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.
This was my concept - I tried this as a challenge - A small Python program on the Pi sends the data to the M5Stack StickC+ via the UART every few seconds. It was quite a bit more challenging (confusing) than I expected because different versions of Raspberry Pi hardware and OS handle the UARTs differently. Also, the Sangaboard uses the UART I am using on the OpenFlexure microscope - there is a second UART - I didn’t attempt that. I like @touchari’s idea better - Those little I2C OLED boards are a good choice.
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.
Is there a particular reason you’re keen on E-ink? The little OLED displays (some of which have a few buttons) are often way cheaper. Various folk (including me in the past) have also thought along those lines - especially for initial network set-up. It could even allow us to do WiFi Direct set-up, which seems to be emerging as the nicest way to add IoT devices to your (home) WiFi.
There’s definitely breakout pins on the sangaboard that talk i2c, and as far as I know the sangaboard passes through the Pi i2c pins: Ben used that to talk to some temperature sensors.
Mainly I saw a little 2-colour e-ink screen and thought it was cool. Part of me likes the idea of it still telling you its hostname when it is off. But actually I can see it also being confusing that the screen is on when it is off.
I will look into OLED and into the Atom/Stick devices. Thanks @Earla and @touchari
