doctr_sbaitso shared this awesome e-ink daily flipping Calvin and Hobbes frame on reddit!
A raspberry pi 4B, waveshare e-ink display and HAT driver. the python interface/drivers provided with the e-ink display write a bmp-format image out to the display, and it’s pretty ‘dumb’ (no scaling/interpolation) so the BMP needs to be exactly 800×480.
So I have some bash using imagemagick to handle the logic of incrementing a counter to pick the next daily strip (they’re sorted as entries in a textfile by date of print), figure out aspect ratio (daily strip or sunday strip), convert to a BMP, then resize it to 800×480 with the correct vertical or horizontal padding, and then write it out to the e-ink display; and of course, using cron to have it execute at 4am each morning.
hope that helps! pretty straightforward to do, and it’s a great project for anyone that enjoys tinkering!
Here is a straightforward list of products used and cost breakdown:
raspberry pi 4B was $60
waveshare 7.5″ e-ink display + hat driver was $66
got a iUniker raspberry pi 4 case to house it all for $12
got a short 90 degree usb-c to usb-c dongle for easier charging access, was $8
photoframe from the local michael’s was $10 I think
had a 32GB microsd card lying around, but thos can be had pretty cheap these days.
The MagTag will get you up and running with an E Ink project in no time. Head over to the Adafruit Learning System and learn more
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