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

github.com

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

#91

Post by w3p706 »

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 buy old kindles for this, ~50$ per piece. they have a linux os & battery included. you get in through a serial port and a password generated for your serial number. downside is that you fight the kindle os in certain aspects.

see for example: https://github.com/Neelakurinji123/kindle-weather-display

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

#93

Post by SavantIdiot »

kelnos wrote: post #44
miohtama wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you keep RPi most of the time hibernated? Does it still draw a lot of power in sleep?

You don't really need to "hibernate"; shutting the entire system down and booting from scratch on each update is simpler and probably more reliable. The problem (hibernate or not) is getting the Pi to wake up, since it doesn't have a real-time clock. OP is using a RTC hat to achieve this. I do wonder what kind of power consumption it uses while sleeping.

what a colossal kludge. what you're trying to accomplish is basically embedded programming 101: sleep mode + wakeup timer. RTC? pff.. even any MPU on-board oscillator with no crystal has good enough PPM and lower power than an RTC. your solution is like hunting quail with a nuke.

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

#94

Post by bpye »

w3p706 wrote: post #91
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 buy old kindles for this, ~50$ per piece. they have a linux os & battery included. you get in through a serial port and a password generated for your serial number. downside is that you fight the kindle os in certain aspects. see for example: https://github.com/Neelakurinji123/kindle-weather-display

I wonder what it would take to build your own firmware image if you were reusing for exclusive alternative use? Presumably there is a Linux kernel tree somewhere and you could pull the waveforms from the Amazon image?

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

#95

Post by dirtyid »

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!

At the same time, disapointed reminder of the lack of the progress on cheap large eink displays.

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

#96

Post by saagarjha »

dragonwriter wrote: post #56
freeone3000 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there has to be a simpler way to draw a grid. there has to.

Simpler in runtime overhead. Simpler for a developer familiar with the tools used here, but less so with others? Maybe not. This seems to be a hobbyist project, not a major corporate effort where $100Ks were spent on tech selection.

I would not be surprised if a corporation would spend $100Ks on tech selection and end up with a headless Chrome too.

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

#97

Post by nanomonkey »

bpye wrote: post #94
w3p706 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy old kindles for this, ~50$ per piece. they have a linux os & battery included. you get in through a serial port and a password generated for your serial number. downside is that you fight the kindle os in certain aspects. see for example: https://github.com/Neelakurinji123/kindle-weather-display

I wonder what it would take to build your own firmware image if you were reusing for exclusive alternative use? Presumably there is a Linux kernel tree somewhere and you could pull the waveforms from the Amazon image?

Check out http://fread.ink/

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

#98

Post by iota7 »

The e-ink displays are a bit costly. Otherwise I would get a few of them and would replace all the paper calendars at home. Simply a calendar, no internet, low power. Not raspberry PI based, some low powered microcontroller simply displaying a paper like calendar and nothing fancy.

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

#99

Post by konschubert »

Hey man, this is so cool.

I hope it’s okay to plug here: I am working towards releasing a similar product for sale:

https://www.invisible-computers.com/

Unfortunately the display isn’t as big as the one you chose and it isn’t battery powered. But I am starting to ship the first units, so there is that :)

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

#100

Post by konschubert »

varispeed wrote: post #49
remir wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably that's why you can't make money on it at scale that you can with any addictive type of device and so it's not attractive for most entrepreneurs - a lot of work to put in and not enough money to even buy a Cessna.

I’m trying to make it work as a product. I tend agree it’s a super niche market though.

https://www.invisible-computers.com/

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