ePaper Display from Waveshare controlled by any ATtiny -it is possible ?

[Frank_MV]

Hello Guys,

I am interested in an ePaper Display ( Black, White, Red) from Waveshare
https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/1.54inch_e-Paper_Module_(B)_Manual#Arduino
And thinking if I can control it with an ATtiny.
I think I read somewhere that it needs a lot of RAM - is that true ?
An ATtiny doesn't have much of it. 
Do any of you here have experience with this ?


Thanks,
Frank

[bidrohini]

I think Attiny's RAM size is too small for it. I tried to use a waveshare e-paper display with Arduino UNO which was based on ATmega328P. I could upload the code. But the display was not running smoothly. The system was hanging. Then I switched to Arduino Mega(2560). After that I got satisfactory results.

[PCB.Wiz]

I am interested in an ePaper Display ( Black, White, Red) from Waveshare
....
I think I read somewhere that it needs a lot of RAM - is that true ?
An ATtiny doesn't have much of it. 

Then why not choose a MCU with more resource ?
The MCU is a fraction of price of any larger display, and there are lots of MCUs to choose from.
 

[amyk]

It depends what you want to draw on it. You can stream data to an EPD, it can be clocked as slow as you want.

[ledtester]

On today's Hackaday:

https://hackaday.com/2022/11/21/driving-e-paper-displays-with-memory-limited-mcus/

[thomasx]

Hi

I see this thread is a bit more than a year old, but since I have the exact same question, using the same display and an ATiny, I was wondering if you pursued this and how it worked out?

I can't really see why it shouldn't work without a lot of memory, as long as you have/can generate the data that goes to the display. For my part I will only write digits, and depending on how I generate the digits output to the display, I figure this should not need much memory at all.

[FrickelPit]

I am at the very same spot: ATtiny 412 and Waveshare 1.54 3-color display.

OK, nice try. - Code space far too large.

So I took a ATtiny3216, but still lacking resources to cope with necessary libraries. ~100kB plus seems to be the threshold on the memory side for driving such e-paper with non native code.
Would be interesting to see, if there are lightweight libraries we could use.

I am aiming on powering the setup with just two AA batteries.
On the graphic side I am good with text only plus simple geometric drawings.

Display update with the 3C 1.54 Waveshare is about 14 seconds. That looks irritating and I am planning with an update every 5 minutes. The 2C e-paper can update in about 2 seconds, which is much better! 

[tszaboo]

I'm not sure why you want such a limited microcontroller. You can power these with a very cheap ESP32 board, STM32 board or anything similar. The it's an outdated microcontroller in an outdated platform, without any standout features, and with bad pricing. The only reason I would consider using it is if I can get an entire project including firmware.