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by samstave 2004 days ago
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....
2 comments
sgroppino 2004 days ago
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/
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lostlogin 2004 days ago
You can probably do this off an esp32 without too much trouble.
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samstave 2004 days ago
Please educate me on where I should go for esp32?
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lostlogin 2004 days ago
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.

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BigJ1211 2004 days ago
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

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djbeadle 2004 days ago
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?
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jburgess777 2003 days ago
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...

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