on a single charge, because the device only wakes up once per hour to update the display. If you were to use it in an e-Reader way, you could get a day’s use out of it, depending on how often you’re polling the rotary encoder. It’s hard to approximate precisely.