What's the display device I'm looking for?
May 15, 2024 4:17 PM   Subscribe

I want to make a dedicated little always-on display that simply shows the time remaining to 7am every day. Ideally it comes in an enclosure which can sit upright on my desk and be charged/powered by USB from my computer. Is there some sort of programmable hobbyist display that can do this? Hooking an Arduino up to a LCD and mounting them inside a box feels like over-engineering. Any suggestions welcome.
posted by Panthalassa to Technology (7 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's entirely overkill (and correspondingly overpriced) for what you want, but Tidbyt is basically this. There are existing widgets (including some countdown ones) and you can create your own as well.
posted by duien at 5:24 PM on May 15, 2024


Divoom is the cute version of above. They do a countdown although the app is a bit finicky for initial set up. I have one that is basically a happy clock.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:46 PM on May 15, 2024 [2 favorites]


Best answer: if quite small is fine the m5stack thingy would probably work with some programming.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:33 PM on May 15, 2024 [1 favorite]


I just talked myself out of buying this Adafruit Matrix Portal Starter Kit - ADABOX 016 Essentials which would do what you want, and they have various size screens. Someone on reddit Tidbyt posted it as the much cheaper dupe.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:02 PM on May 15, 2024 [2 favorites]


Similar to the m5stack but cheaper (and not as slick looking) would be one of the esp32 cheap yellow displays [ESP32-2432S028R] - you can find them for 15 USD with a cheap laser cut plexi sandwich "case" that can stand up ok. There's a clock example [vid] in that github which would be easy enough to mangle into a countdown.
posted by samj at 12:08 AM on May 16, 2024 [2 favorites]


Similar to the Matrix Portal is a PyPortal.
At the height of the pandemic, I had it running 24/7 scraping covid data from various sites and displaying it. Countdown to 7AM feels like walk in the park by comparison. It costs $60.
Here's a similar project that pulls current time from an internet server. You should be able to use this as a starting point.
posted by plinth at 2:32 PM on May 16, 2024


Response by poster: I went with the M5Stack Core Ink and it's working a treat! Thanks all.
posted by Panthalassa at 11:07 PM on May 24, 2024 [1 favorite]


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