① Hardware Checklist
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What follows is some specific bits about the hardware in use here.
If you buy products through Amazon with these links, I may recieve compensation…
…or I may not
I’ll include links to any of the stuff we’re using on Amazon.
Necessary Hardware #
- A Pi 4
These are hard to come by these days, and are stupidly overpriced (( thanks Covid )). So I’m not gonna include a link.
SD Card of non-suckage ™️ #
You’re likely to want a Micro SD Card that doesn’t suck.
The cards that I’ve been using with reasonable success and good speeds are
SanDisk Extreme Pro MicroSDXC
Additional hardware that makes life more awesome™ #
- Micro HDMI to HDMI adapter
- Keyboard
WaveShare 2.13 inch ePaper Hat #
You could use a larger one too. This just happens to be what I have lying around.
Waveshare’s got their new v3 version:
This is what I had lying around.
| Rpi Name [Pin] | Eink Hat Pin | Function |
|---|---|---|
| 3.3v [1,17] | 1 Red | VCC |
| GND [39,20] | 2 Black | GND |
| GPIO10 [19] | 3 Blue | DIN |
| GPIO11 [23] | 4 Yellow | CLK |
| GPIO 8 [24] | 5 Orange | CS |
| GPIO25 [22] | 6 Green | DC |
| GPIO17 [11] | 7 White | RST |
| GPIO24 [18] | 8 Brown | Busy |
PoE Hat #
PoE can be NOISY electrically speakingThe PoE Hats I’ve tried out caused some weird artifacts on the eInk displays…
I found that using Power/Ground from the PoE Hat was problematic. I was getting a LOT more noise and artifacts when using those pins.
Using the power and ground direct from the RPi solved the problems I was experiencing.
YMMV.
I’ve tried a few PoE Hats with varying degrees of success.
The version I have isn’t for sale any longer, but this is the next generation of it:
The version I got from this vendor seem to work just fine on a Pi4.
Good To KnowThe main caveat I’ve found is these will ONLY work when receiving power from an 802.3af compatible PoE source.