Inkplate 6COLOR image display from SD card support

TECHNICAL SUPPORT Inkplate
1

Customer:

I want to use the Inkplate 6COLOR as a photo frame. I have several questions:

  1. Can the ESP32 read common file formats like *.png, *.jpg, *.tiff, and display them on the 7-color e-ink display?

  2. Does the Inkplate 6COLOR have SD-card device drivers, or do we need to write our own code to read/write to the micro SD-card?

  3. How is the image sent to the e-ink display - via SPI or I2C?

  4. Do we need to convert full color images to 7 colors for display on the e-ink panel?

  5. Is documentation available for the ESP32 and e-ink panel serial communication protocol?

Originally submitted via email support on 4 March 2022. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.

2

Soldered Support:

  1. On Inkplate 6COLOR you can use .jpg and .png but .tiff is not supported. Some PNG files can have unusual formatting that may cause reading issues on Inkplate.

  2. Inkplate 6COLOR has an SD card holder built in, and we provide SD card examples in our library.

  3. We use SPI communication to control the e-paper on Inkplate 6COLOR.

  4. When using SD card with .png or .jpg format, you do not need to convert the image because we have added a dithering option.

  5. We provide documentation for our Inkplate library.