Inkplate 6 power LED control and deep sleep configuration

TECHNICAL SUPPORT Inkplate
1

Customer:

I’ve recently purchased my first Inkplate 6. After several unsuccessful attempts with PlatformIO, I switched to the Arduino IDE, where everything worked flawlessly using the Inkplate Arduino library.

I have a couple of questions to keep power usage at minimum:

Power LED

When the Inkplate 6 is powered on, the blue LED near the USB connector remains lit. Is there a way to turn it off programmatically?

Deep Sleep

To put the board into deep sleep, I’m using the following code. Could you please confirm if this is the correct way? Isn’t there anything else to turn off to preserve battery during deep sleep?

// Set RTC alarm
display.rtcSetAlarmEpoch(targetEpoch, RTC_ALARM_MATCH_DHHMMSS);

// Clear any previous alarm flags
display.rtcClearAlarmFlag();

// Enable RTC wake via GPIO 39 (RTC interrupt line)
esp_sleep_enable_ext0_wakeup(GPIO_NUM_39, 0);

// Power down WiFi and Bluetooth
WiFi.disconnect(true);
WiFi.mode(WIFI_OFF);
btStop();

Serial.println("Going to sleep until 00:01…");
esp_deep_sleep_start();

Originally submitted via email support on 14 May 2025. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.

2

Soldered Support:

The power LED can be turned off via the power LED switch on the back of the board.

For deep sleep, you are on the right track. esp_deep_sleep_start() is all you need to call, and when the power LED is turned off you should be using the smallest current on the ESP. If you are using peripherals like the SD card and you don’t turn it off, they will use power even in deep sleep, so mind that, but your code looks OK.

Here is an example for deep sleep you can use as a template for your sketch: Inkplate-Arduino-library/examples/Inkplate6/Advanced/DeepSleep/Inkplate6_Simple_Deep_Sleep/Inkplate6_Simple_Deep_Sleep.ino at dev · SolderedElectronics/Inkplate-Arduino-library · GitHub

Attachment omitted in migration: image.png