Developer and maker Stavros Korokithakis has turned a LILYGO T5 ePaper show growth board right into a multifunctional desk show, with somewhat good coding and a {custom} 3D-printed chassis: the Timeframe.
“I noticed that one factor that’s lacking from my life proper now could be extra time strain. I’ve a job, which received me many of the approach there, however I’m dangerous at remembering the time of every of the twenty conferences I’ve every single day,” Korokithakis jokes of the inspiration behind the mission. “I actually wanted one thing that might enable me to see my every day calendar at a look, and I noticed {that a} 4.7′ [ePaper] display was the right factor for that use case, so I rapidly began engaged on making this a actuality.”
Constructed utilizing a LILYGO T5 ePaper show, the Timeframe is a lovely option to keep on prime of your schedule. (📷: Stavros Korokithakis)
Korokithakis turned to the LILYGO T5 as the bottom for the construct, a 4.7″ ePaper electrophoretic show related to an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller module, 8MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and 16MB of flash. Along with built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, the board provides simple assist for being powered from an 18650 battery — which, bar the custom-built case Korokithakis designed for the mission, sorted out the {hardware} aspect of issues.
With C-programming expertise self-described as “abysmal to non-existent,” Korokithakis set about determining the best way to get one thing up on the show. A MicroPython port was tried and deserted as a consequence of repeated failures to attract; an ePaper library had comparable issues with vertical ghosting, the basis reason behind which was by no means found; however LILYGO’s instance code, constructed utilizing an older model of the epdiy library, supplied a base on which to construct.
To simplify the mission, Korokithakis break up the processing half off-device. A server-side utility pulls down information — from photographs and different photos to calendar entries — and converts it to a framebuffer format comprehensible by the epdiy library. The Timeframe itself, then, merely connects to this server and pulls down the contents of the framebuffer — which has, handily, already been processed to the best decision with dithering and different quality-enhancing methods. Every framebuffer can also be hashed, so the Timeframe can verify for modifications with out having to obtain the entire thing and replace its show.
A crack within the display broke the unique Timeframe, but it surely lives on as a split-screen climate monitor. (📷: Stavros Korokithakis)
Sadly, the lifespan of the Timeframe proved quick. “After I was making an attempt to put in a spacer within the case in order that the display wouldn’t transfer up and down so simply, I should have pressed barely too laborious, and observed that the display had an enormous clean spot on the left aspect,” Korokithakis explains.
“On additional investigation, I noticed that I had cracked the display on the backside, rendering it ineffective two days after I received it.” Deciding to look on the intense aspect, Korokithakis designed a brand new chassis to cover the damaged half and repurposed the unique Timeframe right into a split-screen climate station.
Korokithakis’ full mission write-up is on the market on his web site, whereas the supply code has been revealed to GitLab underneath the reciprocal GNU Affero Normal Public License 3. 3D-printable information for the chassis, which can be utilized in portrait or panorama orientations, can be found on Printables underneath the Inventive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Worldwide license.