I have been thinking it might be nice to create a customisation where we mount this this little e-ink screen. We could put info on it like status, hostname, IP address. Obviously an OpenFlexure logo too!
(Unfortunately it is Red/Black/White not OpenFlexure-Pink/Black/White)
It can be controlled from Arduino or Raspberry Pi GPIO.
I am not sure how we are affected by either the pins used to talk to the Sangaboard on the GPIO, or if we have the breakout space on the Sangaboard. Has anyone experience in using these little screens?
Always interesting to see some info from the microscope without having to be connected to it. I’m seeing that this specific screen refreshes really slowly, taking like 30 seconds to do so. So this would be relegated for static info, no showing the current count of images, or disk space, or stage position or something like that. Is there any possibility to use it for headless pairing to wifi? Would be great to be able to do that without having to set it beforehand, or connect up an ethernet cable / keyboard / monitor. Maybe a single button to search the strongest open wifi connection, so you would click the “pair openly” button on the router, the button on the OFM and confirm it after it shows what it tries to connect up to
Just a quick idea - are you familiar with M5Stack devices like the Atom or Stick devices? These are inexpensive tiny ESP32 microcontrollers with a nice case & tiny color screens and easy access to GPIO ports which can be easily configured in many ways. The ports on the devices have Grove connections. You can code them using a variety of tools. I use their powerful block coding app UIFlow or MicroPython. These devices have good performance, look professional and are easy to use + lots of fun.
You might want to consider using a 1.3-inch blue OLED display. It features a resolution of 128x64 pixels and communicates via I2C, making it super easy to display QR codes, IP addresses, and more. I’ve personally tested it, and developing for it is a breeze with the help of AI.