Inkplate Motion 6 Peripheral Mode over USB/Serial

TECHNICAL SUPPORT Inkplate
1

Customer:

I’m attempting to use an Inkplate Motion 6 in a POC hardware demo where I need to control it over USB with a Raspberry Pi 4 board. The documentation refers to Inkplate Motion 6 as having Peripheral Mode built in like other Inkplate models, but I can’t find the script or option to enable it. How do I put the device into Peripheral Mode?

Originally submitted via email support on 17 April 2025. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.

2

Soldered Support:

Peripheral mode for Inkplate devices currently exists only for the ESP32 Inkplate adaptations, not for Inkplate 6 MOTION. Could you point out where you saw this mentioned? The documentation for 6MOTION is at https://docs.inkplate.com/ and does not mention peripheral mode.

We plan to add this feature to the examples in the future. In the meantime, I can help you outline a project and provide a basis for an Arduino sketch that functions as a peripheral mode solution for your specific use case.

3

Customer:

I found references on soldered.com and the official GitHub stating something like “All inkplate devices are shipped with peripheral mode”, which caused the initial confusion. The documentation link you provided earlier returns an error when accessed from different networks and browsers.

For my POC, I need to leverage the Motion 6’s rapid partial refresh rate to run fillRect() commands sent by a Raspberry Pi 4 over USB/serial connection. I’m generating barcodes with logic on the Raspberry Pi that I want to rapidly draw on the Inkplate Motion by sending fillRect() commands over a wired UART connection. Could you provide a sample Arduino sketch for this scenario?

Attachment omitted in migration: image001.png

4

Soldered Support:

Thank you for reporting the documentation link issue. For Inkplate 6MOTION documentation, use https://docs.inkplate.com/ which should work better. The content will be moved to Welcome | Soldered Documentation soon.

I’ll provide an example sketch for your use case by end of the next work day.

5

Soldered Support:

Here is a peripheral mode example for Inkplate 6 MOTION: https://pastebin.com/raw/DxXFdb6A

This example showcases basic peripheral mode functionalities and drawing things over Serial step-by-step.

An upgraded peripheral mode is in development. Here is also a Python example on how to drive Inkplate from the computer-side: GitHub - SolderedElectronics/Inkplate-Peripheral-Mode-Raspberry-Pi-Example: Some example code for how to drive Inkplate with a Raspberry Pi using peripheral mode · GitHub - you can modify the commands to match those you implement in your peripheral mode sketch.

Sending bitmap data for the frame and then displaying it will also be suggested as an example for future releases.