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The Mystery of the Deteriorating e Ink Screen

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Madelena Mak edited this page Nov 9, 2022 · 2 revisions

The design of this dashboard originally had white text on black background. To do so, I coded the display to fill the background color in black entirely and then print the text on top.

The display was also originally coded to refresh every minute due to the fact that train due time is a countdown clock. As a result, the e-ink screen deteriorated quickly within the first few weeks of use. It eventually died a horrible death 4 months later:

20221107_204151

As you can see, the black particles do not stick to the surface anymore for the lines that are not purely black.

According to the manufacturer's website, the screen, with normal use, can be refreshed 1,000,000 times (1 million times). It is also recommended that the refresh interval be at least 180s, and refresh at least once every 24 hours.

At one refresh per minute, the screen would have refreshed 1440 times per day and 10080 times per week. One month later, when deterioration became evident, the screen had refreshed over 40000 times, which is only 4% of its stated lifetime.

So what exactly was the culprit?

  • Is it the rate of refresh?
  • Is it the image being white on black?
  • Is the screen not as durable as the manufacturer claimed?
  • Is it because ESPHome does not send the screen to sleep mode when it is not refreshed, and the high voltage state damaged it?
  • Was it just a defective screen?
  • Or does Waveshare screens just suck?
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