scretUI - Stardance

Ship #1 Pending review

scretUI is a phone case with built-in 4.2" e-ink display that can display current time, date, to-do list, 7-hour forecast and dynamic landscape. It uses ESP32-S3 to connect to a mobile app via BLE every 5 minutes. Thanks to 1500mAh battery, it can last around one week on a single charge. I think the hardest part was getting BLE to work reliably, but soldering in such a tight space was also pretty hard (especially because I'm not that good at soldering). The whole case adds around 5 mm compared to standard case, and I'm pretty satisfied with it because first iterations added twice as much. Most of this space is occupied by polycarbonate that is protecting the e-ink display so unfortunately I couldn't shrink it more without losing durability. I managed to accomplish main goals of this project (not getting in the way of main camera and minimum 4 day battery life).

4 devlogs
7h build

Video of Project → See source code →

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@kan411 on scretUI · 29 days ago

18m logged

Devlog #4 - Fixed few last bugs before shipping project, recorded demo.

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@kan411 on scretUI · about 1 month ago

2h 38m 21s logged

Devlog #3 - Today I mainly worked on bug that occured after lask devlog (the phone wasn’t connecting to esp32 after first connection) and changed app language to engilsh so I can publish it on my github.

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@kan411 on scretUI · about 1 month ago

3h 22m 21s logged

Devlog #2 – Apart from fixing minor bugs, since the last update I replaced my schedule with a to-do list (because holidays in my country are starting next week). I redesigned the app so I can now add and remove tasks from the to-do list. I also worked on dynamic clouds: depending on the cloud cover, the screen now displays 0–10 clouds, and I made sure they don’t overlap. I replaced hard-coded localization with the phone’s current locale. Lastly, I made it so that after sunset, instead of a sun icon in the weather forecast, a moon icon is displayed.

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@kan411 on scretUI · about 1 month ago

50m 2s logged

I started this project before (around 2 weeks ago) I found out about hack club so those are things I made for this project and aren’t logged here:

I designed and 3d printed (in tpu 90a) case (i think it is final version) with space for:

xiao seed ESP32 s3 that controls whole device
4.2 inch e-ink (white and black)
1500mAh lipo battery (in white petg housing so it has better protection and doesn’t overheat)
button to turn on and off the ESP32
voltage divider so I can read battery voltage directly from ESP32 analog pins - PC for e-ink protection

Basic firmware that every 5 minutes connect to my phone and display:

7 hour weather forecast (temp and rain probability)
current time (+/- 5 minutes)
simple logo that is replaced with error code if something goes wrong
My schedule
current sun position (that is replaced by night sky after sunset)
simple cloud that slowly moves throught the sky (place where sun position is displayed)

Added dark mode (which turns on after sunset)