Yeah, sorry, the title does intrigue… But I really don’t have a proper name for what I am looking for.
Basically, this is Gadget territory. A desktop (physical) thing with a display (I would dream it to be OLED). Stationary powered. With Android on board.
Yes, for a lack of better wording, I have just now described a tablet on a stick. And that’s the direction.
I currently have a “meteo station” with a satellite, sticking outside of my apartment. It shows time, calendar. And temp+humidity for both indoor and outdoor. This is the thing sitting next to my monitor, and is quite comfortable.
But as Icarus wanted to have that 4K experience looking directly at the sun, I want more from that device. I want it to have a scheduler for backlight, sleep mode. Maybe some additional things like MiBand does with app notifications. Basically a smart device, but developed in the direction of not a smart phone, nor a tablet, but a “customizable info booth”, sitting next to the PC.
And the question is (I ran out of words to actually google this) - has anybody come across such a heresy?
Hehe. This is cheating
I have given a thought to do a DIY(and that first tine Pi experience), but it sounds like building my own casino, with blackjack and snooker. Also I dont really have access to a 3D printer, so this brings even more complexity.
Was really hoping that someone has already made such a thing.
Also… is it really possible to flash Android to Raspberry?
You don’t need a 3D printer, a cheap universal enclosure suffices. Here’s an example:
Datasheet:
Sure, it may not be “pretty”, but you build it yourself!
Other housing options exist, look around for suitably sized enclosures should they tickle your fancy.
Mark and cut away the bottom for the screen to stick through, there’s plenty of room for the RPi and some sensors should you want those, as well as a cutout for the LAN cable and power cord. There are RPi HAT units for PoE, so a single cable solution is actually possible.
As for Android, here are a few links to explore, in no particular order, found by Google in less time for you to formulate the question
Can’t say that I dislike the idea. Was looking for a problem, for which to get a Pi device. But I do fear getting overwhelmed. If not for the BE part, the FE part is something that I don’t come across with.
Thank you for this info. Will see what its capable of.
That one does look cool, but I tried finding one at a local retailer, and failed. Making this a 700 euro + at least 100. Woah, and with taxes the total price will bloat to at least a thousand… making it a pretty darn overexpensive clock with extra functionality for home use… and still would be in the same barrel as with Raspberry in terms of developing all the software for my use.
I have an Arduino feeding an e-paper display, it gets its info via its ethernet shield.
Awful hackjob, I hate it in every way.
Grabs weather forecasts via open-data and has an internal schedule of the trains and busses I can catch. (It updates the display when a new ride gets available, so every 5-ish minutes)
Weather, clock. And for weather I think I’ll start googling if there are already baked satellite solutions, which can capture temp, humidity and stuff, and work by WiFi (basically my MeteoStation is clock with one such satellite).
And not stop there. I would love to have a Xiaomi Smart Band experience to have the possibility to translate smart phone notifications to “my smart device”.
Not even speaking about emails and stuff.
Is it harder to work with an e-paper display? As I understand, it is different from a regular display (more see it as a pc->printer type communication).
My fears come from the fact that I have zero experience with Raspberry/Arduino type devices. And on top of that, my choice of parts is limited to 3rd party resellers. There is AliExpress, but not going into detail, ordering something from outside of the country has a very big probability of getting lost (and most sellers stopped delivering to where I live at the moment).
But darn, I’m getting more interested in the Pi5 option.
Unless you get funky with them, you just include the library to drive them and print_display("message here");. Easy!
4 row 16 character dot-matrix displays are super simple to use and very forgiving, look a bit dated though (which I personally do not care about). With some of them, you can even flash the backlight to grab user attention.
Honestly? This is like my first going full custom water loop for my pc - there’s a lot, you don’t know where to start and how advanced is this and that. So you basically try to avoid complex combinations and go with “one big package of things, which work with each other out of the box”. Only after that step you start to get creative.
Will look up Pi4 vs Pi5. But I honestly never had experience with those limited hardware resource environments (am a Java dev, so no real worries in that regard), so Pi5 was “ah, this one strong? Yes, will take that one”.
Ideally I would want to have the possibility to write all the stuff I want in Java. This brings a question of driver/library.
Also, I would imagine e-paper displays and backlight are two separate entities, right?
I managed to find a local retailer for Pi5 (and even displays). The Gods of the Machine approve this choice.
For uControllers, I usually work in C++ or Arduino Sketches. Coming from Java, you will feel right at home with the sketches.
I dislike Python, so can’t comment on Python for the SBC’s.
Depends.
There are some displays that are attached via I2C or Serial, in those cases, the controller on the display will handle that sort of function. If the display is hooked directly to the uC or SBC, then you may be in for a bit of an adventure
Already reading about the Sketches. Look like a good toy to play with.
Also not a big fan of python. C++… well, never really worked with it.
Guess I can search for an e-paper one. My original idea was OLED (with no backlight)… but then my brain remembered the burn-in problem. E-Paper would be the best option.
I like these InkPlate screens from Crowd Supply (or direct from Croatia if you’re in Europe), which recycle Kindle eInk screens with ESP32 chips for these slow-refresh devices. They have Wi-Fi on-board and can do mini-Python with vendor-supplied libraries or anything you can imagine the ESP32 doing.
Sadly, but my current positioning in terms of buying something outside of country is quite close to a small island in the middle of the sea.
However, I did manage to find a semi-local enthusiast store, and they do have e-paper displays. Waveshare E-Ink was what I found (and even a frame for it).
Am thinking of buying a Pi5 Starter Edition (maybe overpriced, but will be just the right thing to actually get started), display + frame. Only think in terms of “things I can buy” is the question of actually this as a “photo-frame” like placing (I don’t have a 3d printer), with the Pi box sitting at the back.
