
More than the earlier two many years, e-paper has progressed from an unique and high-priced display technological innovation to something low-cost adequate to be employed for grocery store price tag tags. When these types of electronic shelf labels are now easy to uncover, in fact re-applying them is generally tricky thanks to a deficiency of documentation. Thankfully, [Aaron Christophel] has managed to reverse engineer a lot of types of shelf labels, and he’s demonstrated the success by turning one into an ultra-minimal-energy clock named Triink. It is primarily based on a 128×296 pixel e-ink exhibit paired with an nRF52832 BlueTooth Low-Electricity SoC and takes advantage of just 65 micro-amperes on common: reduced adequate to keep it functioning for far more than a calendar year on a solitary battery charge.
The clock is housed in an enclosure which is basic but productive: a 3D-printed triangular prism with a slot for the display and space for the 18650 lithium battery. A person facet can be opened to obtain the inside elements, despite the fact that that is actually only wanted to charge the battery. You can see how cleverly everything snaps collectively in the online video embedded underneath.
The CPU spends most of its time in snooze mode, only waking up the moment a minute to update the exhibit. In purchase to preserve electricity, [Aaron] wrote this program in such a way that it only updates those people pixels that have really modified. After an hour, it wholly refreshes the monitor in purchase to protect against burn-in. An integrated real-time clock keeps observe of time and can be adjusted through BlueTooth by using a smartphone application.
If you’ve bought a bunch of identical e-ink shelf labels collecting dust, you can locate all the structure data files and program to build your individual Triink on [Aaron]’s hackaday.io web page. In simple fact, you could want to look through close to some of his other assignments also: he’s managed to reverse engineer 3-coloration e-ink price tag tags for occasion, and even put together 300 shelf labels into a huge e-ink display.
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