
UpNext – an ePaper digital calendar for your desk - brettcvz
http://brettcvz.com/projects/6-upnext
======
wenc
I would buy a product version of this too, even though I have calendar
notifications on 3+ devices.

I really like the aesthetics. There's something human about it -- it reminds
me of Susan Kare's work on the original Macintosh [1]. There's so much soul
and whimsy in what were nothing more than B&W pixeled icons. There's a certain
timelessness to it. Another example: HyperCard's main screen [2].

Another Raspberry Pi digital display project I really like is this one [3],
which mimics a train station display. The aesthetics is powerful here too
because the fonts etc. reminds one of something familiar in the physical
world.

[1] [https://kare.com/apple-icons/](https://kare.com/apple-icons/)

[2] [https://blog.archive.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/MTIyMzI2...](https://blog.archive.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/MTIyMzI2ODgxMjYwNTYzNzM3.jpg)

[3] [https://www.balena.io/blog/build-a-raspberry-pi-powered-
trai...](https://www.balena.io/blog/build-a-raspberry-pi-powered-train-
station-oled-sign-for-your-desk/)

~~~
brettcvz
Very kind of you! I'm happy to help you set one up if you're willing to buy
the components. The wiring is very simple, and while the code is open source,
I'd also be happy to send you the SD card image if you'd like.

~~~
wenc
I appreciate the offer very much. Unfortunately I’m not much of a hardware guy
and these days my attention is a little scattered due to all that’s happening
around us. I do think it’s an inspired project though —- being able to glance
at what’s next on the calendar without context switching seems really useful.

------
Sidnicious
This is cool! I have some things like this around my house but via a different
approach that I'd like to share: each one is just an old-ish e-reader from
eBay or Craigslist, a mix of Kobos and Kindles. Both brands can be made to
show a full screen web browser (Kobo: by editing a config file from a
computer, Kindle: by jailbreaking and installing Kindle-Web-Launcher), so I
have them display a page from a web server on my LAN.

Since the browsers support JS and some mix of WebSockets, EventSource, and, at
the very least, long polling, it's possible to send messages out to them to
update data in real-time or refresh the entire page when I change it. The
screens are sharp and the browsers do partial updates, fast enough that I have
some touch-draggable sliders that follow your finger.

They cost me from $16-50 each, depending on model. They tend to be cheaper if
there's a lot of wear/damage to the case, but if you put it in a shell or
cover the whole thing with gaffer's tape, that's not a problem!

~~~
tduberne
That is a really cool approach! Is the kobo still usable as an e-reader after
the config change? I own one but I have so little time to read lately that it
is mostly taking the dust. Being able to use it as some kind of always on
display, while being able to pick it up to read when desired sounds really
attractive to me.

~~~
frosted-flakes
The browser is accessible out-of-the-box in the "Beta" section. You only need
to edit the config file if you want it full-screen. If you open the browser
with it set to full-screen, I believe the only way to exit is to restart the
Kobo, bringing you back to the home screen. So yes, it is still fully usable.

------
jrockway
I made an e-ink clock, but ultimately found it unsuitable for my desk. The
problem is that when the display refreshes, it switches from white to black
and back to white, and all this activity in the corner of your eye ends up
being quite distracting. You are guaranteed to look at it whenever it changes,
making it worse than a notification on your phone in terms of interruption.
That might be the right thing for "you have a meeting now!" (you're
interrupted anyway), but it's not great for passive information like the time.

I am told that with some amount of hacking and a supportive chipset/vendor,
you can avoid most of this without reducing the lifetime of the display with
the right calibration constants for the device... but nobody seems to have
open-sourced anything like this and even places like Adafruit don't provide
proper datasheets.

~~~
dpcx
The author of the article discusses exactly this and how they got around it.
Seems that some updates have been made to drivers to only do partial screen
refreshes.

~~~
crusso
The author reduced the frequency of full refreshes, but did not eliminate
them. The problem will still occur, just less often.

~~~
brettcvz
You are correct - because I have a clock on the screen, UpNext does a full
screen refresh about every 10 minutes. I thought this would bother me so did
some explorations of a UI without the clock, but in practice I don’t notice
the flashing, and I like having the clock.

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reacharavindh
I would really love to make one of these for myself. This would be my first
Raspberry Pi project. However, I'm a little to scared to even step into it
because I'm not a hardware guy at all - I wouldn't know which pins from the
display goes where. I can solder stuff, but I'd need help figuring out what
goes where.

Second scare is about how to get the software onto Raspberry pi W. In the
past, all how-tos I have read just say "flash it" and go on to the next cool
step, but I'm lost right there.... how to get the software into the thing? -
SSH?

My point is, I'd appreciate a really beginner friendly write up of your
project. From the parts list, how to connect everything, and how to get the
software on to it. I'd pay for such a tutorial rather than the finished
product. I know it is your time that I am asking for, but I wish you found
time to spare to help a beginner like me.

~~~
rtisdale
Going to guess you're a programmer?

If you're like many others, you very likely teach yourself things often by
investigating and experimentation :)

No reason you can't do that here.

These are (relatively) safe low voltage parts, a bit of googling and you'd be
on your way :).

~~~
frosted-flakes
Except it's not that hard to accidentally fry a Raspberry Pi. I did that to
two or three of them when I was experimenting. They would still boot up at
first, but the CPU chip would immediately get burning hot to the touch, and
the only way to get it to stay on was to blow on it continuously. I don't
remember what I did to fry them.

------
dstaley
I have an Amazon Echo Show 5 on my desk that's connected to my calendar. I've
updated the homescreen settings such that it only alternates between the
current time and the calendar display, which displays the next upcoming event.
(It also displays the date and current weather conditions.) Having used the
Echo Show, I definitely see the appeal in a device like UpNext, and I wish
there was a decent hack-able small display that people could use to build
these types of devices. In the past I've paired a Raspberry Pi and a
touchscreen display, but that's clunky and doesn't look all that great. A
while back, I really wanted a Chumby[1], and I wish something like that still
existed.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby)

~~~
anilgulecha
Hey, how can I reach out to you? (or could you ping me). I was looking to
building exactly this using older phones.

------
Risse
I made something similar with Raspberry Pi + E-ink display:
[https://polso.info/raspberry-pi-e-ink-photo-frame-video-
and-...](https://polso.info/raspberry-pi-e-ink-photo-frame-video-and-full-
source-code)

------
pikewood
Waveshare is probably the easiest way to play with eInk today. If you're
willing to look at different sizes, they offer displays with partial refresh
already built in.

The 2.7 inch models are nice for people beginning with hardware because it's
already built as a Raspberry Pi HAT, literally plug and play, no soldering or
wires required.
[https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/2.7inch-e...](https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/2.7inch-
e-paper-hat.htm)

The bottom of that page lists the other models; look for the ones supporting
partial refresh to get around that flashing distraction.

~~~
brettcvz
Agree, the waveshare modules are great. They’re also (surprisingly) available
via Amazon Prime, which is nice when you’re excited about a project idea and
don’t want to wait 2-3 weeks for a shipment from China.

From my experience with this project, all ePaper displays _can_ do partial
refresh, but some may have the drivers (LUT) included, others you might have
to find some community-sources ones or design it yourself. In the post I link
to my drivers for partial updates for the 4.2”, and in the footnotes there is
a YouTube video going into lots of detail on how the drivers work if you
wanted to write one or update it for a different display.

~~~
pikewood
Could you send some links to the community you found who were hacking away on
the partial refresh drivers? I have a 7.5" that I started with and would love
to work off of whatever has already been accomplished.

~~~
brettcvz
I link to a few helpful sources in the “references” part of the project
readme:
[https://github.com/brettcvz/upnext/blob/master/README.md#ref...](https://github.com/brettcvz/upnext/blob/master/README.md#references)

Hope that helps!

------
rtpg
I have an old kindle where I was trying to repurpose it for this kind of thing
but got stuck after trying to flash it with some custom firmware.... will try
again this weekend.

These kinds of projects are cool, but I think they’re even cooler if they’re
reusing stuff you already have in random drawers in your house

------
themodelplumber
Lovely...

Is anybody else at the point of establishing their own digital calendar
system? I feel like my main web-based calendar, one lots of people use, is
powerful, but mainly in super boring ways. And it's functional, but mainly
also in boring ways. It fits more like a generic pair of slacks, than a nice
glove.

For example, I think I would cram the interface all the way up, and then slim
down from there if needed. I may have some kind of material design-derived
interface illness. I look at the interfaces of things like shortwave and ham
radios and just think--yes, good, I am a big boy and can tolerate much more
info-noise from my calendar display. Heck, cram the latest Get Fuzzy in there.
And maybe even complex keyboard shortcuts, shell script integration, the sky's
the limit!

~~~
rajlego
Have you tried Notion? I recently started using it to manage prioritized
tasklists (though not calendar, I usually just make a plan the day before).
Cramming too much in seems problematic from a deep work stand point, best to
be able to focus on one thing at once

~~~
themodelplumber
I'll check out Notion, thanks for the rec. I just realized that the XFCE
desktop I use already has a lot of functionality which could be warped into
building much of what I'm thinking about.

I think I can go heavier on the information density (e.g. maybe using a lot
less white space than Notion does) as long as the information has a
personalized reason for being there...

------
kuzee
This is truly fantastic, the use of an eink display so that it doesn't shout
for attention but is always ready is such a good call and in my opinion worth
the additional effort. Thanks for sharing and making the code available for
others to read and learn from.

------
giancarlostoro
This sounds like another good use for this powerless e-ink reader:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604617)

Maybe it could be hooked up to a microcontroller (Pi Zero with some NFC module
or something) that turns on every 24h.

~~~
rajlego
Saw that recently as well, this post made me more hopeful I'd be able to put
something together to work with it.

------
raghava
Neat project!

I was hoping of building a similar one using a simple LCD
[[https://robu.in/product/3-5-touch-screen-lcd-raspberry-
pi/](https://robu.in/product/3-5-touch-screen-lcd-raspberry-pi/)] display,
with a way to even showcase urgency/priority - and list at least next three
events lined up for the day.

Possibly even add a color code / simple snooze button as the LCD is touch
responsive. Found
[https://github.com/monitoror/monitoror](https://github.com/monitoror/monitoror)
and hoped to use it for this purpose.

~~~
rajlego
I've been thinking of something similar, I have a tasklist system prioritized
and sorted by value/time (in Notion), would be nice to use one of these e-ink
displays to display top few tasks so if I have some free time I can
immediately know what to do.

------
JansjoFromIkea
Seeing as Nook Simple Touches go for about $20 on ebay and can be rooted to be
a pretty basic Android 2.0 tablet, would this be a significantly cheaper and
easier way of achieving the same results or is developing even the most
rudimentary of apps for Android 2.0 an absolute nightmare in the modern day.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Buying an old e-reader has many advantages. It's 4x cheaper than this project
and has even a battery.

------
cvburgess
I would actually buy a product version of this. I use a Remarkable E-Ink
tablet and its pretty incredible. This would be quite nice, so only the
notifications i really care about ( where i need to be ) show up without
sounds and colors and all the distractions would be amazing

~~~
nexuist
As someone seriously looking into buying a Remarkable - worth it? Forget the
price for a second and compare the Remarkable to an iPad Pro w/ Pencil. Would
you still grab the Remarkable to jot down notes, or would you much prefer the
iPad?

~~~
vinay427
Not the OP but I have a reMarkable tablet. I think it's far superior for
writing notes (not really drawing due to the lack of color) or reading
academic papers or other PDFs (that don't benefit much from color). The pen-
on-paper experience is definitely better if you can look past the limitations
of the display.

I use it for reading and annotating academic papers or PDFs of presentations,
for which I find it superior to an iPad/Apple Pencil in just about every way
except for sometimes syncing and transferring documents (this would be easier
on Android platforms, though perhaps not iOS). That's still a little clunky
particularly if you use Linux, but there are a variety of open source tools
now to facilitate the process. The tablet doesn't natively store annotations
as standard PDF annotations, but it's not a proprietary format, and this only
matters if you SSH in to directly access files.

If you plan to get one now, consider waiting for or preordering the upcoming
generation (July?).

------
0x38B
Looks like a satisfying project! Also, website design is nice - plenty of
negative space and contrasting font weights creates an elegant, easy to read
site. When I redo my blog, I would love to shoot for something similar.

~~~
brettcvz
Thank you! I’m not a designer, so the advice of my designer friends was “pick
exactly 2 fonts, use lots of white space, and left align edges.”

The code for the site is open source, feel free to borrow/steal.

~~~
0x38B
It seems to have worked, because I was impressed!

And thank you, having examples to take inspiration from makes all the
difference.

------
raihansaputra
E-paper is ideal, but even a UI like this for old phones/tablets would be cool
to have on my desk.

------
nubela
Fun project! Do you have links to the eInk module?

~~~
brettcvz
It’s this one:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075JLP2LP/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075JLP2LP/)

