New board features e-paper display, Raspberry Pi chipset and integrated sensors

Waveshare now offers the so-called RP2350-ePaper-1.54, a new development board that not only includes a computing chip but also comes with a fairly extensive feature set. The model is available in two different versions, one with a touchscreen and one without. Prices are listed at $16 and $21. The system can also be ordered directly with a lithium battery, allowing it to be used independently of the power grid.

A 1.54-inch e-paper display with a resolution of 200 x 200 pixels is always onboard, which should help keep power consumption low. Image content should therefore be displayed for a very long time. One obvious use case could be as a small room climate display, since the board already includes sensors for measuring temperature and humidity. Additional sensors can be connected, with several ports available for that purpose. I2C and UART are each supported once, and PWM is supported as well.

The RP2350A is used as the computing chip, allowing users to choose between one of two architectures. There are two Cortex-M33 cores on the one hand and a RISC-V computing chip on the other. In general, performance should be rather low. The focus of this device is on displaying sensor data than on rendering complex interfaces or real applications. Wireless network connectivity is not possible, which can be a significant limitation. For example, it is not readily possible to make the data immediately available in a smart home. Long measurement series can nevertheless be recorded on a microSD card.