patryk-kawalarz / nodejs-to-eink

Convert any NodeJS generated canvas to stream data which can be easily handled by Arduino based hardware (like ESP8266) and displayed on the E-Ink display.

NodeJS to E-Ink

Convert any NodeJS generated canvas to stream data which can be easily handled by Arduino based hardware (like ESP8266) and displayed on the E-Ink display.

About

I spent a lot of time figuring out how to convert a canvas object to a monochrome picture which can be ease transferred to my ESP8266. Converting canvas to bitmaps was too complicated for me. So finally I decided to prepare a chain of 0 and 1 as information about which pixel should be black. ESP8266 must know the dimensions of the upcoming image but for me, it's not a problem.I know that using strings as raw data is lost of bytes but it was the only way to handle it based on my knowledge. 

Installation & usage

Download source code and install dependencies:

npm i

Now run Node app server:

nodemon app

Upload display.ino to your arduino hardware.

Make sure that you know correct IP address of your Node app server. I tested it on localhost so I used my local IP address: 192.168.0.42.

My hardware

Tested with Waveshare 5.83" E-Ink display and NodeMCU v2.