E-paper
Raw e-ink panels without PCB, SPI driver-board modules, Raspberry Pi HATs, 91-segment numeric displays, NFC-powered tags and an HDMI e-paper monitor all share this family. Who drives the panel is the first question.
Waveshare makes up the large majority of parts here and often sells the same panel twice: once as a raw display needing a separate driver board, and once as a module or HAT+ with the SPI controller attached.
- Color is a panel property, not a software setting: black/white, 16-grayscale, red/black/white three-color, and (G) red/yellow/black/white four-color panels like the 1.64inch square E-Paper trade refresh speed for the extra colors.
- Pimoroni's Red/Black/White Inky pHAT is the most project-mentioned part here — a ready-made Raspberry Pi pHAT — unlike the 7.8inch, flexible 10.3inch and 13.3inch 1600×1200 raw panels whose parallel ports require a dedicated controller board.
- The 1.9inch 91-segment module runs over I2C rather than SPI; NFC-powered 1.54 and 2.13inch panels need no battery or MCU; the 10.3inch E-paper Monitor takes HDMI for Raspberry Pi or Jetson Nano.
- Several sizes ship as both a raw display and a module: verify which listing you're on before ordering, because the raw panel alone won't display anything without the matching driver board.
