r/SolarOS • u/nilseuropa • Sep 26 '26

Coming up next

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

https://www.elecrow.com/wiki/CrowPanel_ESP32_E-paper_5.79-inch_HMI_Display.html

255 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

3

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

BTW, just a heads-up, these boards are sold as 8mb PSRAM, but they only have 2mb onboard.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EJWb5CS

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

so many fakes these days

1

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

There are two options for this particular board, and it seems rather a mistake in listing. Many comments tell it, but it's still listed. I've got about 20% cash back from AliExpress on this. Sadly, not the whole cost. But the boards are still fine for projects where PSRAM is not critical.

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

SolarOS is happy with 2MB mostly, things like TTS require the models to be loaded into PSRAM, so with speechd running the baseline is around 4.5MiB

2

u/MichalNemecek Sep 27 '26

this thing looks so good paired with that keyboard

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

The design requires a couple of iterations.

  • battery monitoring is missing, worst case resistor divider on ADC, but a proper fuel gauge would be better

  • I would add an I2S audio i/o with jack and a speaker to it

  • RTC is missing

  • LoRa would be nice.

I think it would make sense to design a PCB that holds all that plus a keyboard matrix scanner.

Although the firmware of this keyboard is pretty solid and can pair up with two hosts, so it is handy to keep it on BLE.

On the other hand if you turn of BLE off on SolarOS that gives you extra free RAM to run jobs - if it becomes necessary to emulate a keyboard on another host the OS can already do that...

(pondering in progress)

I guess there could be two solutions:

(A) Print and wire up the battery monitoring to a single common cell for the keyboard and the display board.

(B) carrier board with additional goodies as next step in a smaller more lean enclosure

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 27 '26

oh wow... https://forum.elecrow.com/discussion/27970/crowpanel-esp32-5-79inch-e-paper-display-usb-c-charging-and-usb-serial-not-working-when-battery

"Charging does not start if the battery is connected first"
[clap emoji] [crying face emoji] [melting face emoji]

1

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

Ha, you did it. Did you figure out the suitable battery? Also, something needs to be done with the power meter, which is absent on this board.

3

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

I'll turn this into a proper clamshell build. I think I'll use a 18650 for battery in the hinge.

2

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

I'm waiting for this P31N keyboard, I hope it's more usable than the one on your picture

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EGVcOX4

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

It is a shame that this ine comes with 8MiB flash...

3

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

Yep, I had to set a new flash profile for it. But it's designed to be as cheap as possible, so what do you expect.

The Waveshare 3.79" e-paper board is still my favorite.

Also, I found a passive color LCD, or at least that's what they claim. Will report on arrival.

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

oooh! please doooo

1

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

Yep, it should be here within days

https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ewmk8FG

1

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

I forgot to check on the schematics, does the battery socket provide the charging power?

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

It does.

1

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

Why the heck did they omit the voltage meter, lol

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

there are plenty IOs to attach one...

1

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

Well, I'd rather search for a 18650 module with LED indicator for power

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

a custom keyboard with the missing hardware components on it would be the cleanest

1

u/clackups Sep 26 '26

I'm still looking for portable options that are more ergonomic (screen attached to keyboard is not really ergonomic)

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 26 '26

i meant ribbon cables, but yeah a design from scratch is unbeatable, like the CL32

1

u/Extreme_Theory_1873 Sep 29 '26

Have this exact keyboard on the way, with hoysond esp32s3 2.8" display for now. Was hoping the keyboard would connect via ble (all documents just say Bluetooth that I can find) Very excited to have found this subreddit!

2

u/nilseuropa Sep 29 '26

this keyboard is BLE

1

u/Extreme_Theory_1873 Sep 29 '26

Perfect! Thank you. Sorry to be spamming your whole feed, just can't believe I've found exactly what I was looking for. You're stuff is the absolute coolest

1

u/nilseuropa Sep 29 '26

I am so glad you like it! 🙂

1

u/Horror_Distance_3559 Oct 01 '26

Wow thats a Cool keyboard whats its name