Zerowriter Pi Bright Display brings a 6-inch, fast e-paper screen with a user-controllable front lighting to your Raspberry Pi projects. It works with Linux command line applications natively: no fuss or driver complications. Plug it in, run the driver, and enjoy responsive, 12 FPS e-paper. The rest is up to you.

If you want to build with e-ink, there’s plenty of choices. But what if there was a simple, no-hassle solution for making e-paper projects come to life? And you didn’t even need to pick up a soldering iron? Building on our Zerowriter Ink device, Pi Bright lets you create the devices you’re dreaming of in record time.

Fast and Bright

Zerowriter Pi Bright Display brings fast e-paper to any Raspberry Pi project without any extra work. Plug in your Pi to our HAT, and you instantly will have output to the 6-inch e-paper display. You can then focus on everything else: building cool software, designing the enclosure, etc.

Now you can easily build a distraction-free writing machine that can use any of your favorite command-line based word processors or editors: VIM, emacs, Wordgrinder, or even nano. You could also create your own personal e-paper terminal for coding or development. You could level up your dashboard projects. You could create an e-ink based emulator. You could implement new panels, bigger displays, and more with our open source back end code.

Whether you are just starting out with building hardware projects, or if you’ve been doing it a long time, you know that complicated solutions to simple problems are a real pain point. And that is the case with e-paper displays. Builders and hobbyists working with e-paper expect plug & play, like you would get from a HDMI or off-the-shelf LCD panel. Instead, they get archaic drivers, poor performance, and clunky code.

Zerowriter Pi Bright Display gives you the plug & play experience you expect, so you can focus on building.

Features & Specifications

• Supports ED060XC or ED097 e-paper display panels: 6 or 9-inch parallel e-ink displays used in devices like Kindles
• Supports frontlight connection via standard e-paper light fixture connectors
• Built-in HAT for Raspberry Pi Zero 2W: the female header connects to your Pi Zero 2W, no soldering required
• Built-in power switch, frontlight toggle button, USB Type-C power, and QWIIC connector for expansion
• Add your own battery pack for a simple power solution, or wire in a UPS circuit for more control and flexibility
• 6-inch e-paper display module
• Dimensions: 140 x 103 x 4 mm (5.51 x 4.05 x 0.15 in)
• Weight: 30 g (1.05 oz)
• Installing the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W increases height to 15 mm and weight to 40 g

Firmware

• Open source firmware to drive the board at 12FPS via native Linux framebuffer
• Designed for command-line applications, but could support desktop emulation in the future

Open Source

Zerowriter Pi Bright Display is open hardware with open source firmware. We will provide BoMs, KiCad files, enclosure STL files, and more under a permissible license (yet to be determined). All source files will be made available once crowdfunded orders are fulfilled.

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