platisd / iotink

Your portable & connected, e-paper dashboard

IoTink

Your portable & connected, e-paper dashboard

What?

IoT + E-Ink = IoTink

IoTink is a portable dashboard using an e-paper display and is connected to the Internet. It is currently utilized to fetch public transport departures and weather predictions from a web service but could be easily repurposed to accomodate different use cases.

Why?

IoTink is ideal for times when you need to fetch information via WiFi and display them on a screen, but it is not feasible to install power cables.

As long as you do not need real-time or frequent updates, IoTink should be able to remain powered up on 4 AA batteries for a while.

How?

The concept is rather straightforward, with an ESP8266 microcontroller fetching data over WiFi and displaying them on the e-paper screen. Then it goes to deep sleep until it is time to ome back online and fetch updated data.

On a hardware level, things are kept simple, with a minimum ESP8266 circuit that enables us to program the chip when necessary via UART. 2+2 AA batteries are supplying just enough voltage for the microcontroller to operate seamlessly.

Components

• IoTink PCB rev.0
• 4.2" e-paper module by Waveshare
• ESP12F
• 4x AA battery holders (Dimensions)
• 4x 10KOhm resistors
• 100nF capacitor
• On/Off tactile switch
• 2x 3-pin male headers
• 2x Jumpers
• 6-pin female header
• 8-pin female header

Software dependencies

• GxEPD library for controlling the e-paper display
• Adafruit GFX library for the graphics
• ArduinoJson library for parsing JSON

Media

• Background story
• Demo video

License

The IoTink project is released under a dual licensing scheme, because we are obligated to use a copyleft license for the software.

Software

GPLv3 - The license had to be selected due to depending on GPL'd software, i.e. the GxEPD library. Pull requests that will enable this project adopt a more permissive license are more than welcome.

Hardware

CC-BY 4.0

iotink's Issues

Add a PIR sensor to detect movement

Add a PIR sensor which will trigger the reset pin whenever it detects movement and the microcontroller is in deep sleep but not when its running.

Add a Low Dropout (LDO) Regulator

As an Iotink user I would like to have the microcontroller and the screen powered consistently regardless of the voltage drop of the batteries so I can be sure that Iotink will operate consistently.

Acceptance criteria:

• LDO is added (preferably the MCP1700-3302E in a SOT54 package) to regulate the power from the batteries.

Add on/off switch

As an Iotink user I would like to be able to completely turn the power off on the board when I leave for vacation so the batteries don't get needlessly depleted.

Acceptance criteria:

• Readily available and cheap on/off switch is added.

Fix BAT4 horizontal alignment

BAT4 needs to be moved slightly to the right so to be evenly spaced compared to the other components.

some questions to get this nice and great iotink

Hi,
since i´ve seen your great iotink project, i like to fork it and build my own Display for our kids school bus timer. Quiet often they are that late missing their bus getting to school in time. I´ve already worked on grabbing the times from the webite of our local busservice with my beloved node-red running on my pi.

So i will to understand your code implent my mqtt broker and getting the topics for the two buslines and the times. For the weatherforcecast i would like to stay on your solution, as i already grab openweather data with node red using this api key.
Maybe i´m wrong but it seems your are using the api key which comes out of a file? I´ve already made a free pythonanywhere account to get it running. Would it be possible to run the python script on my pi, simmilar to other python sripts which are running on it by edtitng the link of the credentials.h Otherwhise i ´ll try to understand how this pythonanaywhere works. It seems you are unsing not the beginners account. Does it make any difference with a beginner a.

Many thanks in advance. I hope i can make it, i´m still newbie with Arduino and this stuff but it´s wonderfull getting things running,sometimes with a little help from pro´s like you.

Tobias, from Königswinter, Germany