Skip to content

Driver for the IT8951 e-paper controller on Raspberry Pi

License

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

GregDMeyer/IT8951

Folders and files

NameName
Last commit message
Last commit date

Latest commit

 

History

61 Commits
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Repository files navigation

IT8951

This Python 3 module implements a driver for the IT8951 e-paper controller, via SPI. The driver was developed using the 6-inch e-Paper HAT from Waveshare. It hopefully will work for other (related) hardware too.

To install, clone the repository, enter the directory and run

pip install ./[rpi]

(If you are installing on a platform other than Raspberry Pi, omit the [rpi]).

Make sure that SPI is enabled by running raspi-config and navigating to Interface OptionsSPI.


For some examples of usage, take a look at the integration tests.

Notes on performance

VCOM value

You should try setting different VCOM values and seeing how that affects the performance of your display. Every one is different. There might be a suggested VCOM value marked on the cable of your display.

Data transfer

You might be able to squeeze some extra performance out of the data transfer by increasing the SPI clock frequency. The SPI frequency for transferring pixel data is by default set at 24 MHz, which is the maximum stated in the IT8951 chip spec here (page 41). But, you could try setting higher and seeing if it works anyway. It is set by passing the spi_hz argument to the Display or EPD classes (see example in tests/integration/tests.py).

Running the code on Linux desktop

You can run this library on desktop Linux distributions (e.g. on Ubuntu) using a "virtual" display, for testing and development. Instead of appearing on a real ePaper device, the contents will be shown in a TKInter window on the desktop. For an example, see the integration tests at test/integration/test.py when passed the -v option.

Windows is curently not supported (the cython build will fail because the C code depends on some Linux components). It might work if you use some Linux compatibility layer like WSL or Mingw.

To do so, simply run

pip3 install ./

Now you should be able to run the tests with the -v flag: python test.py -v.

Contributors

Thanks to the following folks for helping improve the library:

  • @BackSlasher
  • @cetres
  • @azzeloof
  • @matyasf
  • @grob6000
  • @txoof