I was listening to Dale Carnegie’s “How to stop worrying and start living” and thought I needed to be reminded once in a while of his good advice.
But I did not want the wall to have a bunch of framed quotations.
So I made this daily inspirational quotes frame, and placed it near my coffee machine.
Every morning, I’ll get a dose of caffeine and one good advice to practice during that day.
RIBBA was selected as I needed a nice frame for the display and have some space in the back for the components.
I have a bunch of quotations on my phone (that I add to once in a while) and it randomly picks one every 13th hour and displays it.
I can also force display a quotation to the screen if I like. As I did in this (gif) example.
Here’s what I did for my daily inspirational quotes frame
IKEA items used:
- RIBBA picture frame (13x18cm)
Other materials and tools:
- Particle Photon
- 640×384, 7.5inch E-Ink display HAT for Raspberry Pi (link)
- Mobile power bank
- 1 x switch
- 1 x 2.2k resistor (pull down resistor)
- some wires
It was a lot of work and here is the short story of it:
First, I created the code for the particle photon and e-ink display via the lib GxEPD2_PP.
Then, created a firebase realtime database to store the quotations.
Next, created firebase functions to know when the display is awake (via a REST call from the photon) and push a new print to the display (via particle-api-js)
I created a mobile application (via expo) to update the database and push new print to the display.
Next, cut the RIBBA framing mat to fit the e-ink display.
I solder a switch with a pull down resistor to D3.
The last step was to hot glue the components to the back of the RIBBA frame.
How long and how much did it cost?
Too much – most people would say. But it was a lot of fun!
What do you like most about the hack?
The final look with the daily inspirational quotes frame and the font are stylish.
It updates and displays a new quote every 13 hours.
If I can’t wait (or wish to test the look of a new quote), I just turn on a switch at the back, open my mobile and start printing.
What was the hardest part about this hack?
Coding the particle photon. I’m not so good at arduino code (prefer JavaScript).
What to pay special attention to?
It requires a lot of different skills to make it (most of it is coding).
Looking back, would you have done it differently?
Would like to show the author of each quote with some italic font. It’s still a possible feature, but I have other projects that needs attention.
And other thoughts/ comments that you have received about the hack
People think it takes too long to display. It takes ~45 sec. It does not matter to me. After the update it uses no power.
~ by Lasse Norfeldt