Customer:
I have an old Inkplate that I’m trying to use again. It doesn’t show any signs of life. There’s no visible physical damage. I’ve tried several micro USB cables and several power sources. I’ve tried the switch and reset buttons. Does anyone have troubleshooting tips?
Originally submitted via email support on 14 April 2026. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.
Soldered Support:
To determine if the device is actually working, it’s important to upload working code to it - the display should refresh if it’s functioning. The board itself is most likely fine, but when we say Inkplates are ‘dead’ we’re almost always referring to the e-Paper display being the issue.
Try uploading a simple hello world sketch to test if the display is OK. When uploading, make sure to select the correct board definition in Arduino - use “e-Radionica Inkplate 6” or the appropriate model for your Inkplate. Many users mistakenly use “Soldered Inkplate 6” which is for newer models.
Inkplate is an Arduino-based development board designed to be programmed. It can’t work as a dashboard completely on its own. If you’d prefer not to write code from scratch, you can use any of the pre-made Inkplate 6 projects which work out of the box. Follow the getting started guide to upload them and get your device running.
Customer:
I understand - I need to upload code to test the device properly.