How about designing your ESPaper content rather than programming it? You can fully customize the content to display. And load content from remote resources (calendars etc.). And much more. All with the help of https://www.espaper.com.
No Arduino programming required anymore!
This client here is responsible for a simple & smooth registration process and for the general update cycle:
- connect to WiFi
- pull image from server
- render it
- go back to deep sleep
- repeat
Note that the client has support for OTA (Over-The-Air upgrades). See details below.
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- Go to https://www.espaper.com and create an account. You can either use email and password for authentication or use one of the social login options.
- Install drivers for USB-to-Serial
- Prepare the Arduino IDE for ESP8266
- You need at least ESP8266 Arduino Core 2.5.0
- Download or clone this repository to your computer. Then open it in the Arduino IDE.
- Install the MiniGrafx library through the library manager in the Arduino IDE.
- Define the device type in
settings.h:33ff. Hints: 'EDP' = ESPaper Display, '29' = 2.9'' - Compile and upload the sketch to your ESPaper module. Then Restart it.
- in Tools > Board: * > select "Generic ESP8266 Module"
- in Tools > Flash Mode select "QIO"
- in Tools > Flash Size select "2M (512K SPIFFS)"
- Follow the instructions displayed on screen.
- Initiate the registration process by restarting the device.
- Now go back to https://www.espaper.com and complete registration process by adding your device.
- Design the screen for your device.
This firmware/application supports OTA (Over-The-Air upgrades). With every request for an updated screen it sends its client version to the server. Should that version be different from the current version then the server will, in addition to the screen, respond with instructions for the client to go fetch an updated binary. It will then load the new version from the server and update itself.
That means that you only need to manually install the client once. After that it will keep itself up-to-date automatically.
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