TICKEY Puts 48-Color E-Paper on an ESP32-S3 Badge

A Clip-On Display That Is Mostly Screen

ENIAC, operating as ENILINX, is funding the TICKEY on Kickstarter: a ticket-shaped clip-on badge built around a 3.7-inch colour e-paper panel and an ESP32-S3. At 111 x 62 x 3.8 mm and 45 grams, it is roughly the footprint of a transit pass and thinner than most phone cases.

• Display: 3.7-inch, 720 x 480, 48 native colours, using Modos e-paper technology
• Refresh: about 13 seconds for a full high-quality refresh, or roughly 3 seconds in a faster lower-quality mode
• Silicon: ESP32-S3 dual-core LX7 at 240 MHz, with Wi-Fi 4, Bluetooth 5.0 LE and NFC (ISO 15693)
• Power and price: 360 mAh battery rated for over 1,000 refreshes, about $49.90 on Kickstarter, shipping estimated November to December 2026

What Makes the Colour E-Paper Interesting?

Colour e-paper has historically involved a trade nobody liked: acceptable colour or acceptable refresh, pick one. TICKEY partners with Modos — the open-source e-paper outfit behind the Flow monitor — on an improved colour-mixing approach that reaches 48 native colours at 720 x 480 on a 3.7-inch panel. That works out to a fairly dense pixel pitch for the category.

The dual refresh mode is the practical concession. Thirteen seconds is slow, but it is the right number for a badge that changes a handful of times a day and then holds its image with zero power draw. The three-second fast mode covers the cases where you are cycling through screens and care more about responsiveness than about perfect colour. A 360 mAh cell stretching to over a thousand refreshes — roughly two months of daily use — is only possible because e-paper draws nothing between updates.

Is the ESP32-S3 the Right Chip Here?

It is, and for an unglamorous reason: the driver ecosystem. The ESP32-S3 has been the default choice for small connected displays for a while now, and it brings Wi-Fi 4, Bluetooth LE and enough headroom to render images locally rather than shipping pre-rendered bitmaps from a phone. NFC on top of that is the detail that turns a badge into a credential, since ISO 15693 tags are what most access and ticketing readers already speak.

Storage is where the two versions split. The standard TICKEY carries 8MB; a Modos-branded Developer Edition raises that to 128MB for about $5.90 more, aimed at applications that need to hold a real library of images or a larger firmware. ENILINX says the firmware is open and that a platform for discovering third-party firmware is in development — which, if it materialises, is the difference between a gadget and a small platform.

Where This Fits in the ESP32 Display Wave

The ESP32-S3 keeps turning up wherever a cheap screen needs a brain, and this is a notably well-executed example of the pattern. It rhymes with the OpenTrailPaper e-paper bike computer approach of taking a devkit panel and giving it one clear job, and with the run of ESP32 projects we have covered lately — from Linux 6.11 running on an ESP32-S3 to Tomb Raider on an ESP32-P4.

Standard crowdfunding caveats apply: this is a Kickstarter campaign with an estimated November to December 2026 ship window, and estimates move. The campaign has raised well over $600,000, which at least suggests the volume is there to get the CNC aluminium tooling paid for.

Sources: CNX Software — September 17, 2026; ENIAC TICKEY product page — September 2026.