I’ve been working towards this for several months, but today I finally wrote initial software for the thing:
The intent is that this provide useful information as you’re getting ready to go out the door. What’s displayed in the image above are easier, proof-of-concept things:
- Sunrise and sunset times (this still required dealing with Daylight Savings Time, as if I needed another reason for it to annoy me)
- Day and date
- System uptime
As it is now I have it refreshing on the hour.
This is just the beginning, though! I hope to add support for configuration files, and weather and bus information too. It’d be nice to know what sort of temperatures to expect that day, and whether I’m likely to need an umbrella. And when to leave for the bus. (I have USB speakers so it could chime.) The e-ink display (PaPiRus Zero) I’m using has some tiny switches on it, but they’re not easy to use at all, so I’m hoping to figure out how to use a handful of keyboard keys. 3D printing will likely be very helpful with that.
It’ll involve more hardware work, but I’m also hoping to have this thing provide a UI for measuring the weight of my cat’s food and water bowls. Currently I’m doing it manually, and I only get a start and end measurement for each day at varying times, so there’s a lot of slack to it. If I automate it, every few minutes will be no problem, and I can get an idea of his consumption rate. Graphs! This seems likely to require more soldering, as I haven’t been able to find a USB scale that operates in grams, but I have been able to find someone else with the same problem who solved it by soldering things.
You can find the code here.