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E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

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Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#31

Post by politelemon »

oingodoingo wrote: post #6
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #4

Can’t explain why but all these E-Ink projects are so awesome and attractive to me. I’m surprised I can’t just buy a bunch of E-Ink style gizmos from some company to decorate my home and office. My wallet would be wide open to it constantly. Great work and congrats on this!

For me it’s a cost issue, this is over $200… I might pay $100 for it, but this wouldn’t be a must-buy for me until it hits ~$50

I've been using another eink project dashboard, which cost me less as the screen is a smaller one, but it doesn't have colour: https://github.com/mendhak/waveshare-epaper-display

Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#32

Post by SavantIdiot »

fcsp wrote: post #23
dheera wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the ESP32 much easier to develop for, you don't need to install any toolchains, just plug in and drop code into the virtual USB drive that shows up! I wish all microcontrollers were like that these days.

How do you handle SSL? I found this very cumbersome in my experiments with esp32

I never coded on Espressif, but in other SDKs (e.g., mosquitto, mbedtls) typically this is done when you open the connection at the application layer (HTTPS, MQTTS). You pass in the cert bytes either as binary or PEM text as a char[]. Use a CA root cert(s) from your OS/browser.

EDIT: grammar and typos.

Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#33

Post by turtlebits »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #7

Nice, but I can't think of less power-efficient embedded platform than an RPi. Especially with something as low power as E-Ink (zero power when displaying). Innophase T2, Dialog DA16200, RedPines (SiLabs) RS9116, RealTek Ameba... they all are super low power (like 100x less than RPi) even while maintaining the 802.11 association, and come with easy SDKs ready for REST HTTPS out of the box (and RTC capabilities, not s…

Sure, there are more power efficient platforms, but the project uses Selenium and PIL which I’m pretty sure won’t run on any of those boards.

Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#34

Post by dsr_ »

gedy wrote: post #24
foolfoolz wrote: post #2

i’ve thought about this a lot because i use a whiteboard on my fridge. i would do this if it was huge like my whiteboard. like 2ft by 3ft. then i can read each day at a glance. seeing the whole month is huge. and writing on it means it should be a touch screen i find myself wanting larger displays than is for sale a lot. i want an electric photo frame but not some 12in screen. i have great photos i want to see them 4…

Might be cheaper to put a printer on top of your fridge and automatically print calendar every morning into a plexiglass holder :-)

Hundred dollars for the printer, probably 20 cents a day for the consumables (paper, toner, electricity). The paper is recyclable. At one page a day, I would guess lifetime will be dominated by mechanical lubrication or degradation of capacitors, dust clogs, etc.

Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#35

Post by remir »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #4

Can’t explain why but all these E-Ink projects are so awesome and attractive to me. I’m surprised I can’t just buy a bunch of E-Ink style gizmos from some company to decorate my home and office. My wallet would be wide open to it constantly. Great work and congrats on this!

These projects have a pleasant "lo-fi zen" aspect that makes them attractive, I think. They are simple, provide value yet fade into the background without sucking your attention like some other gadgets.

Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#37

Post by azeirah »

jaidan wrote: post #30
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #4

Can’t explain why but all these E-Ink projects are so awesome and attractive to me. I’m surprised I can’t just buy a bunch of E-Ink style gizmos from some company to decorate my home and office. My wallet would be wide open to it constantly. Great work and congrats on this!

I’m sorry to have to let you know your wallet may empty if you have not seen this already: [edit: 4.7” ESP32 based epaper display with touchscreen, built in battery and expansion ports] https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-...

I scoured the wave share site for all the other e-ink screens and there're many cheaper ones.

You can get small e-ink screens (without a HAT, requires adapter ~10$ and dev board which is necessary anyway) for much cheaper.

5.8 inch is 40$

800×480, 7.5inch 50$

400x300, 4.2inch E-Ink raw display, three-color 26$

The cheaper ones are cheap because:

1) Each size comes in a low res and a high res variant, the low res ones are a lot cheaper

2) No HAT, so no built-in dev board for the PI. You do need to somehow connect it to your dev board. An adapter with SPI costs 10$, a dev board with esp8266 that has built-in adapter costs ~18$. Both are officially from wave share available on their site as well

3) All boards below 7 inch are relatively affordable. After that the price increases are huge

4) Not sure why, but price difference between black/white and 3-color is negligible. So feel free to pick a 5 inch tricolor screen for like 40$!

Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#38

Post by baybal2 »

mwcampbell wrote: post #11
SavantIdiot wrote: post #7

Nice, but I can't think of less power-efficient embedded platform than an RPi. Especially with something as low power as E-Ink (zero power when displaying). Innophase T2, Dialog DA16200, RedPines (SiLabs) RS9116, RealTek Ameba... they all are super low power (like 100x less than RPi) even while maintaining the 802.11 association, and come with easy SDKs ready for REST HTTPS out of the box (and RTC capabilities, not s…

How does ESP32 compare to the products you listed?

ESP32 is a very generic synthesized chip, not particularly ULP oriented.

On other hand, it's the most developer friendly company out there.

I've been unsuccessful getting any proper reaction from Innophase about SDK support. Their sales seem to not even understand what we are wanting from them, and keep sending us "enter these AT commands through USB-TTL"

ESP32 is also pretty much the one, and only wireless MCU you can buy on the open market, in any quantity, on a short notice. Nothing else comes with the supply chain security like this.

Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi

#40

Post by seneca »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #19

The first thing I always do with these E-Ink projects is to check the price of the display, to see if it's come down at all since the last time I checked over the last 3+ years: > Waveshare 12.48" Tri-color E-Ink Display - $179.99 NOPE

The price of displays has come down. Color e-ink is new tech, and as such is more expensive.
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