$52 7.5-inch E-paper display connects to ESP32 boards

So far LILYGO’s ESP32 boards with an E-Paper display such as the TTGO T5  or Mini E-Paper Core featured smaller displays from 1.02-inch to 2.9-inch. But the company is now offering a larger 7.5-inch display that works with most of its T5 boards excluding the one used with a 4.7-inch display.

The black and white e-paper display offers a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, is Arduino programmable and backward compatible with earlier T5 E-paper solution, and should be one of the most cost-effective to way to make a wireless E-paper display.

LilyGO 7.5-inch E-paper display specifications:

• Panel SKU – DKE DEPG0750_U790F3 (See PDF datasheet. note non-secure link so your browser may complain)
• Size – 7.5-inch diagonal
• Resolution – 800 x 480 pixels (124 DPI)
• Active area – 163.2 x 97.92mm
• Pixel pitch – 0.204 x 0.204 mm
• Host interface – SPI
• Dimensions – 170.2 x 111.2 x 1.2 mm
• Weight – Around 44 grams

I was unable to find information about the refresh rate.

If you already own a T5 board with an integrated E-paper display, the new 7.5-inch display is compatible with boards that ship with 1.54, 2.13, 2.6, 2.7, 2.9, or 3.7-inch displays, but not the T5 4.7-inch board. You can check our earlier post about the TTGO T5 board for more details, but in a nutshell, it’s an ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth board with a microSD card slot, a speaker (depends on model), a 24-pin IO header, some buttons, and powered from 5V via USB or a LiPo battery.

If you don’t own this board, the LilyGO 7.5-inch E-paper display is also offered with the T5 V2.4.1 board (using ESP32 + CH9102 USB to TTL chip) as pictured below.

The board would typically be sold fitted with a 1.54-inch, 2.13-inch, or 2.9-inch display, but in this case, it would just be attached to the larger display as shown in the first photo of this post. You’ll find documentation on Github explaining how to use the Arduino IDE together with the Adafruit-GFX-Library to drive the E-paper display from the ESP32 microcontroller.

LilyGO 7.5-inch E-paper display is sold for about $52, but you may want to spend $59 to get a bundle with the T5 2.4.1 board. It offers a cheaper alternative to Inkplate displays, also based on ESP32, although the Inkplate wireless display should be quite better with higher resolutions, possibly higher refresh rates (we can’t know for sure since LilyGO did not disclose this information), a front light, a battery charging circuit, and optional features such as touch screen.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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