Advantages of E-Paper displays for IoT applications

[MarkCrabs1]

E-Paper displays offer a unique advantage in that maintaining the displayed image does not require any power, unlike LCDs and OLEDs. Power is only actively consumed when updating the display, However, the downside is that display updates can be somewhat slow, depending on the display area to be updated.

The unique features of E-Paper displays makes them a good match for low-power IoT projects, since the microcontroller can set the display and go into sleep mode, only waking up to read sensor values and update the display. This demo project shows how a RTL8722 microcontroller can be used to show the temperature and humidity with a E-Paper display.

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYI5WBmC6ac&feature=youtu.be

Join in the community discussions at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmebaIoT/
https://forum.amebaiot.com/

Purchase links for the various Realtek development boards can be found at:
https://www.amebaiot.com/en/where-to-buy-link/

 

[MarkCrabs1]

Besides saving power through using a E-Ink display, it is also important to minimize power consumption of the microcontroller, since wireless connections such as WiFi and BLE can use up significant amounts of your project's battery capacity if left on continuously.

Realtek's RTL8722 microcontroller contains 2 processor cores, a high performance core for general user applications, and a low power core to maintain system state and check for wake triggers when the high performance core is in deep sleep mode. This allows the RTL8722 to reduce power consumption when the system is idle and there is no communications occuring.

A guide on using the RTL8722 deep sleep mode with a E-Ink display can be found at:
https://www.amebaiot.com/en/amebad-arduino-deepsleepmode-elink/

Join in the community discussions at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmebaIoT/
https://forum.amebaiot.com/

Purchase links for the various Realtek development boards can be found at:
https://www.amebaiot.com/en/where-to-buy-link/

 

[MarkCrabs1]

For more power savings, you can use BLE for transmitting small amounts of data. BLE is a more power saving focused wireless protocol compared to WiFi or standard BT, trading off bandwidth and range for greatly reduce power consumption. By adjusting connection parameters such as BLE connection intervals and slave latency, users can choose to further reduce bandwidth to minimize power consumption, which can be useful in IoT projects which do not need to transmit large amounts of data.

Realtek's RTL8722 microcontroller supports BLE 5.0, can be programmed using the Arduino IDE and includes examples on how to use the BLE library to define your own services and characteristics to fit the project requirements.

A example for using a basic BLEUART service to control a LED can be found at:

Join in the community discussions at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmebaIoT/
https://forum.amebaiot.com/

Purchase links for the various Realtek development boards can be found at:
https://www.amebaiot.com/en/where-to-buy-link/