A digital photo frame comprising of a color e-paper display can be a nice way to spruce up your surroundings. The added advantage of the e-paper display is that they don’t emit any light as such and hence merges with the surroundings brilliantly. Also, the nice thing here is that you can make one of your own as well, similar to the one that Sprite_tm did as mentioned on the site Hackaday.
Specifically, the photo frame makes do with a 5.65-inch Waveshare display. The display is capable of showing seven colors and has a resolution of 640 x 448 pixels. Of course, you can’t and shouldn’t expect the display to show photorealistic images but should do a good job showing simple images, more so post some dithering job. Then there also is an algorithm at work here, one that ‘uses Floyd-Steinberg diffusion and the CIEDE2000 color space’ that takes ‘regular RGB images and breaks them down into dithered images that are displayed using the screen’s 7 available colors.’
At the core of the device lies an ESP32-C3 which powers the entire thing, besides also retrieving the images over Wi-Fi every day. Providing the juice is a pair of AA batteries and a Natlinear LN2266 boost converter, which does more than a decent job considering the extremely low power requirements of the E Ink display. Further, with the entire thing wrapped up in a nice 3D-printed photo frame makes it quite a looker too.
You can also customize the frame as per your preferences while the necessary codes are available via GitHub. So, if you are feeling like making your own iteration of a color E Ink photo frame, you have all the resources to get started right away.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
