🎉  Happy 13th Birthday Raspberry Pi!   🎂   1,000+ deals in store!   🥳
🎉  Happy 13th Birthday Raspberry Pi!   🎂   1,000+ deals in store!   🥳

Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD)

by Pimoroni

A low-energy, high-falutin, electronic paper (ePaper / eInk / EPD) display for your Pi, in three different colour schemes: red/black/white, yellow/black/white, and black/white!

Inky pHAT's beautiful, high contrast display is ideal for displaying simple graphics and crisply-rendered text and, because it's like paper, it's readable in bright sunlight. You could use Inky pHAT as a cute little clock, display tweets on it, the weather, news headlines, sports scores, and more. It's also ideal for graphing data from remote sensors, CPU load or temperature, or stock prices.

Our Getting Started with Inky pHAT tutorial is a great starting point for getting acquainted with the joys of e-paper! 

Features

Multi-colour EPD displays, like the ones on Inky pHAT, use ingenious electrophoresis to pull coloured particles up and down on the display. The coloured particles reflect light, unlike most display types, meaning that they're visible under bright lights. It takes approximately 15 seconds to refresh the display, with a typical 8mA current draw during refreshes. The black/white display can be refreshed much more quickly, in just a second or two.

Everything comes fully-assembled, and there's no soldering required! The display is securely stuck down to the Inky pHAT PCB and connected via a ribbon cable. Just pop Inky pHAT on your Pi and run our installer to get everything set up!

It'll work with any 40-pin version of the Pi, including Pi Zero and Pi Zero W.

Software

Our Python library takes the stress out of displaying text and images on Inky pHAT, and our examples include a cute clock and weather display. 

We started rolling out a higher resolution SSD1608 e-paper screen on Inky pHAT from late 2020 (250x122 pixels instead of 212x104!).  Our library should autodetect the right drivers for your screen, but you might run into problems using third party software to drive the display if you have one of these newer boards. 

Our current Inky library does not support the original (V1) Inky pHAT. If you have one of these boards you should use the original Inky pHAT Python library.

Notes

  • Overall dimensions: 65x30x8.5mm (WxHxD, depth includes header and display)
  • Display usable area dimensions: 48.5x23.8mm (WxH), 2.13" diagonal
  • PCB and screen dimensions (PNG)

129 customer reviews

6 months ago
Easy to set up . Fun to use. Wide range of commercial and personal applications. Offers high benefits for low costs.
by Richard about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
7 months ago
Compared to the wHat, the update-time is a bit long (5-6 secs vs 3 secs). But still much faster than with color e-inks. So it is a good compromise.
by Anonymous about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
7 months ago
Super cool. Make sure you follow all of the setup steps or else it probably won't work. I had a lot of random packages to install so the setup took a little while. It says it takes 15 seconds to refresh -- in my experience it's closer to 18 but the point is they're definitely not exaggerating the refresh time.
by Anonymous about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
9 months ago
Great display, low power, easy enough to use with python libraries, my only complaint would be no simple way to safely mount/attach to my rpi zero 2 other then beyond "hanging" by the pin header which delicate at best with on "protable" devices/applcations
by Peter about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
I absolutely love this little piece of art. Quality products should come with quality software/drivers to be great. Before I bought this one from Pimoroni I was using an alternative one, but since drivers were terrible, I was not able to use it as I wanted. Inky pHAT from Pimoroni is an awesome combination of quality HW, great drivers, and clear documentation. Installation and usage are super-easy, so literally everybody will be able to use it even, when not a Linux guru. I am very happy, that I bought one, and I will definitely order another for my next RPi Zero projects.
by Jiri about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
It delivers what is promised, a fantastic 2.13" display, easy to set up and to connect to raspberry. Also comes in a nice package.
by Pedro about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
Perfect little e-ink screen. It is a bit slower in refreshing than black/white version, but for my project the reds are absolutely worth it. Love it!
by Anonymous about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Not had chance to use this yet but looks amazing come with logo on so can't wait to use. Support and set up looks as it always does from pimoroni very stress free but know that the team will support anyways
by Alan about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Awesome display, super easy to use, getting started guide is very good, Display is crisp, but does take a little while to refresh (~15 seconds)
by Liam about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Love it - It's currently neatly mounted to a Pi Zero in my kitchen, displaying the current/upcoming 'Octopus agile' energy tarriffs which change every 30 minutes. The screen's low energy use means it will run from a battery for a long time. The only issue wasn't the inky pHAT it was that the pi zero didn't have GPIO pins. I had to order some solder-free hammer-in pins so I could connect things together.
by dan about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Works really well, easy to set up and the colours are surprisingly vibrant for a display which doesn't emmit light. Can wait to plug it into my next project
by Andrew about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Very good, once you work out some of the quirks involved :) The biggest tip I can offer is that the "AUTO" type detect didn't work at all, and I had to use "--type ssd1608" to make it do anything at all. Documentation could be improved, hence 4*, but the actual display is excellent. The BLACK display updates in about 2 seconds, but the other coloured ones apparently take ~15 seconds, even if you're only using the black ink. Order accordingly!
by Dave about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
The Initial one was seemingly DoA but Matt in support sorted out a replacement really quick. The new one works like a charm.
by Tony about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Got it up and running quickly and without hassle. The documentation and examples are really good. Got mine showing the weather from my weather station connected to another rpi outside the house. Fun little project! It didn't sit well on the pins when connected directly to the rpi but was fine when I used a ribbon cable. No idea why this was. Pimoroni support was helpful when trying to resolve this issue.
by John about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
This is a fun little board. I don't even have a project planned for it I just wanted to play around with it and I'll figure out something afterwards. The online documentation is fairly clear so it makes a fun project that doesn't need a high skill level to use it.
by Liam about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Awesome e-ink display. The colours really pop and come out crisp. I'm going to use it as a secondary 'always on' display and this will be perfect.
by Daniel about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Great product, does what it says and great python library overall. I removed one star because the refresh process and blinking/flashing is a major constraint that prevents using the screen for many purposes. An option in the python library to adapt the behavior would be great.
by Cyril about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Brilliant piece of kit and easy to write images to. Yes the refresh is slow for red/yellow (15 seconds or so) and about 2 seconds or so for black. This is not a problem for my application, where data's updated every 6 minutes or so. I have black, red and yellow version for experiments. When compared with each other the red and yellow devices have a very light background colouration (very light pink and very light yellow) caused by the colour elements I guess but this is only noticeable when you compare devices side-by-side. Interestingly though, although all my devices are the higher resolution of 250x122 pixels, and although the device reports itself as 250x122 it seems that the bottom two rows of pixels (or top row if you've flipped the image) are not visible. I can address all the pixels but the two bottom (or top?) rows are not visible. So the device actually only displays 250 x 120 pixels. Just in case you actually expect to use the advertised resolution - you appear to be 2 pixels short. Can someone at Pimoroni confirm this behaviour? i.e. you can only see 250 x 120 pixels?
by Alan about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
An excellent product that worked perfectly and was well described on the website. I did break it - don't panic though, this was entirely through me being dumb and attempting a modification involving a hacksaw blade that I didn't know enough about to do safely (don't ask!) RIP my red&white inky pHAT that I brutally murdered. Sorry everyone.
by Anonymous about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
There’s really only one word to describe it.... perfect! Clean, clear, low energy display. Easy to fit. Fast delivery and superb after sales service. Thankyou
by Jamie about Inky pHAT (ePaper/eInk/EPD) via REVIEWS.io

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