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Building an e-ink weather display for our home

kimmo.blog

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Re: Building an e-ink weather display for our home

#91

Post by IshKebab »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #58

I have no idea how this is not get a commercial product. Our Google Nest Home Max Hub Whatever screen that I got free from CES is garbage at displaying useful information. The weather info can’t sync at least once per week, requiring a restart. It’s literally just our bathroom clock / Bluetooth speaker because that’s all it’s good for. It cannot sync to Google Apps (business account) calendars. The proposed solution…

I agree. There are a few e-ink displays that include battery circuitry and a microcontroller, e.g. the Inkplate series. But nobody wants to mount a bare PCB or even a one with a 3D printed case on their wall. I wish they'd sell one with a nice picture frame case.

I mean I could definitely make one, but I don't really have time and I imagine most people don't either.

Re: Building an e-ink weather display for our home

#92

Post by rwmj »

zerop wrote: post #84

Want to build a digital frame which shows the photos from Gmail Album in a loop.. Any pre-existing work on this?

Digital photo frames are very common (LCD, not e-Ink). We bought one for my parents which even uses mobile data because they didn't have internet at home. I don't know about the Gmail requirement however.

Re: Building an e-ink weather display for our home

#94

Post by tecleandor »

1MachineElf wrote: post #2

Well done! I wish something hackable like this was commercially available (without surveillance/data harvesting.)

Maybe not that big (It's 5" instead of 10") but I just bough an M5Paper for a similar use at home, probably in "collaboration" with my Home Assistant. Still haven't tested it but I've heard good things about it.

https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-...

You can start developing easily using their easy development tool called UIFlow, that's block based like Scratch ( https://flow.m5stack.com/ ), or go "advanced" and use MicroPython or Arduino, as it's core is an ESP32

Re: Building an e-ink weather display for our home

#96

Post by nicolas_t »

pjerem wrote: post #85
nicolas_t wrote: post #80

I'm looking for a good e-ink display with touch input. I want to setup an eink calendar that can show the view for the current week, month and year and allow clicking on an event to see notes if there are any.

Maybe you can add a set of buttons ?

Probably what I'll do if I can't find any alternative, but being able to just touch the specific event is more intuitive.

Re: Building an e-ink weather display for our home

#97

Post by SigmundA »

jrockway wrote: post #17
SigmundA wrote: post #11

Mentions battery life but does not say in the end how long between recharges with the 12000mah battery. Would really like to know power usage and how long between charges and more details about getting the pi to wake up once a day then sleep the rest of the time. Because if my maths right a Rpi zero running normally would drain the battery in less than full day.

I would imagine it runs for a long time if you are only powering it on to connect to WiFi, grab weather data, render the screen, and then shut off. The PiJuice page mentions "intelligent on/off switch", but I didn't easily find any details. Hopefully intelligent means "turn on at a certain time via an onboard RTC, turn off when systemd says it's OK" and the userspace code implements that dance correctly. In the absen…

Thanks for pointing me towards the Pi Juice "intelligent on/off" that makes things more clear, looks like it has a Cortex M0 microcontroller with RTC that can be programmed to wake at a specific time [1]. The Pi Juice is a really cool piece of hardware. Still interested to know the total time between charges for this thing, and some details of programming the Pi Juice would be cool.

1. https://github.com/PiSupply/PiJuice/blob/master/Hardware/REA...

Re: Building an e-ink weather display for our home

#98

Post by gregoriol »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #75

The Urban Workshop in Helsinki Central Library mentioned in the article is quite a cool place (as is the rest of the Library): https://www.helmet.fi/en-US/Libraries_and_services/Helsinki_...

Wow, this is the kind of library I would love to go to!

Re: Building an e-ink weather display for our home

#99

Post by frownz »

IshKebab wrote: post #90
COGlory wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone on HN was manufacturing one that showed your Google Calendar: https://www.invisible-computers.com/

That is not battery powered and judging by the lack of side photos I imagine it is unsatisfyingly thick.

There are more pictures here https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
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