Here at MakeDeck with think that ePaper displays and the Electric Imp are a perfect match. With extremely low power consumption during sleep, and the ability to update the board with WiFi makes this design a fantastic combo. The commercial applications for this combination are staggering, and we will continue to help developers create products around it. @Tom at Electric Imp created a fully working reference design for three of the Pervasive Displays ePaper boards, and MakeDeck is excited to be able to bring it to you.
MakeDeck has 100 Vanessa PCB’s in stock and is ready to manufacture, but because this is a specialized board, we will not be manufacturing until we receive at least 50 pre-orders. At that point it will take approximately two weeks to manufacture and we will ship immediately. Edit - We are manufacturing now. The board will sell for $69, (no display, battery or enclosure) and we are offering a 10% discount to all pre-orders. See the product page for more details.
MakeDeck is committed to bringing services to the development community to make using and developing with the board very effective, so help us get started and order a Vanessa!
Reference Design page link:
A few of you have asked about Vanessa updates, so I am going to post one here. We’ve decided to go ahead with manufacturing the board, and we expect it to be available within the next two weeks.
The web API that we are creating for the Vanessa board is nearly ready to use. You will be able to send text and formatting information to the API, and it will return a properly formatted .wif file for the display that you are using. This service will make the display very useable.
Here are a few cool uses for Vanessa. If you think of others, please post them, as we will be making sample code available.
- Hourly updated weather forecast
- Where am I - Office door sign
- To do list - Fridge magnet
- Imp-e-rator or any project status monitor
Vanessa has two user buttons, 8MB of SPI flash, and a battery monitoring circuit on board as well as a number of other great reference features. We expect to see all kinds of cool projects using it.
We expect to receive the first order of Vanessa boards on Friday night, so the pre-order sale will end Friday at midnight EST.
If you don’t already have an ePaper display, at the moment the only ones that seem to be available are with evaluation kits. Pervasive Displays has stated that the new version of the display will be available early June, and they should be available from Arrow shortly thereafter.
I am hoping to make the ePaper web service available next week, so stay tuned!
…and a HUGE thanks to Tom at EI for designing Vanessa and a really cool custom enclosure!
Vanessa and 2.7" display inside a 3D printed enclosure from Shapeways.
I’ve been busy writing example code to display your local weather forecast using Vanessa and the Pix API. Just type a zip code into the agent hosted web page and the display will update! The 2" display is shown.
More updates to the Pix API…
2.7" displays are back in stock at Arrow! We will be making them available as a bundle with the Vanessa board this week.
MakeDeck has 2.7" ePaper displays! This board is receiving data from our impTherm X2 BBQ temperature monitor regularly updating. We can change the update time through the agent web interface.
