TesseraeServer

Supported hardware

paperlesspaper
OpenPaper frames

Two open-hardware e-paper picture frames made in Germany by paperlesspaper. Tesserae's firmware runs in place of the vendor cloud: flash it from the browser, join Wi-Fi from the frame's setup page, and it wakes on a schedule to fetch whatever dashboard you have pointed at it. Frames stand upright, so the OpenPaper 7 composes portrait out of the box.

Flash the firmware Buy a frame
  • ESP32-C6
  • Spectra 6
  • NiMH, deep sleep
  • Open hardware
OpenPaper L · 13.3 inch
OpenPaper 7 · 7.3 inch

OpenPaper 7

Verified on hardware
Panel
7.3" Spectra 6, six colours
Resolution
800 × 480 native
Composition
480 × 800 portrait by default
Board
ESP32-C6, 4 MB flash
Storage
16 MB NAND flash
Sensors
MEMS orientation sensor
Power
4 × AAA NiMH, USB-C
Kind id
paperlesspaper_openpaper_7
Flash target
paperlesspaper-openpaper-7
OpenPaper 7 at paperlesspaper

OpenPaper L

Experimental, not yet run on the hardware
Panel
13.3" Spectra 6, six colours
Resolution
1200 × 1600 native
Composition
1200 × 1600 portrait
Board
ESP32-C6, 4 MB flash
Storage
16 MB NAND flash, 128 MB SD card on board
Sensors
MEMS orientation sensor
Power
4 × AA NiMH, USB-C
Kind id
paperlesspaper_openpaper_l
Flash target
paperlesspaper-openpaper-l
OpenPaper L at paperlesspaper

Setup

From the box to a dashboard

  1. 1

    Know the way back

    Tesserae's layout overwrites the region that holds the frame's paperlesspaper cloud certificate, so a flashed frame will not talk to the vendor cloud again on its own. That is not a one-way door: paperlesspaper support can provision a fresh certificate for a frame that wants to go back, and their web flasher is gaining a backup and restore flow. If you would rather hold your own copy in the meantime, plug the frame in over USB-C and read the region first:

    esptool.py --chip esp32c6 read_flash 0x3B0000 0x40000 openpaper-spiffs.bin
  2. 2

    Flash from the browser

    Open tesserae.ink/flash in Chrome or Edge, pick your frame under paperlesspaper, and connect. To enter download mode, hold the small Boot button and press the big Reset button. Every image is checked against its SHA-256 before it is written.

  3. 3

    Join Wi-Fi

    The frame boots into a setup network named tesserae-<id>. Join it, fill in your Wi-Fi and the URL of your Tesserae server, and save. The frame restarts onto your network and registers itself under Settings → Devices.

  4. 4

    Point a page at it

    Bind a page or lineup to the frame and send. The big button on the back is a reset that wakes the frame and repaints; the small one is Boot, only needed for flashing.

Worth knowing

Notes from the bench

  • The OpenPaper 7 is confirmed on real hardware. The OpenPaper L build was written from the vendor's open firmware without an L on the bench, so it ships as an experimental target. If you have one and try it, report what you see.
  • Orientation. The 7 composes portrait by default and paints upright with the USB-C port at the bottom, confirmed on a production unit. Should a frame ever paint the other way round, switch that display to portrait_flipped in Settings → Devices. No firmware change is needed.
  • No PSRAM. The ESP32-C6 cannot hold a full 13.3" frame in memory, so the L streams rows into the panel as they arrive. Features that need the frame resident on the device, such as always-on mode, the cloud relay and the SD deck cache, are not available on these boards today. The L carries a 128 MB SD card on its board, which is the natural home for the deck cache once the L build has been run on hardware.
  • Orientation sensor. Both frames carry a MEMS sensor that knows which way up they stand. Tesserae does not read it yet; orientation is a per-display setting in Settings → Devices.
  • Battery. The frames read their cells through a divider that paperlesspaper calibrates at roughly 2.83:1 across board revisions. Tesserae's reported voltage is still being checked against a meter, so treat the battery figure as approximate for now.
  • Open all the way down. paperlesspaper publishes the circuit board, 3D-print and laser-cut files. Tesserae's side lives in tesserae-device-firmware and the hardware catalog in the main repo.