Using Dasung Paperlike HD-F, HD-FT and Paperlike 253 with Raspberry Pi 4

The Dasung Paperlike Pro / Paperlike HD are E-ink monitors that have many nice properties (and work well outdoors).

They generally work with most HDMI outputs, but I had problems with the Raspberry Pi 4. The point of this repo is to document what I had to do to get it working (I can't fully tell which device is at fault here, but I suspect both the Pi 4 and the Paperlike have issues).

What I did to make it work:

1. extracted the EDID from the Paperlike on a iMac and included it as edid.dat, including it in the same directory as the config.txt (which is typically /boot but /boot/firmware on Ubuntu). (get-edid may work too, but I haven't tried that).

2. forced the use of this using

hdmi_edid_file=1
hdmi_cvt=2200 1650 40 1 0 0 1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87

in config.txt. Note: it is now incompatible with anything but the Paperlike HD.

For convenience, I have included my config.txt and edid.dat this repo.

Using Dasung Paperlike Pro-F/FT with Raspberry Pi 4

Contributed section

Raspbian

The monitor works fine without any specific settings on the latest Raspbian.

Ubuntu

I've extracted the edid from the Paperlike Pro monitor with the help of get-edid command.

On Ubuntu Core with installed standard ubuntu desktop I did:

1. Put edid.dat in /boot/firmware/ dir.
2. Edit /boot/firmware/usercfg.txt and add hdmi_edid_file=1 (see example config)

Arch Linux/Arm

Ypsu reports that he needed hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 in the config.txt on Arch Linux for his Paperlink HD in order to get full resolution in the framebuffer. Definitely worth a shot and probably not just specific to just Arch Linux.

---

• It is very important to use HDMI 1.4 micro-hdmi m -> hdmi f otherwise the monitor will not work but will show black dots noise.
• The only available resolution is 1600*1200.

Paperlike 253

The method below worked for my Rasperry Pi 4B running Raspian 10 Buster (the latest Rasperry Pi OS at the time).

Add these lines to your existing config.txt:

# do not try the lower res 1800x900 it has issues - simply use the double pixel trick, see below
hdmi_cvt=3200 1800 40 3 0 0 1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
# this will fix the black bars around the screen which are otherwise wasting space
disable_overscan=1

With this, your Paperlike 253 should already be working after reboot! It is on high res however (3200x1800). If like me you want bigger characters, simply use this trick: preferences > rasperry pi configuration > display > enable double pixel. Magic!

Notes:

• if you want to watch videos, do not use VLC (video lags with it for some reason), use Kodi instead it works perfectly! You can even use the android app "Yatse" on your favorite eink smartphone (Yotaphone 3+ in my case) to control it.

• I did not need any EDID custom file like u/wauske did. At least for me, simpler is better!

I hope this is helpful to at least another Paperlike 253 user! (=^ェ^=)