CALE is a screen administrator where you can mix content of different APIs and control the content output. This output can be exported as a bitmap image and can be used to refresh dynamically WiFi online displays such as an Epaper or Eink displays that are online using ESP32 or ESP8266 running CALE Firmware. But you can use it also to display this API mixins in your monitor, tablet or any device.
CALE Web-Service is free for personal use and supports up to 3 different Screens. If you need to use it for business use supporting more Screens please get in touch with us on the support section after registering an account. Check our Firmware for ESP32/ESP8266 and the supported E-ink displays in order to build one of this displays yourself. Additionally we recently added support for TFT Displays (TFT-Firmware coming at the beginning of May 2020)
Primary target displays are the so called Eink or Epaper. The technical term is electrophoretic ink, that when laminated to a plastic film and then adhered to electronics, it creates an Electronic Paper Display (EPD).
The ones that expose an SPI interface for makers come in up to 2 EInk colors, 3 colors counting the white background, but in the first version of this Screen administrator tool we are targeting only the ones with Black ink (2 colors).
Building one Epaper displaySelect a board that you want to use: ESP8266 or ESP32
Either will work. 8266 will consume less but ESP32 will have another powerful features that make it a nice partner to travel with like zlib compression and bluetooth configuration
- Connect the SPI from the Epaper to the ESP32 following the Schematics. Note that SDIN needs to go to MOSI in ESP32 (gpio 23) and CLK to gpio 18. The other pins can be freely wired to other gpios and are configurable in CALE Firmware
- Print a case for the display you are using
- Get a Lion battery of at least 2000mA/h. I recommend using ESP32 TinyPICO www.tinypico.com for a great low consumption (branch: cale_tinypico )
- Get PlatformIO and the Framework from your selected board installed
https://fasani.de/2018/11/24/platformio-an-alternative-to-arduino-ide-and-a-complete-ecosystem-for-iot If you still use Arduino is also fine, but I recommend to try Platformio since is a very nice way to package dependencies in your project.
Edit the default_envs line if you want to switch to lolin_d32 (ESP32) or just select your board to match it exacly
https://github.com/martinberlin/eink-calendar/blob/master/platformio.ini#L5
And make a copy of lib/Config.h.dist into lib/Config.h
Add there your SSID / PASS so the board knows how to connect to your Router
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