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ESP8266 ePaper WiFi Display Kit Runs for Months on a Charge
- zitterbewegung 9y agoWould an epaper hardware wallet for bitcoin make sense ? Or does the display technology matter ?
- Fnoord 9y agoIt wouldn't be the most important aspect of such a hardware wallet (maybe TEMPEST is a consideration?). These wallets (Trezor and Ledger Nano S) generally get their power via microUSB connection, and they're not on a lot like a wall mounted weather app would be basically 24/7 on. The Ledger Nano S uses OLED according to themselves [1]. If there's a way they draw less power, that is welcome if the source is say a laptop. There's also the Ledger Blue which uses a (larger) color touchscreen and rechargable battery. For the price of almost 4 Ledger Nano S. [1] https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products
- zitterbewegung 9y agoDo Oled screens degrade faster than epaper?
- StavrosK 9y agoNo, the display technology doesn't matter. It would make sense if you want to send transactions through QR codes, might be an interesting project. Not sure how it would be more useful than a Trezor, though.
- djsumdog 9y agoIf you're scanning the bar code with a phone app, it's just going to use the camera. So as long as the display has a high enough resolution to display the QR code and it shows up on a camera, it should work fine. But keep in mind, you probably want the device backing the epaper display to allow some kind of password input and store your BTC key on an encrypted medium (either encrypted flash or an LUKS/ext4 formatted sdcard).
- Fnoord 9y agoLedger Nano S uses Intel SGX. Trezor uses a Cortex M3, probably with a secure enclave.
- baybal2 9y agoThe problem of offline QR code payments have been solved in a much low-tech way... https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/images/methode/2017/03/22/e98bb2ba-0afc-11e7-8938-48dffbf7165d_1280x720.JPG https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/p... I see main utility when you need per-item/per-transaction billing. Instead of having to print static-per item tags, or redirect users to a website with online checkout, you can have that thing to generate individual codes for each piece of merchandise.
- pingec 9y agoGreat idea although too pricey for what you get IMHO. I'll stick to hacking Kindles for now.
- mosselman 9y agoThis sounds interesting. Could you shed some light in what hacking a kindle entails? Could I hook up my micro controller to the kindle and use the kindles display? Could I add gpio ports to the kindle and use it as a micro controller?
- pingec 9y agoSure. The kindle runs linux and has a large e-ink display and battery integrated for a good price. You can do many things that you cannot do on a micro controller. For low level stuff you can hook up an esp8266 through wifi.
- maxkrieger 9y agoCheck out using the Kindle as a raspberry pi display: http://ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/ http://ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/ https://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html https://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html
- mosselman 9y agoThanks for the links, this looks very cool!
- rubatuga 9y agoHere’s a link to a video I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oel08SDFyIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oel08SDFyIY Of course, you can skip the server section and make the IP address point to your local server. Some caveats are you need to use pngcrush to turn the image into a format that the kindle can use. Link to GitHub: https://github.com/yoonsikp/weather-display https://github.com/yoonsikp/weather-display
- slig 9y ago
- scroot 9y agoAll displays should be e-ink. It's crazy to stare at a backlit screen all day.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoApart from the very slow response times, of course.
- scroot 9y agoThings seem to be getting better in that regard [1]. We'll need better software/interfaces for using these kinds of displays though. [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/e-ink-monitor-with-hdmi-paperlike-pro#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/e-ink-monitor-with-hdmi-p...
- Fnoord 9y agoDepends on the use case. We have two e-readers from Kobo. Both have e-ink. They can both also run a browser. Pretty cool thus far? The refresh rate is abysmal which you're gonna notice whilst browsing, and it all has to be rendered local (including all the bloated JS being used nowadays). Both of these factors are a killer for battery life. So if you'd be scrolling down a web page, and then replying to say here in HN that'd be terrible use case because input is also terrible (touchscreen isn't very accurate either and low refresh rate makes the letters appear slowly). For pure reading however, it is great, and for browsing it is OKish (the only disadvantage is the rendering). It has Pocket support which is sanitised. The less the screen is refreshed, the better e-ink is.
- bitwize 9y agoThe refresh rate sucks. Transflective LCD gets you e-ink-like contrast, LCD-like refresh rate, and battery life that's still much worse than e-ink but a significant improvement over backlit LCD.
- suprfnk 9y ago> It's crazy to stare at a backlit screen all day. Why?
- 9y ago
- reacharavindh 9y agoI'd love to put together a small E-paper display that I can stick on the door showing where I am or if I'm free/busy. 3" display is enough for my need. Small LiPo battery works for my need. I can spend a few hours learning to program this thing with Arduino IDE or whichever tool is needed with a little bit of Internet handholding. But, >$50(incl shipping) kits don't give me the value I look for. Why are they so expensive? I'd happily buy a pre-made setup of (controller+LiPo battery+e-paper display) easy to program device if the price is < $30.
- joshvm 9y agoI agree with you. I think kits are too expensive and going the homebrew route is generally more fun and educational. But to answer: ePaper is expensive, $15-20 for that module. The rest of the components are cheap. You're paying for some profit for the designer, amortised development time, assembly (by hand?) and the fact that it should work straight away (i.e. so you don't spend time). Tindie also take a cut, 10-15%? Shipping isn't free for the seller either. At work I grit my teeth and suggest we buy the dev kits because it's worth paying $100 for an official board to check something works tomorrow, vs 3 weeks for a PCB and 2 days of tinkering. But at home, as a hobbyist, I mutter under my breath and fire up Eagle.
- tindie 9y agoTindie takes 5% and passes on the payment processing fee (~4%). :)
- ah- 9y agoYou could hunt for an older ebook reader on eBay with similar hardware if you're willing to spend some time getting it to do what you want. The older Kobos were pretty simple to modify for example.
- Fnoord 9y agoThe color version is quite cheaper [1]; 30 USD. [1] https://www.tindie.com/products/squix78/esp8266-wifi-color-display-kit-24/ https://www.tindie.com/products/squix78/esp8266-wifi-color-d...
- tucosan 9y agoIf one could add a touchscreen, this would be perfect for home automation.
- Fnoord 9y agoIf you look on the bottom right it says "refresh". Not sure why it says that, but its suggestive that it can be refreshed physically somehow.
- DangerousPie 9y agoPresumably those three circular things below the display are buttons? So not a touchscreen, but you could navigate menus with up/down + enter.
- Willamin 9y agoThe left button is used to put the ESP8266 into flash mode for updating the firmware, the right button is used to reset the device, effectively pulling it out of deep sleep to refresh the content on the screen, and the center button is wired to a GPIO pin that isn't used. You would only be able to use the single button for input. I don't see any other GPIO pins exposed, so it'd be tough to add extra buttons. The ESP8266 has over a dozen GPIO pins, but any hobby kit like the ESP01, ESP12E, or ESP32 might not expose all of the pins. I can't tell which ESP module this board has on it, but if they're exposed you could solder an extra few buttons. They'll be really small solder points, though.
- stevekemp 9y agoI'm currently awaiting the delivery of a 400x300 epaper module from aliexpress which I'm hoping to use as a display that updates daily with google calendar entries, the local weather, and similar things. I don't have a solid use for it, but I'm looking forward to experimenting as I'm surprised how inexpensive these things have become - the item I ordered is ~€25. I'll be using a Wemos mini D1 to drive it, and I'd also expect a long life-span between charges. (Though waking up and using the WiFi is always the heavy-weight part of these devices.)
- LaurensBER 9y agoDo you have a link to the item? Or atleast a name + type number. Why did you choose that specific display? A quick Google search shows that driving an e-inkt display can be challenging. Have you checked how hard that particular item is to drive? Thanks! I can think of so many cool things I would love to build for ~€30,- :)
- reustle 9y agoFound a few here: https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20171227080653&SearchText=400+300+e-paper https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S...
- ComputerGuru 9y agoInterfacing them isn’t too bad, your basic atmega328 should be able to do it handily if you’re comfortable with spi/i2c and co. The problem is that they all come as FPC (micro ribbon cables, those orangish-brown display strips) so you need to at the very least get a compatible FPC to DIP breakout board if you’re not comfortable with SMT work.
- m-p-3 9y agoI'm not sure I want to get involved in that (at my office) since I already deal with enough equipment already, but I think something cool would be to make a small ePaper like display for conference room in front of each door, and display the upcoming meetings that are booked. Of course people could look directly on the calendar through their phone or computer, but sometimes a quick glance when you're near is all it takes.
- Jaruzel 9y agoI've got an old Sony eReader - before I throw it in the bin, is it possible to re-use the display? Do all eInk displays use the same protocol?
- ComputerGuru 9y agoeInk is a technology on the physical level, has nothing to do with the digital/microelectronic component. So, in a word, no.
- Doxin 9y agoAFAIK There's really only one manufacturer of eink displays, so there's a good chance the physical interface is the same as other eink displays.
- otakucode 9y agoI have been waiting for several years for color eInk displays to come about. I am fine with a refresh rate of even something like multiple seconds. Thus far the only thing I have found are companies in China that are willing to fix a single image on a color eInk display (no idea what the point is if the image can't be changed, but that is my understanding) before shipping. I haven't went hunting within the past year or so though.. anyone know if there's been any progress on that front?
- kachurovskiy 9y agoYou can get 128X64 OLED on AliExpress for 3$. Mine draws 2.2mA to show 6 letters, 3mA for 12 letters. It can be controlled with e.g. ATTINY85 (1$) which can e.g. set the text/image to display and go into deep sleep in beetween sreen updates where it draws almost nothing (< 0.01mA). 2800mAh battery featured in this video will last this setup for more than a month of continuous operation. If you turn the display off e.g. when the lights are off it can last several months.
- pwaai 9y agoI was hyperventilating as I read this as ESP8266 runs for months on a charge but still ePaper is a great move on a path to finding self sustainable internet connected (w/ extending wifi possibly falling back on 3g) devices in the wild. Has anybody done experiments to see if you can power esp8266 with solar cells with portable battery? We are in for some truly exciting applications.
- cwt137 9y agoHere is a weather station powered by a ESP8266 using solar power: http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Powered-WiFi-Weather-Station/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Powered-WiFi-Weather-S...
- mrob 9y agoHow is this better than something using a Sharp Memory LCD, or similar low power reflective LCD with built in memory? The power consumption of the LCD is slightly higher, but total power use is dominated by the wifi. It will still run for months and the refresh rate is much better.