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I very much like the end result; hanging high up on a glass wall it's hard to see that the E-ink displays have any depth; they look like 2d images. The high contrast makes it very easy to see what the time is. The fact that the digits flicker for a few seconds every 10 minutes is noticable if you pay attention to it, but hardly irritating. An example video is below: note that while the video plays in real time, I cut out the periods when the digits don't change.
The fact that the clock is made of separate digits that seem entirely passive and unconnected, means that for the casual observer it doesn't even register as a clock. We've had people over who reacted startled when they saw the digits flipping over: they saw the clock earlier, but they assumed it was a set of stickers or something, maybe indicating some obscure number that was meaningful to our family but to no one else. Only when the clock ticks over, they notice it's actually a dynamic display and the connection to the current time becomes clear.
In case you want to make one of these yourself: the design files and firmware is all released as open-source as usual. Feel free to drop me a note if you managed to build one, I like hearing from others replicating my stuff.
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3 commentsIs there a technical reason why the display flickers only when switching to digit zero, or did you just like the effect it produces every 10 minutes? I know nothing about epaper, asking out of curiosity.
I have read many great articles here on the site and this one was once again a good piece of entertainment. Thanks to the articles I was also able to take my first steps with DIY electronics although I usually primarily develop software, I managed to publish my first e-paper devboard on GitHUb. Thanks for that!
@PJ It's because the specs of the epaper say you're only supposed to do a partial refresh (one that doesn't blink) for 5 times before you must do a full refresh. I'm hoping that under normal temperatures I can get away with 10 times, so that's a blink every 10 minutes.