2026
I really like the idea of e-paper displays. They don’t require a backlight and use very little power. So back in 2022 I purchased an Inkplate kit without any plan for what to do with it.
First thing I tried to do was turn it into a control panel for hue lights. It worked but it was slow and did not really take advantage of the display.
After a bit more tinkering I settled on making a little weather display to check the forecast without pulling out my phone.
It displays the hourly forecast through the next 24 hours, and the daily forecast for the upcoming week. The device is woken up once an hour to fetch new forecasts and refresh the display.
The display is powered by a tiny 500 mAh Li-ion battery. It typically runs for about 3 or so months before needing to be recharged.
The case is printed with PET.
I wrote the software in C++ using PlatformIO. The code is a bit of a mess. I handwrote almost all of it for the love of the game.
The one part I did use AI for was a re-implementation of the Inkplate’s graphics API that could render to a JPG on my development laptop so I could quickly iterate on the layout without waiting the 10s of seconds it takes to upload a program to the board. Without that I don’t think I would have been able to have finish before getting frustrated and annoyed.