Ultra-low power Pervasive Displays e-paper screen added to pioneering IoT development board
Pervasive Displays (PDi), a provider in e-paper displays, announces its ultra-low power displays have been incorporated into a pioneering Internet of Things (IoT) development board from Cypress Semiconductor Corp. that enables device designers to benefit from a human-readable screen requiring very low amounts of power.
Created for use in a variety of IoT applications, such as fitness and health wearables, smart home and smart metering, the Cypress PSoC® 6 BLE Pioneer Kit helps engineers take advantage of the benefits of displays in their designs, without significantly impacting the power budgets.
Adding a display to almost any device including portable health monitors, utility meters and other connected monitoring and control devices, means designers can improve the overall user experience and offer exciting new features.
E-paper displays use much less energy than a traditional TFT liquid crystal display (LCD), because they require no backlight and do not need to be refreshed constantly to maintain a visible image. The savings are striking: an always-on e-paper display, updated half-a-dozen times a day, can use as little as 0.001% of the energy of an LCD equivalent performing the same role. This means a device with an e-paper display can run for months or even years on a small battery.
E-paper displays also offer very wide viewing angles, and because they’re reflective, can be read in bright sunlight and by barcode scanners, unlike TFT LCDs.
Jim Davis, director of Marketing for the MCU Business Unit at Cypress, said: ““PSoC MCUs have always been differentiated by the rich design resources of their analog and digital software-defined peripherals. As a market leader in e-paper displays with a ready supply of high quality screens available off-the-shelf, Pervasive Displays was the ideal partner to implement the display on our PSoC 6 BLE Pioneer Kit. This board gives our customers the best of both worlds: the processing performance combined with an ultra-low power architecture and the flexibility to design differentiated IoT applications.”
Scott Soong, CEO at Pervasive Displays, added: “Many people have already enjoyed the benefits of e-paper displays in their e-reader devices, notably their exceptionally low power use and reflective nature, which makes them easily readable even in very bright lighting. Displays used in IoT applications require similar properties, as they will often need to operate for very long periods on a small battery, and be easily readable in a variety of lighting conditions. A Pervasive Displays e-paper display is the ideal solution for anyone wanting to add a human-readable screen to a battery-powered, connected device.”
Designers wishing to purchase the Cypress PSoC® 6 BLE Pioneer Kit can obtain them from distributors including Mouser, Digi-Key, RS Components, Future, Arrow and Farnell.
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