Pimoroni seems interested in e-paper displays.The Sheffield-based team has released multiple displays raspberry pi, and now we see the latest version of the Raspberry Pi Pico W. actual, Raspberry Pi Pico W It is surface mount soldered directly to the display. $89 Inky Frame 7.3 The top level of the range. Its 7.3-inch 8-color display dominates a white PCB. There are smaller, cheaper versions (Inky Frame 5.7 $79, Inky Frame 4.0 $69) that share the same feature set as Inky Frame 7.3. We tested the 7.3-inch and 5.7-inch versions and both look great and are powerful to use. However, all photos in this review are from the Inky Frame 7.3 (although the other models look similar, just a little smaller and lower resolution).
I also love the e-paper display that came out of my early experiments (2015) with a Raspberry Pi A+ and a commercial e-paper display.reviewed Pimoroni Badger 2040,And, I Badger 2040W on the bench too. But let’s take a look at Inky Frame and see what it can do.
Pimoroni Inky frame hardware specs
| SoCs | Onboard Raspberry Pi Pico W |
| Dual Arm Cortex M0+ running at up to 133 Mhz with 264kB of SRAM | |
| 2MB QSPI Flash with XiP support | |
| 2.4GHz wireless | |
| screen | 7.3 inch EPD display (800 x 480 pixels) |
| 5.7 inch EPD display (600 x 448 pixels) | |
| 4.01 inch EPD display (640 x 400 pixels) | |
| E Ink Gallery Palette Electronic Paper | |
| ACeP (Advanced Color ePaper) 7 colors: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow and orange. | |
| Dot Pitch – 0.2 x 0.2mm | |
| depository | 8MB of PSRAM |
| Micro SD card slot | |
| Connectivity / GPIO | 2x QW/ST (Stemma QT / Qwiic) connectors |
| GPIO breakouts for I2C, Analog (A0), External Trigger, Serial, and 3.3V / GND. | |
| size | 7.3 inches: 176 x 139 x 7mm |
| 5.7 inch 131.4×127.5mm | |
| 4.01 inch: 102.8 x 96.7mm |
Get started with Pimoroni Inky Frame
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Getting started with Inky Frame is easy with pre-flashed MicroPython. There are some examples that can be run from the launcher. Simply provide your Wi-Fi details via secrets.py and you’ll see NASA’s image of the day, news headlines, or random jokes as internet-enabled examples. These examples show the scope of this screen. This is more than just an e-paper display. The onboard Raspberry Pi Pico W and GPIO connectivity means it can be used as a low power data display. So let’s get to know Inky Frame.
Using Pimoroni Inky Frames
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My first test was not a simple “Hello World” on the display. Instead, I used a set of stock images downloaded from Pexels.com, wanted to be a little more “artistic”, and converted them to match the resolution of my display. Note that if you save Inky Frame JPEG images, you need to make sure they are not progressive JPEGs. That said, using images on these displays has become very easy via the PicoGraphics module.
Previous generations of the Pimoroni Inky HAT used a special color palette in Photoshop/Gimp to ensure the image worked on the display. Now Inky Frame does it all. It takes about 45 seconds to refresh the entire screen. There are 7 colors that need updating. Complex images such as photographs are rendered without issue. Dithering mixes the seven colors with sufficient fidelity to faithfully reproduce the original image. Color ePaper displays are often better suited for comics and pictorial images than photographs. To alleviate this, Pimoroni has created a tutorial on how to use his Inky Frame, including a specific section on how to prepare images for display.
A few tweaks to saturation and exposure brought back some of the detail, making the beach test image look like Ralph McQuarrie’s Star Wars concept art piece. I cycled through a series of images and everything looked good. Then I decided to use some famous artworks as a test of image quality.
Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks is a dark and mysterious work of art. Our gaze is drawn to a coffee shop where four people are sitting quietly. A yellow light shines on them as they sit in a room with only one door and no way out. Outside the coffee shop is a dark and depressing street. Drawn in 1942, the Nighthawks have an air of isolation in the big city. This painting is very well rendered, mainly because of his limited color palette and sharp contrasts.
Close-ups lose detail, but when viewed from a meter away, you get a pop-art style image that preserves the original image. Further testing with Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa found that many shades of blue were realized with amazing detail. I’ll go out on a limb and say that The Great Wave off Kanagawa looks better than Nighthawks because it uses thicker lines meant for printing.
Dual onboard QW/ST (Stemma QT / Qwiic) connectors make it easy to connect compatible components to the Inky Frame. After connecting the BME688 temperature and humidity sensors, I was seeing raw data in my Python shell within minutes. I grabbed a cup of coffee, glanced at the Inky Frames Python module, and the current temperature was displayed on the screen. With a little more work and creativity, you can combine textual data with graphical displays. So live weather data with icons is possible.
Lanyard holders may not have missed your attention. Yes, you can wear this as the ultimate conference badge (sorry Badger 2040). All three sizes of Inky Frame accept external power via the JST header and will work with any power supply that provides up to 5.5V DC. Please note that there is no onboard charging circuit, so the battery must be charged with an external charger.
Who is Inky Frame for?
You can see the Inky Frame when you hang it on your desk, wall, or neck at home, so it looks like it’s going to be a versatile device. Whether you need data visualization, desk art, news headlines, or the ultimate conference badge, Inky Frame has you covered in a highly practical and comfortable form factor. I’d consider a 4-inch model when attaching an Inky Frame, but a 5- or 7.3-inch model would have more output for desk use.
Conclusion
At $89, the Inky Frame 7.3 is the most expensive model in the series, but at this price you get plenty of screen space in a very comfortable form factor. The included MicroPython module makes it very easy to use as well as the QW/ST connector. I had a great time with Inky Frame 7.3. It worked well and gave great results. If budget, desk space, or neck space is a concern, buy the 5.7 or 4 inch model. It’s a little lower resolution, but other than that it’s exactly the same.
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