Is it possible to remove the camera on the Esp32S3 Sense, and plug in an eInk/ePaper display to it? I have ordered the ePaper breakout board, but I wanted to see if I can use the Sense to drive an ePaper display until I receive the breakout board. I’d assume not all FPC wires are connected, but I am hoping that the pins are common between the camera, and the ePaper. If so, does anyone know the pin mapping for this?
Thanks.
Hi there,
And welcome here, Ok so I think this is confused. You can use any of the Xiao’s on the EPaper breakout driver board.
This one.
Do you mean all at the same time?
GL 
PJ 
yes… i dont think the camera had any effect on the EPaper function… as they use entirly different GPIO… and yes… the camera can be removed without effecting the other functions of the device
I have been playing with XIAO boards for some time, but I joined the forum just today. Thanks for the welcome.
I should have been more clear. I was asking if I can use the Sense, without the ePaper breakout board as I have not received it yet. The camera already has the same (I guess) ribbon cable as the ePaper display.
So just unhook the camera ribbon cable (and keep the FPC connector board on the xiao):
And then attach an ePaper display to the FPC connector where the camera was:
(It looks like I can’t post pictures yet, probably new user policy)
I can’t upload pics, so I shared them here. Basically plugging in the ePaper display to where the camera ribbon was plugged in, without using the ePaper breakout board.
oh ok… i am not sure if it works that way… but it would be nice if it did
you can share pictures after you level up… with a little more time on the forum
Hi there,
Yea I thought you might mean that but sadly NO, the camera FPC pinout doesn’t come close AFAIK, check the schematics and you see it’s pretty much custom for the camera, Now that doesn’t preclude you from rolling your own, expansion plugin board with a FPC that does match a Display instead. I used it to make the more I/O
HTH
GL PJ
That looks so nice! I guess I’ll have to wait until my order arrives. Thanks all for the input!.
Hello.
The FPC cable of the camera is not the same as the Display FPC cable, so you can’t connect the screen directly to the FPC cable on the sense. The reason why we make an epaper expansion board is also for this reason 
it should be made to standard like raspberry pi the camera and display port be the same
could the xiao drive the screen directly or does it still need a chip in the middle?
Hi there,
No, even on the RP its not display compatible. AFAIK , such an FPPC interface doesn’t exist. Good idea though. Cameras and screens have way different timings and more signals than screens.
The FPC connector was made for Density and ribbon flexible cable. Not really some universal interface specification, so…
HTH
GL PJ
i would think this could be a problem seeed could solve to make the XIAO smaller… the only thing that would be necessary is to make the power and ground pins the same… the rest would be GPIO’s… some type of system to connect logical pins to physical pins
where is the camera for RP5?.. they moved to 2 display ports? who needs 2 displays on a RP5? something looks wrong?
It does combine DISP and CAM on the pi5, but it requires a different FPC cable to work properly.
Maybe this can be something we go to work on, thanks for the offer.
