HD EPaper Ticker

We made an epaper crypto-ticker (codename: Pauline) at the end of 2021, and then an epaper quotes ticker (codename: Audrey). We sold some, and also open-sourced the code and instructions on GitHub, because caring’s sharing.

Having had the time to fully appreciate epaper, we were hooked, and wondered what we could do if we spared no expense on the screen. Fast forward a few months and this is what we came up with codename: “Big Audrey”

The large version of our ticker sports a 1448 x 1072 pixel epaper screen with 16 levels of grey and a refresh rate of around 1 second. Compared to our first ticker, that’s:

33x more pixels,

4x more grey levels,

6x faster refresh.

Next we needed to make a frame. Designing something that does the new screen justice was the priority, so we built a lean frame from bent aluminum and had it powder coated. Early prototypes had an asymmetric design (see video), but after some tweaking, we got it into a symmetric form.

At the rear of the frame is a Raspberry Pi Zero running Linux, but the simple design means that it is modular. We’ve also used the screen with a Raspberry Pi4 on our Bitcoin Node as well as used it as a payment mechanism in our Bitcoin Boombox.

We’re still calling it a ticker because we are shipping it with the Python code that pulls a variety of content from the internet (video below). However, our first ticker started as hardware assembled to fit a neat use-case. In this project, focus shifted to building a versatile computer in a form-factor that we love.

Now that we’ve settled on a design that we’re proud of, we’re making a small number of them available in our store. We assemble these by hand. We use local suppliers and manufacturers wherever we can. This human-scale lets us keep full-control over the quality of components and craftsmanship.

We’re really excited to share our work, and looking forward to seeing how people use them. Keep us posted!