Show HN: Raspberry Pi 400 with a $2 IPS 240x240 micro display
github.comA bit off-topic but related to the intro in this readme..
> Why? > I'm super bored in lockdown. Add a Raspberry Pi 400 and a few tiny displays...
I feel like there are two distinct kinds of lockdown experience. One, you have kids, and you have absolutely no free time because now your kids are home and you're working from home. Two, you don't have kids, and you're super bored every day. Seems like not much in between.
Super agree. Its either "I'm bored out of my wits" or "i'm exhausted with my kids"
Folks with more time and energy on their hands have managed spend it all on a broad variety of rabbit holes.
Folks with kids have managed to wither whatever minutes were left away, looking at the other group's reports on their rabbit hole expeditions
Both, together have managed to give google enough confidence to double their ads and disable the "skip ad" buttons on youtube.
I don't have kids and I don't think I've gotten bored once - I had the time to watch a whopping two TV shows this year.
Early summer was strange. I finished watching seasons one through four of the expanse on Amazon.com
Kept getting side tracked because it takes a dystopian science fiction set hundreds of years in the future to discuss basic income and climate change in television.
I'm honestly struggling with finding more time to do stuff and I don't have any kids.
I have loads of side projects I want to work on, loads of games I want to play, books I want to read, movies and tv shows I want to watch and I have a relationship takes up a lot of my time.
I was doing Adventure of Code this year and I haven't managed to finish the last 7 days because I haven't had time for it yet.
Though I strongly believe that if I was single, it would be a very different story and I'd be very bored and restless with all this time. Maybe the relationship is the biggest difference.
> Both, together have managed to give google enough confidence to double their ads and disable the "skip ad" buttons on youtube.
I'm finding that I'm not using youtube that much anymore. It wasn't really a conscious decision - the annoyance pushed away my reptilian brain.
I barely use it on my phone anymore and on my desktop I installed an adblocker again (before I only used uMatrix).
But we’re a minority, obviously Google’s choice is paying off.
> But we’re a minority, obviously Google’s choice is paying off.
Or a growing towards a majority and Google is in a deathspiral trying to meet quarterly growth targets by extracting more attention from an audience that is catching on faster than it is growing in size.
One can hope.
I have ublock for Firefox on android and it works as expected.
> together have managed to give google enough confidence to double their ads and disable the "skip ad" buttons on youtube.
Just in case there's anyone from Google reading this: I'm tolerant of ads. I'd like the option to "skip the first ad" but watch the second. Or just put the short ad first.
Sometimes I don't mind watching a 15 second ad, but I really don't want to watch a 4 minute ad.
This is especially true if I'm not even sure I want to watch the video. If I follow a link to a random youtube video there's a 50/50 chance I'll stop watching after 10 seconds of content. Having to watch even 5 seconds of ads before that makes me avoid following links in the first place.
Thats only if you believe raising kids isn't a rabbit hole expedition.
Quite a few people are just too confused, clueless and unconscious of what expeditions they are on.
I have no kids, live alone and am absolutely fine. Just playing games, reading internet, watching youtube, chatting and occasionally doing something else that happens to interest me at the moment.
Not sure how it would be different without pandemic? Maybe I'd spend few percent of my time outside and/or interacting with people in person, but probably no more.
I'm one of those people who found out that their preferred lifestyle is called quarantine.
Kindergarten? School?
At least in Norway the government has focused on locking down old -> young. So bars and restaurants and gyms are pretty much shut down, put kindergarten and primary schools are still open with some restrictions.
Mind you though. Most of the people I know with small kids didn’t have much time to spend on side projects before the lockdown either. Only difference now is that they save an hour of travel a day.
Netherlands used to take a similar approach as Norway, but since earlier this month the schools and kindergarten are closed. Not because many children get infected, but because parents are much more likely to stay at home when the school is closed. So they're using kids as a way to keep people at home. Kind of crazy...
Now it turns out that kids at school are spreaders (especially of the new variant) - one of my friends who is a teacher has it.
N=1, but childcare has been the biggest avenue of infections I've seen here in Germany. Basically every childcare of colleagues with children has been shut down at one point in October/November (when the numbers started rising here) due to infections among the children. In most cases one or multiple of the families have been completely infected as a result of that, and I guess the only reason it hasn't spread around the workplace is due to good precautions.
It's the reason we aren't sending our kid to daycare, despite the private facilities here in Poland staying open for a large part of this pandemic.
I have exacty the same suspicion. Cases started spiking exactly 3 weeks after we opened schools after summer break in Poland, and did not start falling down until we closed down schools again.
N=1 as well, but we haven't seen a single case of it. In the area, I'm aware of one school that had a case of COVID a few months ago, and our local one - in which our child is nominally enrolled, but isn't attending physically - lasted with zero cases until two weeks ago.
Same in my family. Kid was fine, grandparents just couldnt live without seeing her weekly (slaps forehead :/) so got infected (one critical condition at one point), so did the parents.
For someone living in a suburb but having work and daycare in city a work-from-home might actually make commute worse (or it would for me, if I had to work from home).
It’s strange but I don’t really feel bored at all (I don’t have kids). In fact work-wise not a lot has changed except for having no commute, and since my commute was pretty short, the increase in time is quite marginal.
You bet :) At the beginning of this lockdown I was excited about how great it will be to dedicate commute time to hobbies.
With kids at home only time I get is @ 1 AM.
2 kids, 2 and 4.
My wife and I both try to give the other time for themselves. She goes hiking most days and I’ve built up 3 custom bicycles over 2020 and ride them on local trails at night after the kids are asleep. Bike lights have been my best investment this year.
> Seems like not much in between.
Why? No kids there, but why would I be bored? I have plenty of things to do, as always. Having worked from home for years now, I don't really see that big difference in regular day other than the fact that socializing and conferences have moved online.
If anything, I imagine that it would be painfully lonely if I had to live alone during the lockdown. Thankfully, I live with my girlfriend. But why would it be boring? Lockdown or not, it doesn't make much difference.
I have all the time in the world and am completely bored senseless.
There is a "happy" medium between the two I assure you. Personally, I basically have two friends, neither of which I have seen for a few months now - one won't leave the house, and the other "friend" is probably a mild psychopath. Bored and lonely, what a combination...
Thank you for acknowledging this. The whole subthread of shared experience is highly theraputic.
My first child was born a month ago mid-lockdown, so I have experienced both sides. I concur.
they don't go to bed? I work in my garage workshop from bedtime to midnight or one a few times a week. I've turned out way more finished projects than I ever did before the pandemic.
That's the second part of my work day. The first part is between breakfast and lunch. During lockdown (like we're about to go into again) my afternoon becomes my other, new, exhausting job of being a crappy early grade teacher while my partner works her normal job. Evening we all have dinner together, then alternate who does bath/bedtime vs dishes/laundry/garbage/etc, before going back to "day" job and finally sleep.
They do, but your SO would probably like to spend some time with you as well.
Myself, between WFH, my wife and my 18mo, I get about 1-2 hours of personal time after they both go to sleep, and half of those times I'm too tired by then to work on anything.
I've been on a mission to start my day earlier than both my SO and LO. It's been a resounding failure.
I have a 3yo and a 10 month old. Way too tired for that.
Maybe if they were a bit older?
4, 3 and a 1 y/o for me. Can agree, that it's been hard to maintain the same focus and energy recently.
We feel like the worst parents in the world because our kids apparently don't need as much sleep as other kids.
We've tried extensive bedtime rituals, tried tiring them out by going to the forest and making em run etc, but we really can't get our 1,5 year old to need more sleep than we do.
Our 4 year old tends to sleep an hour longer in the morning, but the little one is really killing us from a freetime standpoint with his 7 hours a day of sleep he needs (5-6 at night, 30m-1h a day).
Naturally this is driving my wife and me insane.
Daycares were open, but we've decided to take our older one out to reduce his contacts and give the daycare some breathing room as they are also at their limits because they've had staff quitting because they didn't want to risk getting infected for this little money (understandable imo).
The whole situation for parents is absolutely disastrous, my wife should have been looking for a new job already, but it was simply not realistic for her to start working a new job with me retaining mine and the kids at home.
As a young family in a high cost-of-living metro-area we had to decide to move as we can't afford to live here while giving our kids the space at home they need without support that allows us to work effectively.
I’ll throw one thing out there in case you’ve not tried it: I’ve seen plenty of advice that if your kids wake up “too early”, then counterintuitively, they may be going to sleep too late. So in your case, it’s possible that if you get them to bed two hours earlier, they’ll just wake up earlier. However, getting them to bed several hours earlier might work better. Ours are almost-3 and 5 and both sleep ~12 hours, but if they go to bed late will probably wake up early and things go to pot.
That said, I’ve zero idea how to switch sleep modes, sorry.
Our lifesaver was “healthy sleep habits, happy child” by Mark Weissbluth.
Don't feel bad! Every kid is different and there is no magic trick (at least that I've found!) to get them to sleep more. Mine are 4 and 6 and I'm trying to reframe my mind to not see sleep as a battle. What is killing me is that they won't come downstairs alone to play, though once here they can play unsupervised. I am looking forward to the days getting brighter so it isn't the dark that stops them.
Even taking out my 2h45m (total) commute time, I'm more tired than ever. I'm sure a lot of mine is due to stress and low level depression - I have a lot on now but so does pretty much every person you interact with.
Before lockdown I was starting to get some arduino and electronics projects in during my commute, but I've barely even had time to watch videos of other people's projects.
I just remind myself that in time this will change, that I'll find time again for myself. Over Christmas I've been trying to go for a walk alone each day and also to step away from my phone more. But it is hard - but that is OK.
Oof. That’s tough. I’m sure it’ll get better, but it’s definitely hard work in the meantime. Just keep in mind that it’s temporary on all counts.
Don't you need time alone with your significant other? That's the only time we've got together, so it's difficult to find "me" time, as I also need to care for my relationship (not that it bothers me! But 24h are 24h...)
You need to do that 7 days a week? Did you do that before the pandemic as well?
I assume you'd go out and meet some people? Sports? Other out-of-house activities, that's all time you can use as "you" time now.
HN comment
Two small kids here, I’ll try to explain my experience.
First off, there was very little time for socializing before the pandemic. One evening a week to grab dinner with a friend was the gold standard and achieved at the cost of putting more childcare on my partner. My partner also got an evening a week for friends, so I’d have extra kid duty that day.
The pandemic has made life harder for me and my family in many ways. School closure is the obvious one. My oldest had about a year in preschool before the shutdown. They miss their school community and have backslid developmentally. My partner was already a full-time care giver, but making preschool means the younger child gets very little one on one attention, while the older one loses socializing experience.
We also lost secondary childcare. No more babysitters for date night. No more weekend play dates. Much more limited access to grandparents and other relatives.
And then there’s all the marginal stuff that surprised us. We used to take the kids to the grocery store. You could kill an hour and show them the world a bit. No longer. We used to take them to the playground and encourage them to play with other kids. Now best case my kid wears a mask and plays at a distance with a small number of kids.
I’ve found that we’re losing a lot more time to home maintenance. The kids use the house all day, we have to clean it up after they go to bed. I’m trying to get the kids to help more with that, and to move more cleaning before bedtime.
All that taken into account, I find that I can get maybe 90 minutes per day, after the kids are done, that I have some personal choice about. I can spend that time with my partner, pushing work forwards, larger chores/home projects, professional development, hobbies, socializing, or resting. There is no other time for those things.
In practice I’ve found myself avoiding large hobby and professional development projects. I love them too much. I get very frustrated when they’re started but I can’t devote any time to them. I love hitting flow State on a project, and it’s simply not possible at this point in my life.
I don’t expect this to last forever. The pandemic will break eventually. The kids will get older and need less intense supervision. I do my best to be present and focused on them during these early years. Everyone tells me they go by fast in retrospect.
PS this comment took me over two hours to write because of these circumstances
I have three boys, aged 3, 6, and 9, and your comment pretty much nails our experience. The lack of childcare, the lack of access to grandparents, the lack of school, the volume of energy in the house constantly, the messes, the crazy amount of dishes and food prep because they don’t eat breakfast and lunch at school anymore; I could go on and on, I can laugh and I can scream and curse, in the end I do what you do and just try to be present and carry on. It is exhausting.
Ha! It says “HN Comment” at the top because that was the title of the Notes app entry where I wrote it! I find myself making lots of little mistakes like that these days.
I feel you. I have a newborn and a two-year-old. It can be frustrating not being able to get into the flow, but I'm just trying to enjoy this time with the kids knowing that they're growing fast.
When they go to bed is when I can actually work. But I am obviously wasting that time on hn as of this moment. LOL.
Third take: you use the free time to work on your projects and come out of lockdown stronger, healthier, and richer both in money and culture.
Most important point during a world pandemic is to survive during a lockdown.
There is a weird spot in the display market that is painful as a embedded developer:
Displays under 400x240 pixels, usually the gfx buffer can be managed in the ram of the MCU. Nothing fancy needed, can get decent framerate on SPI bus running at 16 MHz. Anything above this range gets super ugly: no good displays exist and if they do, they're expensive or outdated (800x480 resolution is basically impossible to obtain). Furthermore, driving this display requires crazy shit like multiple SPI channels (QSPI), or some neutered version of DSI protocol...impossible to find docs for and if they have docs, theyre in Chinese.
Then there are ultra high resolution displays, for e.g. cell phone market or laptop screens. You're now looking an entirely different beast. MIPI/DSI hardware support is required and a bunch of NDAs, need dedicated GPU and a proper linux running.
Ideal display tech would be 5"inch diagonal, OLED (low power consumption), 800x480 (or similar) and can be run using ARM Cortex-M4 or similar microcontroler arch. That would open up opportunities for so many device categories that doesn't exist today. Imagine a VT100 terminal clone running on 8" 1024x768 resolution screen with a cheap ESP32 + display driver chip. Or a slightly more beefy Cortex-M7 running zephyr/linux. So many things we could build.
It's an interesting challenge, but MIPI DSI is sort of the right interface for small size displays too high resolution to drive with SPI. There are a range of Cortex-M4 and M7 MCUs that have DSI output (e.g. https://wiki.st.com/stm32mpu/wiki/DSI_internal_peripheral). The solution is probably just better documentation for the panels and their DDICs.
Oh wow, I didn't even know ST had a wiki! I wonder if they also have a section on the STM8 family?
Aside from very simple use cases, you'd probably struggle to render 800x480 or 1024x768 frames on an MCU. At 1024x768 especially, the pixel rate (47 MP/s at 60Hz) and framebuffer size (2.3MB at 24bpp) are just too big even for large MCUs.
APs are the right tool for the job. It's true that for hobbyists, documentation is lacking and DSI is complex to get started with. The best solution would probably extend DSI with something like EDID. DSI displays can then be plug-and-play (like HDMI / DP) using an universal driver.
Another option is eDP, but it's not so common on cheap APs or screens.
The last time I built something with a small display, the CPU-and-on-board-RAM combo didn't have enough room for a framebuffer. But it did have multiple cores, and each of those had multiple hardware-multiplexed threads for real-time processing. Most of the threads were devoted to audio DSP and maxed out.
It was fun developing a little algorithm to stream out full rendered frames in real time, bit-banging 16-bit colour over SPI at its max frequency, while rendering and compositing from an object tree with fonts, textures, gradients, blending etc without ever storing more than a few scan lines worth of pixels. Intermediate pixels and blending states were stored in an ever-moving queue to account for multi-pass rendering and the different timing between the rendering thread, which blended in each item at whatever speed could be done, and the bit-banging SPI thread which formatted the pixels into the strange bit order needed by the display. The bit-banging thread needed perfect, sustained timing as a single glitch would crash the display.
When all the complications were working perfectly, it just looked like a mundane but smoothly animating display, as if it had a boring GPU and framebuffer and some kind of clean GUI.
These 240x240 IPS displays are awesome and dirt-cheap. The best "application" I've seen for them is a tiny retro game console [1].
Could you make an alternative to SteamDeck?
A 4x4 arrangement with some clear plastic buttons on top of each individual screen would be pretty useful. Especially if it was a preview of a specific video source.
Love the concept of that but you'd have to have children's hands to play it. I can only see frustration and the thing being thrown across the room if I had one.
There's a lotta cool/interesting applications for a tiny display like that. Thanks for sharing. :).
I ordered a few by accident from AliExpress and they showed up yesterday. I don't know for the life of me what to do with them. I was thinking maybe as a temperature/humidity monitor thing, but it would have to be mains powered because I don't think there's a way to make a device like this diy'able (with arduino and dht22 level components) and make it run off a battery for more than a few months. So any suggestions are good.
Look into the low-power mode of whatever microcontroller you're using... I did an AT-Tiny85 project, and it burned through the battery. I then switched to low power for a while, and it draws micro-amps (!) when in low-power mode, so the battery would have lasted hundreds of times longer.
Oh... umm... the display, yeah. Maybe have an on-button for the display to power it up only when you want it?
As long as the microcontroller has a sleep mode, you can use a relay (for-real or solid-state) to toggle the power for the display.
Great idea, thanks!
Other than watch-like functions, can you give me some ideas?
Reminds me of the first atomic clock wristwatch:
http://leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/
> Batteries are included (they last about 45 minutes but are rechargeable)
Supposedly, that retails for about $30,000.
Depending on your tolerance for accuracy, rubidium standards are much cheaper and smaller. Obviously the second is defined in terms of cesium, so if you really want to be the reference clock for your entire country, you're going to need to shell out the cash for a cesium standard. But if you merely want to be within a nanosecond per day, rubidium is fine for that.
Originally I was just using it to display the IP addresses after reboot on a smaller 0.96" 80x160. Then a screen shot... then zoom. I'm thinking more about some QR code with basic sysinfo.
QR for status or info on anything is the winner here...
can you array these off a single PI?
Imagine this:
An installation where there is an array of these screens - they are associated with whatever you want info on - they cycle btwn a screenshot of the item, some basic text (like IP/UPC/Barcode/QR to a fully detailed product/item page, uptime/health status...) etc...
And you can just have a PI running a bunch of these on a 42" rack, or on shelves of retail items etc....
This is a good question. You should be able to control multiple SPI devices at the same time, but that requires the CSX/CS ("Chip Select") pin to be present. The model I bought doesn't seem to have this feature, but someone found a hack [1]. I will add this info to the readme as you're really better off buying displays with CS if you're planning to control multiple tiny screens. [1] https://www.instructables.com/Adding-CS-Pin-to-13-LCD/
You can probably do this off an esp32 without too much trouble.
Please educate me on where I should go for esp32?
I went to a local electronics store and got one. I then looked on AliExpress and found them for a fraction of the price.
I mainly use ESP8266, as it’s cheaper but it’s less powerful and doesn’t have 5v output, just 3.3v (or at least the ones I have were like this). I don’t have any real coding skill but between the Arduino IDE, ESPHome, MQTT and some mucking about, I got where I wanted to be.
The sensors are so inexpensive and there are so many (light, temperature, fire, smoke, moisture, humidity, distance, gasses, weight, open/close, current etc). It’s really impressive what is out there.
You can get those on banggood and aliexpress for incredibly cheap as well. You can look into nordic stuff as well for bluetooth related microboards to develop on.
If you're just starting out I can recommend looking at m5 which has nice little kits to get started. It's a bit pricier though. https://m5stack.com
The M5 kits caught my eye at MicroCenter a few weeks back when I was doing some holiday shopping, I couldn't tell if they were just toys or actually useful. Any pointers on them?
M5Stack is an AWS partner for a new “AWS IoT EduKit” so I imagine you will be seeing more projects using them in IoT roles. The getting started guide has some examples.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/12/introduci...
watch lofi hip hop radio, of course. https://learn.adafruit.com/lofi-hip-hop-raspberry-pi-radio-b...
That's pretty cool. That joystick looking thing made me think it would be cool to have some old school knobs to change the (youtube) channel.
I used a similar screen to display the user interface for my DIY reflow oven. The raspberry Pi and Linux is overkill for this project, but it's so much easier building a GUI than on a microcontroller.
https://nabil.me/2020/12/01/diy-reflow-oven-w-exhaust-build-...
Same thing you’d use a blink (1) for. Long build jobs notifications. Slack notifications. Temperature display. Lots of use cases.
Not sure why but the first thing that came to my mind was making HamsterTV set for your hamster.
I don't even own a hamster currently and haven't owned one in few decades.
I think I'm watching way too much random youtube makers.
I like where you're going with this.
The hamster will of course also need buttons to change the channel to other hamster-related programming if he or she so desires. :)
Eureka the next big thing is Peleton for Hampsters :-)
Edit for the BT labs injoke
In a mini server farm like the one we're running at work you could stick one on each box and run htop or something along those lines. Cool for a sys admin to have a status display of each physical box's htop graph at a glance.
How about embedding them in a split keyboard in the middle so I don't even need to move my hand off the keyboard? E.g. I can just touch and jump to any part of the open file? Won't be very accurate due to the small size but sometimes I just need to go to a specific section and then I can scroll.
I guess the line number and use the jump to line shortcut.
I have one in an IT little closet at home that displays a few stats. Temperatures, line speed, my public IP, a few PiHole stats, NAS storage space, etc. Another screen shows a few values from temp and humidity sensors that some esp chips are collecting.
it actually reminds me of the Logitech G15 that I had over a decade ago (or G19 as the later model). The screen can be used to show some stats like CPU and RAM usage, or for games some kind of extra information like your health, your ammo count etc.
A display for a pihole or a display for a pi based streamer
Maybe something like Stream Deck?
This is a strange way to do this. Linux already supports such displays to be used as a real framebuffer. Why all the python and screenshotting?
Couldn't make it work with those modules.
I want to make a smart glass like device with a tiny display or a projector, Raspberry Pi Zero as the main board and powered by a battery pack. Does any one have any input regarding optics?
Just thinking about the possibility of having a linux machine always on you seems really exciing.
Seconded!
The Vufine+ [1] is about the best option I’ve found so far. It works and is a standard HDMI display but it’s really small in your vision (so need v large font sizes), has quite a lot kind of obstructive stuff from the casing etc. in your field of view, and feels bulkier than it needs to be.
I’d be happy with much lower resolution like these displays specially if it appeared larger and clearer. I actually bought a transparent OLED thing [2] recently with the intent of trying to hack it into something wearable but no progress on that yet and not sure if it’ll actually even be readable.
Maybe this would be a place to start.
Really cool display even if it has problems with tearing. I played around with that display a bit - https://youtu.be/8S1BXnx-vLE (STM32, 60+ fps), https://youtu.be/Wql4WTpPrWs (ESP32, ~40 fps)
What is it? A screen for ants? -- Derek Zoolander
LOL - wait until you see the keyboard I'm working on...
Damnit you got here 4 hours before I did! Well played.
Maybe it's just a computer for really, really, ridiculously good looking people.
This seems really great for times when I want to boot up a PI but don’t want to bother with finding a display and PSU for that display, and I don’t want to unplug my computers display. A quick display for simple things.
You may think this is "tiny", but I got a lot done on my Apple ][ back in 1978 with a 280x192 pixel display.
You’re 280x192 pixel display was probably 13” or even larger. This display is 1”x1”. You can get about six lines of 12-15 characters on it if you want to be able to read it from further than 6” away.
You should watch the movie Brazil, if you haven't. All the computers have tiny 2" displays, with a Fresnel lens attached in front of it
With the right lens, you could have the start of Pi Goggles
8bit VR sounds interesting :-)
There was very nearly a 16 bit VR platform for the Sega Genesis:
Nintendo VirtualBoy
Semi-OT: I wish someone would make flexible building blocks for fastening/connecting such parts, i.e. something like Lego or Fischertechnik but better suited for electronics. Many people use 3D printers, but they seem wasteful for printing temporary cases for such projects. Wood is a possibility, but not so quick to work on. There has to be something better than duck tape and rubber bands...
> i.e. something like Lego or Fischertechnik but better suited for electronics.
There are already lego raspberry pi boxes. They are sold for less than $5.
They're not very flexible though, I can't just take any accessories like the display in the article and attach it properly with a few extra blocks.
> They're not very flexible though, I can't just take any accessories like the display in the article and attach it properly with a few extra blocks.
Well, you can. You just need to attach the accessory to a lego piece that suits your fancy, and you're done.
By "attach" you mean glue?
It really depends on your goals and needs.
Still, in a world where 3D printing is sold as a happy path solution to everything, putting glue on a couple of COTS plastic pieces sold for about $0.10 seems like an absolute no-brainer.
Using glue on small PCBs doesn't seem very sensible to me. I guess it's asking for too much to sell some lego bricks with simple ways of attaching a PCB?
> Using glue on small PCBs doesn't seem very sensible to me.
Then why are you basing your argument on an approach which you already believe isn't sensible?
I mean, you can glue everything you wish on a lego piece, including all the M3 spacers you need.
But hey, why settle with an easy solution when you can bicker endlessly about problems that you don't need to handle?
Good work! My first 240x240 display was a Palm Treo 750 and 320x240 apps were unusable because 80 pixels were out of sight, haha
Add your contacts, social links and donation button
where would I get the display for 2 USD?
I got them from AliExpress - Google for ST7789 240 IPS TFT
Like /r/cyberdeck
Kudos for the WHY in the README! Love it when a hacking adventure gives us a raison d'etre, and a well-deserved one too.
what are the specs form this display? the title says 240x240, but what size? How many colors and refresh rate?
Driver: ST7789 Interface: SPI Display color: RGB, 65K color Resolution: 240x240 Backlight: LED Operating voltage: 3.3V
It looks like I2C, so it's probably damn slow.
They're SPI driven and store their own pixels. You don't need to clock it like a parallel display.
Nice! I was thinking about coupling it with a thermal printer.
Line editors like ed make much more sense when used with a printing teletype, which is what the RPi 400 would be with a little printer attached.
Added more info on displays and code for 80x160.
You should add an affiliate link for the screen