Seeed Studio has sent us a sample of the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 for review. The kit is comprised of an ESP32-S3 board driving a 13.3-inch Spectra 6 color E-Ink display with 1600 x 1200 resolution. It supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 (LE) wireless connectivity, and features a USB Type-C port for power and programming, a battery connector with an on/off power switch, a built-in charging circuit, a Reset button, and three user buttons.
In this review, we will test the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 with the SenseCraft HMI platform and the Arduino IDE. But first, let’s go through an unboxing.
XIAO ePaper DIY KIT EE02 unboxing
We received the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 in a cardboard box with foam to protect the display.
The package includes the 13.-inch ePaper display, the XIAO ePaper Display EE02 board, an external antenna, and a set of two 60-pin adapters and two FFC cables.
The XIAO ePaper Display Board features a power on/off switch for the battery, a Reset button, three user buttons to refresh the display and switch to the next or previous page, and a charging LED (Blinking = No battery connected, Solid green = Charging battery). The PCB is fitted with an XIAO ESP32S3 Plus board featuring an antenna connector and a USB-C port for power and flashing the firmware.
The bottom side of the board features a 60-pin connector for the E-Ink display, and a 2-pin 2.0mm pitch battery connector can be found on the right side.
Review of the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 with SenseCraft HMI
Before we start testing the solution with the SenseCraft HMI platform, we’ll need to connect the XIAO ePaper board to the 13.3 E-ink display through the 60-pin FFC cable and connect the WiFi antenna to the XIAO ESP32S3 Plus module.
Let’s now connect the EE02 kit to the Khadas Mind mini PC using the provided USB Type-C cable. The display will automatically refresh and show a preloaded photo.
The display will soon refresh again to display the network setup screen in order to configure Wi-Fi. You’ll get the access point SSID (ePaper-DIY-Kit-xxx) and IP address (192.168.4.1), or you can scan the Wi-Fi Setup QR code to get started.
After connecting to the access point and accessing 192.168.4.1 in your web browser, you’ll be offered to configure Wi-Fi and enter your password. Since it’s based on ESP32-S3, it only supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, and not 5GHz.
After the board is successfully connected to your Wi-Fi router, the screen will refresh again and display the Pairing Code for connecting to the SenseCraft HMI platform.
This is the same procedure we followed for the reTerminal E1001/E1002 ePaper displays using the SenseCraft HMI Platform. Simply log in to the SenseCraft HMI platform, go to the device management menu, select “Add Device”, and enter the Pairing Code displayed on the ePaper screen. When pairing is successful, the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 device will appear in your device list in SenseCraft HMI.
We will now create a user interface in the SenseCraft HMI platform. The dashboard has changed since we tested it with the reTerminal E1001 and E1002 ePaper Displays last December. Within the Workspace section, users can choose to create various types of content, including New Design, New Image, RSS News, or Web Content.
We first did the easiest test by uploading an image. Once completed, click the “Apply” button in the top right corner and select the target device. The ePaper EE02 will receive the data and refresh the screen with the new image. Easy.
In the design page, we can select various templates, and we select the Weather option to get data such as temperature, humidity, and weather icons.
The RSS Feed component allowed us to load two elements from CNX Software’s RSS feed. You can select to show excerpts or the title only.
We eventually came up with a dashboard design including time, a calendar, weather data, and the RSS Feed from the CNX Software website.
Here’s the result.
Note that you can combine multiple dashboards automatically refreshed at scheduled intervals. As you can see from the video below, you use the above dashboard, a photo, and a shop promotion. We pressed the refresh button to manually switch the pages.
It’s all nice, but most people will likely need a frame to hang the display on a wall or place it on a desk. We asked Seeed Studio if they had made a 3D printed frame, but instead, we were told some users purchased photo frames from IKEA. We found and purchased the IKEA FISKBO 21x30mm photo frame on Shopee for 68 THB (about $2.15 US) shipped using a coupon.
It worked better than expected, and there’s an opening on the back to easily pass the USB-C cable through.
However, it can be difficult to close the back cover because of the board. One solution is to make use of one of the 60-pin adapters and FFC cables for extension. If we had used two sets, we could also have even placed the board outside of the frame, and it would have given access to the buttons. It all depends on whether you intend to press the buttons or not.
We also added some white tape on each side since the display is not quite as wide as the photo frame. The result is fairly nice, although black tape might have been better with the black frame. The FISKBO photo frames are also available in white if you prefer.
When shutting down the computer, the screen retains the last displayed content (expected without power). However, when turning the computer back on, it cannot continue to be used after accessing the Device page on SenseCraft HMI and clicking the “Apply” button, and we have a blank design. The only solution is to re-create the dashboard design and re-flash the firmware. The photo and the “HOT SALE” design are still there. We could reproduce the issue several times.
Using the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 with the Arduino IDE
The development kit also supports development via the Arduino IDE. You’ll need to download the Seeed GFX library from Seeed Studio on GitHub, and make sure you do not have the TFT library or any other display libraries with overlapping functions already installed, as they cannot be used together. After that, open the Arduino IDE, go to the menu Sketch -> Include Library -> Add .ZIP Library, and select the downloaded ZIP file.
After the installation is successful, go to File -> Examples -> Seeed_GFX and select one of the examples. We selected Bitmap_13inch30.
Sketch:
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/* * Supported Colors: * - TFT_WHITE * - TFT_BLACK * - TFT_YELLOW * - TFT_GREEN * - TFT_BLUE * - TFT_RED */ #include "TFT_eSPI.h" #include "image.h" #include <cstdint> #ifdef EPAPER_ENABLE EPaper epaper; #endif void setup() { #ifdef EPAPER_ENABLE Serial.begin(115200); delay(2000); Serial.println("13.3\" Colorful E-Paper Bitmap Display Example"); epaper.begin(); // Clear screen to white epaper.fillScreen(TFT_WHITE); epaper.update(); delay(1000); // Display color bitmap image using pushImage API // pushImage(x, y, width, height, image_data) epaper.pushImage(0, 0, 1200, 1600, (uint16_t *)gImage_13inch3); epaper.update(); Serial.println("Color bitmap displayed successfully"); // Put display to sleep to save power epaper.sleep(); #else Serial.begin(115200); Serial.println("EPAPER_ENABLE not defined. Please select the correct setup file."); #endif } void loop() { // Nothing to do here } |
Now, create a new file called driver.h and paste the following code for the EE02 display:
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#define BOARD_SCREEN_COMBO 510 // 13.3 inch six-color ePaper (T133A01) #define USE_XIAO_EPAPER_DISPLAY_BOARD_EE02 |
Set the board to XIAO_ESP32S3_Plus, and select the serial port (COM6 here).
Also, enable OPI PSRAM to support handling large image data for the ePaper display.
We can now compile the code and upload the firmware to the board.
The image defined in the gImage_13inch3 array will show on the screen.
Let’s try another sample of the Seeed_GFX menu: “Hello ePaper”.
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#include "TFT_eSPI.h" #ifdef EPAPER_ENABLE // Only compile this code if the EPAPER_ENABLE is defined in User_Setup.h EPaper epaper; #endif void setup() { #ifdef EPAPER_ENABLE epaper.begin(); epaper.fillScreen(TFT_WHITE); epaper.fillCircle(25, 25, 15, TFT_RED); epaper.fillRect(epaper.width() - 40, 10, 30, 30, TFT_GREEN); for (int i = 0; i < epaper.height() / 80; i++) { epaper.setTextColor(TFT_BLUE); epaper.setTextSize(i + 1); epaper.drawLine(10, 70 + 60 * i, epaper.width() - 10, 70 + 60 * i, TFT_BLACK); epaper.drawString("Hello ePaper", 10, 80 + 60 * i); } epaper.update(); // update the display #endif } void loop() { // put your main code here, to run repeatedly: } |
It will show “Hello ePaper” text with increasing font size, and that’s exactly what we got on the E-Ink display.
Conclusion
The XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 with a 13.3-inch 6-color E-Ink Spectra display is easy to use with the SenseCraft HMI no-code platform, and advanced users can write code with the Arduino IDE, although what they can do is limited since the board lacks GPIOs.
Our review of the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 with the SenseCraft HMI platform shows it is very easy to use and offers a wide range of functions. However, the software still has a few bugs, and our dashboard design disappeared a few times in the SenseCraft HMI interface after we disconnected and reconnected the display.
We’d like to thank Seeed Studio for sending the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit – EE02 board and 13.3-inch Spectra 6 color E-Ink display for review. The board itself is sold for $14.90 with an antenna and FPC cable, but the full kit, as reviewed here, goes for $163.90 on the same page. It’s a pretty decent deal for the Spectra display. We used an IKEA FISKBO photo frame in our review, but Seeed Studio has just released the reTerminal E1004, based on similar hardware, but equipped with a built-in 5,000mAh battery, a 16GB microSD card, and an enclosure. It sells for $279.90.
CNXSoft: This article is a translation – with some additional insights – of the review on CNX Software Thailand by Suthinee Kerdkaew.
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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