Customer:
We’re looking to use Inkplate for museum object labels in exhibitions. We want to display labels that can be updated maybe once a week, with user-generated content. We’d ideally like to display a webpage but we also need these devices to last at least a month on a single battery charge. Will your solution work for this?
Originally submitted via email support on 22 February 2022. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.
Soldered Support:
Yes, this is a perfect solution. If you do the update only once a week, this solution can work on a single battery for years.
Showing a website might get tricky, but you can generate an image (from website or otherwise) and just send that image to Inkplate. That should work smoothly.
Customer:
I’ve ordered an Inkplate 6 and Inkplate 6 Plus for testing. There’s an additional requirement: the designer wants different museum labels on one display, with user-contributed content. The designer wants 12 different pages/images that visitors can scroll through.
We’re hoping this is possible. If we can scroll through different images on the Inkplate 6 using buttons or GPIO, one button just needs to act as a skip/next button. If we end up using the touchscreen, we just need the user to swipe to get to the next page.
Is this workable, and how badly would it affect the battery life?
Attachment omitted in migration: image001.png
Soldered Support:
It’s no big deal to add this change. Buttons can be connected to onboard MCP23017 GPIOs which has interrupt pins, meaning it will be in low-power state for most of the time. If you use a touchscreen, you will have to leave it on for all times, which needs about 2mA (from top of my head, needs to be checked/measured) of a continuous draw just for the touch panel. You can even cache the images to additionally save battery if they are not changing too often, so the board does not need to connect to WiFi all the time.
This all depends on how your software programmer will implement this.
So:
Customer:
We would only want to connect to WiFi once a week. Would there be a way for the device to turn on its WiFi and connect once or maybe twice a week? Also, is it possible to push content updates through WiFi?
Soldered Support:
If you are connecting to WiFi only once per week, you can expect long battery times. You can use this code as a basis for waking the display only once per week, saving power in between with deep sleep: https://github.com/e-radionicacom/Inkplate-Arduino-library/blob/master/examples/Inkplate6/Advanced_Inkplate_Features/Inkplate_RTC_Alarm_Deep_Sleep_Example/Inkplate_RTC_Alarm_Deep_Sleep_Example.ino
If you want to push updates to the display (meaning it updates as soon as you want it), you will have to have the board on all times. That will drain the battery quite quickly, so I definitely do not recommend it.
Customer:
We will only want to update at the same time we turn on WiFi, so we’ll only have planned updates. Will that be possible?
Soldered Support:
Of course, no issues with that. After receiving the units, you’ll see it’s quite simple to use them.
Customer:
I’ve just realised that I don’t have the means to charge the battery. What kind of charger will I need?
Soldered Support:
There is a charger on board. Just plug in the battery and USB to the Inkplate, and the battery will start charging. There is an LED indication on the board for the charge status as well, so you can know when your battery is charged.