Customer:
I’m looking to create a screen for a vehicle, updating speed, gears etc. Some minor animations and menus would also be needed. Would Inkplate 6 MOTION be a good option? I’m working with Protopie for prototyping cars, and would it be nice if there were an easy implementation with some APIs or other connections?
Originally submitted via email support on 13 June 2025. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.
Soldered Support:
Yes, Inkplate 6 MOTION could work due to its great speed when using partial update. You can write your Arduino sketch in such a way that it receives data via USB serial and then draws accordingly to it. There is no official Protopie implementation for Inkplate.
Inkplate 6 MOTION runs on a powerful STM32 chip and uses the ESP32 onboard for WiFi but the implementation with WiFi is limited due to this separation (as STM32 doesn’t natively support wireless we opted for this design).
As another option, check out 6FLICK and 5V2. 5V2 is quite fast with screen updates, and 6FLICK features a touchscreen, which could make for a two-way interface. With these other Inkplate models (any other current model than 6MOTION) the code runs natively on ESP32 (it’s the only microcontroller on board) and you could thus run a webserver on it, which would make the data transfer from Protopie simpler in some sense (protopie goes to Inkplate’s API endpoint and sends it some data - Inkplate displays it in response).
Customer:
I just got my Inkplate 6 FLICK, where can I find the Inkplate board definition for Mac? I couldn’t find it on GitHub.
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Soldered Support:
There’s no official integration between Inkplate and ProtoPie at this time, but HTTP-based interaction works very well with a bit of custom setup.
Inkplate as a REST API server: Inkplate can expose simple HTTP endpoints such as /api/update_text, allowing ProtoPie to send live data (like speed, gear, etc.) via POST requests. The display updates accordingly in real time.
Check documentation for ESP32 web server: ESP32 Web Server - Arduino IDE | Random Nerd Tutorials
Touchscreen-driven API triggers: Inkplate can detect screen touches and trigger HTTP POST requests back to a ProtoPie-accessible endpoint — for example, to simulate a button press or gesture.
The ESP32-based Inkplate 6 FLICK is fully capable of handling this communication. You’ll need access to the Send Request API functionality within ProtoPie which comes with the PRO version.
Check documentation for ESP32 HTTP requests: ESP32 HTTP GET and HTTP POST with Arduino IDE | Random Nerd Tutorials
Example Implementations: We have multiple examples in our Arduino library that show how to:
These examples can serve as a base for your custom API integration with ProtoPie.