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How to build a circular LCD clock

blinry.org

61–70 of 73 posts

Re: How to build a circular LCD clock

#61

Beat project, but > I also tried with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2, but 512 MB of RAM were too little to run a modern browser, You don't need a browser to display graphics. And you don't need to be a programming whiz either. I'm sure Claude could write some python to render these clock faces.

Yeah, there's loads of really cool visualizations you can do with really limited specs, demo scene stuff. Of course, that's an art of its own, it's probably easier to look at c++ and its graphics libraries, or even game engines.

Easier than what?

Re: How to build a circular LCD clock

#62
post #44

It's cool I like it, but seems a little overkill on the HW. no matter. One thing though, how is the screen 1080px1080 ? Is it a 1080p square, with the visible pixles a circle cut out of that ? I doubt it's a non rectilinear pixel grid. i guess it's x y coords, rather than cartesian ?

It is logically a 1080x1080 rectangular display. Every pixel outside the circle is ignored.

Re: How to build a circular LCD clock

#63
Did you have any issues with screen orientation? I have a waveshare round display in one of my projects too, they are great looking. Mine had an issue with wire orientation where I needed to have the wire emerge from the bottom of the display, but then I needed to rotate the picture to properly handle the rotation. It was tricky to get that working smoothly.

Also the display cuts off the corners on mine. Does it do the same for you? I'm not too bothered by it but it's only good for running custom SW where it's okay to be missing the corners.

Re: How to build a circular LCD clock

#64
post #55

A 256MB Raspi Zero can comfortably drive a HDMI-connected display at 1080p60, and not even drop frames when rendering textured+shaded 3d if you just reasonably account for overdraw. Drawing something as simple as this with a browser is peak overkill. If the watch had a unreal-like PBR graphics diorama for example, gigabytes would at least be argued for.

Yes, all of that is on the roadmap for when it goes into production in China in the millions. This was just the mockup the artists used to test out some ideas.

Don't worry, we've got a long backlog of JIRA tickets to handle all of this.

Re: How to build a circular LCD clock

#66

Beat project, but > I also tried with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2, but 512 MB of RAM were too little to run a modern browser, You don't need a browser to display graphics. And you don't need to be a programming whiz either. I'm sure Claude could write some python to render these clock faces.

I just want to point out I think the project is still cool, if maybe inefficient. I love the idea of a clock that can do what a smart watch can do.

Re: How to build a circular LCD clock

#67
> At first, I used some random phone chargers, but the Pis would always complain about undervoltage, and throttle their CPU

This is a real annoyance with raspberry pi's. At first you think that you can run them off of USB power, but then you realize that they start throttling at 4.75V, which is still within USB spec (especially when you consider the voltage drop across the USB cable). The point of a spec is that compliant stuff should work, so you shouldn't need a "high-quality" power supply and cable, just compliant ones.

Re: How to build a circular LCD clock

#68

I am currently building a project ( http://www.screenwall.app ) that tries to reuse old phones and tablets (that some people have in the drawer unused) as widget displays. Seeing such cool widgets always tempt me to buy it, although I know that my old Samsung A6 is perfectly capable for such things as well. :D

FWIW your link comes up as a blank black page on Firefox/Linux.

Can you check if it‘s still the case? :o
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