Customer:
Is there a difference in hardware or pin connections between the e-radionica and Soldered versions of Inkplate 6 PLUS? I’m trying to get the EPub-InkPlate firmware to work (GitHub - turgu1/EPub-InkPlate: An EPub Reader for the ESP32 based InkPlate e-Ink devices. · GitHub) but I’m running into issues (Soldered Inkplate 6 PLUS boot loop · Issue #18 · turgu1/EPub-InkPlate · GitHub). Using this as an open e-reader was my primary reason for purchasing the board.
Originally submitted via email support on 9 July 2023. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.
Soldered Support:
Yes, there is a difference in hardware and pin connections. The main difference is the GPIO expanders. See Inkplate Arduino — Inkplate docs documentation for details.
Code modifications would be required to run on Soldered variants due to how the GPIO expander communicates with the ePaper. This is one of the reasons we use a different board definition.
Looking at that repository, I don’t see our official Inkplate library included (no #include “inkplate.h”), so the user wrote their own ePaper driver and used our hardware. You would need to work with them on whether they can implement support for the Soldered variant.
I’ve done MCP to PCAL adaptations in Arduino within our native drivers and in MicroPython without too many problems. My advice would be to find any place where the GPIO expander is used to drive the screen and change the functions accordingly. Also check the schematics for Soldered Inkplate 6PLUS in our hardware repository: GitHub - SolderedElectronics/Soldered-Inkplate-6PLUS-hardware-design: Hardware design, BOM, gerbers and 3D files for Soldered-Inkplate-6PLUS designed by Soldered Electronics. · GitHub. You can use our Arduino driver as a reference.
Customer:
Do you publish an Inkplate library for the ESP-IDF framework that supports the Soldered variant of InkPlate 6Plus with the PCAL GPIO Expander? I couldn’t find one.
Looking at the GitHub - turgu1/EPub-InkPlate: An EPub Reader for the ESP32 based InkPlate e-Ink devices. · GitHub code, they use the ESP-IDF framework (not Arduino) for their EPub reader, using GitHub - turgu1/ESP-IDF-InkPlate: A porting effort to the ESP-IDF framework for the e-Radionica InkPlate software. · GitHub, which you link to from your docs at Inkplate Get Started Page — Inkplate docs documentation.
I don’t see any PCAL functions (only MCP) in the Inkplate API reference docs at Inkplate esp-idf — Inkplate docs documentation, and it’s unclear from these docs which Inkplate variants are supported by each framework.
Soldered Support:
We only officially support the library for Arduino and MicroPython. The MicroPython library was made by a contributor and then officially adapted by us; it’s now in our official repository and we’ve expanded it for new boards.
The ESP-IDF library was made by a contributor but we haven’t had official involvement, other than including it in our docs so users can see it’s available for some boards. We still link to it so users can check it out if they want to use it.