IoTink

Your portable & connected, e-paper dashboard

What?

IoT + E-Ink = IoTink

IoTink is a portable dashboard using an e-paper display and is connected to the Internet. It is currently utilized to fetch public transport departures and weather predictions from a web service but could be easily repurposed to accomodate different use cases.

Why?

IoTink is ideal for times when you need to fetch information via WiFi and display them on a screen, but it is not feasible to install power cables.

As long as you do not need real-time or frequent updates, IoTink should be able to remain powered up on 4 AA batteries for a while.

How?

The concept is rather straightforward, with an ESP8266 microcontroller fetching data over WiFi and displaying them on the e-paper screen. Then it goes to deep sleep until it is time to ome back online and fetch updated data.

On a hardware level, things are kept simple, with a minimum ESP8266 circuit that enables us to program the chip when necessary via UART. 2+2 AA batteries are supplying just enough voltage for the microcontroller to operate seamlessly.

Components

• IoTink PCB rev.0

• 4.2" e-paper module by Waveshare

• ESP12F

• 4x AA battery holders Dimensions

• 4x 10KOhm resistors

• 100nF capacitor

• On/Off tactile switch

• 2x 3-pin male headers

• 2x Jumpers

• 6-pin female header

• 8-pin female header

Software dependencies

• GxEPD library for controlling the e-paper display

• Adafruit GFX library for the graphics

Media

• Background story

• Demo video

License

The IoTink project is released under a dual licensing scheme, because we are obligated to use a copyleft license for the software.

Software

GPLv3 - The license had to be selected due to depending on GPL'd software, i.e. the GxEPD library. Pull requests that will enable this project adopt a more permissive license are more than welcome.

Hardware

CC-BY 4.0