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133 points tosh | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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whatever1 ◴[] No.43553680[source]
At what point does one decides that a microcontroller doesn’t cut it and moves to a full OS system like rpi?

For example this could be an esp32 project

replies(3): >>43553985 #>>43554074 #>>43554912 #
1. a2dam ◴[] No.43553985[source]
I made a board similar to this that is based on an ESP32 eink screen (the Inkplate, which I highly recommend). The easiest way to render a dashboard like this is with a website, versus making the ESP32 render custom components and call a bunch of APIs). There isn't enough power on the ESP32 to render a website, but there is enough to fetch and render an image, but something has to generate that image. On mine, I use Home Assistant and pre-render a custom dashboard into a PNG, which the Inkplate grabs and renders. This guy skipped all that by just having the Pi do all the work in the first place, which is a fine way to do things if you can get the display working how you like.
replies(1): >>43554821 #
2. martin_a ◴[] No.43554821[source]
Very nice product that Inkplate. Seems like it's a sweetspot where I can think about the content and not worry too much about the hardware aspect.