Pervasive Displays Collaborates With Energia IDE to Add Ultra-Low Power E-Paper Driver Support to TI LaunchPad(TM) Development Kits
TAINAN CITY, Taiwan, September 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Pervasive Displays (PDi), a world leader in e-paper displays today announced the
results of its collaboration with community-driven and open source electronics prototyping
platform provider Energia [http://energia.nu ]. The Energia integrated development
environment (IDE) provides similar support for the Texas Instruments (TI) family of
LaunchPad [http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/launchpad.html ](TM) development platforms as
the Arduino and Wiring IDE.
Designed to bring the same Arduino-style application development simplicity to the
LaunchPad ecosystem, the Energia IDE provides support across the range of MSP430(TM)
microcontroller(MCU)-, MSP432(TM) MCU, SimpleLink(TM) Wi-Fi(R) CC3200 wireless MCU- and
TM4C microcontroller boards.
Within Energia IDE's Library Manager all the necessary driver libraries for the range
of Pervasive Displays 1.44 to 4.2 inch e-paper displays are built in. In addition, support
for future three-color displays is accommodated. Full support is also provisioned for the
recently announced EPD Extension Kit Gen (EXT2)
[http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/kits/ext2_kit ] extension board that is constructed in a
TI LaunchPad kit and BoosterPack(TM) plug-in module-compliant format.
By incorporating native IDE driver support, both Pervasive Displays and Energia are
easing the development of designs that use e-paper displays. E-paper displays are ideal
where power budget restrictions mean that driving an LCD display is not possible. E-paper
only requires energy to change the information displayed. Once changed, the power source
can be removed and the information last displayed remains. This approach yields
exceptionally long battery life; a single coin cell will power some applications for many
years.
Adrian Fernandez, microcontroller customer experience manager at TI commented,
"Integrating ease of access to e-paper displays by providing full library support through
our LaunchPad kit ecosystem and the Energia IDE gives developers every opportunity to
trial their capabilities and incorporate them into their next design. Energia support for
the e-paper BoosterPack module will enable the maker community in their various
endeavours."
Robert Wessels, Founder of Energia, said "The LaunchPad kit is an ideal development
environment ecosystem from which to prototype a wide range of applications and these
advancements will enable rapid future prototyping. The addition of native Energia IDE
support for Pervasive Displays' range of e-paper displays further broadens the possible
range of applications and expands into a number of sectors where extremely low power
consumption and/or energy harvesting techniques are essential. The fact that the display
continues to show an image after the power has been disconnected facilitates display-based
developments not previously possible and we are getting very positive reviews
[http://embeddedcomputing.weebly.com/pervasive-display-e-paper-epd-extension-kit-gen-2.html ]
on the second generation of the Pervasive Displays e-paper extension kit with support
for new screens and new LaunchPad kits."