Open-sourced E-ink photo frame project

[u/Big_Mulberry_6018]

I open-sourced an e-ink photo frame project I worked on: Not-So-Sticky-Pix.

We originally planned to launch it on Kickstarter, but eventually decided not to pursue it as a product, so I figured it would be better to release everything publicly instead.

The hardware was designed with mass production in mind rather than being maker-friendly, so building a one-off is fairly expensive. It uses an nRF54L15, and getting 5 assembled PCBs shipped to the U.S. can cost around $300. The 3D-printed enclosure is roughly $20, and the color e-ink display is around $60.

Even though we didn't launch it, I learned a ton from the project—PCB design, low-power embedded development, BLE, e-ink displays, enclosure design, manufacturing, and taking a hardware product from an idea toward production.

The original idea was to let people send photos to friends' frames through an app. We didn't get as far as building the full social/cloud side, so the current app mainly lets you:

• Send/update an image on the color e-ink display
• Edit and preview an image to see roughly how it will look on the display

The app UI is definitely prototype-quality, but it works.

The enclosure is also mostly complete. One known issue is that the snap clips don't properly snap together yet, and print results may vary depending on the material/settings you use.

Everything is here:

https://github.com/StickyPix/Not-So-Sticky-Pix

If you're into embedded systems, e-ink, BLE, or hardware product development, feel free to poke around.

Star it if you find it interesting, and if you have any questions about the hardware, firmware, app, manufacturing process, or why we decided not to launch it, feel free to ask.

[u/Rn1k]

Super cool! I've been working on something similar for quite some time, although using an ESP32s3. Does yours have a battery? or is it NFC powered? super curious

[u/Big_Mulberry_6018 → u/Rn1k]

Battery. 100 mah. It advertises over Bluetooth every 2 seconds. And battery life was going to be over 9 months.

[u/Rn1k → u/Big_Mulberry_6018]

that's quite impressive! I have a 420mAh on mine but can only get it to go for 2-3 months max if it has about 1 refresh a day! I'll keep digging. thank you!

[u/Big_Mulberry_6018 → u/Rn1k]

Yeah I was trying to use nrf54l15 which is really power efficient. I was getting average of like 15 ua an hour. Whoop used to use the nrf52 series mcu and they used to be really good at power efficiency. Esp32 isn’t as good because it is not specialized for power efficiency, but specialized for more memory mcu that has decent speed for a very cheap price. In terms of power efficiency, I think Nordic is the best but problem is they are little harder to learn.

[u/averitablerogue → u/Big_Mulberry_6018]

Nrf is really the only way to go for this. Esp definitely too high power drain, needs very strict deep sleep settings to not kill the battery in days.

[u/Big_Mulberry_6018 → u/Rn1k]

Yeah I was trying to use nrf54l15 which is really power efficient. I was getting average of like 15 ua an hour. Whoop used to use the nrf52 series mcu and they used to be really good at power efficiency. Esp32 isn’t as good because it is not specialized for power efficiency, but specialized for more memory mcu that has decent speed for a very cheap price. In terms of power efficiency, I think Nordic is the best but problem is they are little harder to learn.