I'm super interested in these ESL displays, but couldn't really find any (the few I found are very expensive per piece).
Are there any special keywords or sources for finding them in Europe?
I love stuff like this. I once went way too far down a rabbit hole with addressable Christmas lights.
https://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/turning-ge-color-effects-g-35-c...
These are also serially linked but the first step is to give each lamp an address and then messages just get passed on until consumed by the appropriate lamp.
I never quite understood why shops use those electronic shelf labels.
Most of them can't be updated by someone in the store headquarters remotely. Someone has to take a bluetooth programmer device around and program each one by hand. And if they're doing that, they might as well just take a handheld label printer or sheet of labels.
Benefit of the labels is they're clearer than e-ink, brighter, and more colorful (more sales)
This is cool. I like E-Ink displays and also have plans to build a wireless display like this, but was/am stuck on how to receive data while also sleeping as deeply as possible, so the linked page about advertising looks helpful!
I'd run it off of a LiFePO4 (bioenno or something), but that's the ham in me (also I'd probably give it powerpole connectors just to further justify how much I spent on my crimpers haha).
Really cool!
Just came to say that I am loving rbaron’s write ups - thank you introducing me to them @frxx.
What a coincidence that this [1] popped up in my youtube feed today.
That's really neat! I wonder if (and how long) they would run off a supercap or harvested wifi energy.
Love the simplicity of the circuit with the daisy-chained uart lines and the use of a time-to-live counter to determine the target so you don't need to give each one an ID.