ePaper is something I’ve had half an eye on for a while.

Because, wouldn’t it be cool to have a display on the wall in your hallway which showed the times of busses from nearby stops, the weather for today and tomorrow, whether any bins are due to go out, etc.?

Well, I think so, but having a tablet permanently on seems a bit excessive for the electricity bill.

ePaper display on the wall in my hallway

The device itself came from Andrews and Arnold (if you happen to already be a customer of theirs with a direct debit, you can get it a bit cheaper than the price on Tindie).

I was a little nervous ordering this as the documentation isn’t massive, but I’m pleased to report that I had it up and running for my purposes in a couple of hours.

The web interface makes sense (in particular, it has a page showing what’s currently on the display, so you don’t have to sit in an awkward spot with a laptop to make changes once you’ve committed to mounting it on the wall).

Most of my set-up time was working out the APIs needed to assemble the data - shout out to OxonTime, which gives a remarkably comprehensive API for the data shown on bus stop screens around Oxfordshire. Even my local council turns out to provide a Google Calendar with bin day information in it.

As a final touch, I set up Mosquitto on one of my Raspberry Pis so I could control the coloured LEDs round the edge of the display.

So far all I’ve come up with is red when the bins need to go out tonight, but that does draw the eye to it nicely.

I also need to find a shorter USB-C lead which is the same colour as the wall, but for now, it still looks classy and is a conversation starter with a certain sort of person.