Pimoroni’s Inky Frame 4.0″ is a small, low-power electronic paper display with a limited color palette, five buttons for controls, a microSD card reader for storage, and a Raspberry Pi Pico W at the heart of the system.
Designed for use as digital photo frame, digital signage, or a display for a home automation system or other applications, the Inky Frame 4.0″ can also be used for other DIY applications… as long as you take the screen’s limitations into account.
The screen is a 4.01 inch, 640 x 400 pixel screen that uses E Ink Gallery Pallette 4000 ePaper display featuring E Ink’s Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP) color technology. That means it’s capable of showing 7 colors: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.
But these displays are designed for showing a static image, not for full-motion graphics. It takes about 30 seconds to refresh contents of the screen.
The good news is that since the display only uses power when the screen is refreshed, and since the rest of the components also consume little power, this thing should be able to get weeks or months of battery life if you hook it up to an optional battery pack.
Pimoroni sells the Inky Frame 4.0″ for for £70 (about $84) or you can pay £79 (about $95) for an Inky Frame + accessory kit that includes a 16GB microSD card, battery pack, micro USB cable, and velcro square for attaching the battery pack.
Both the Inky Frame-only and Inky Frame + accessory kit come with two metal legs to stand up the display and the Raspberry Pi Pico W board is pre-soldered in place, so there’s no need to buy that separately.
The Inky Frame 4.0″ is currently out of stock, but you can sign up on the Pimorini website to be notified when it’s available again.
The 4 inch display is a recent addition to the company’s line of Raspberry Pi-related products. Pimoroni also also makes a 5.7 inch model that sells for £90 (~$108) and up, but it’s also out of stock.
via Geeky Gadgets and MagPi