E-Ink Alarm Clock

Dan its 2025 (or 2023 when this was made but w.e.) who uses an alarm clock anymore, we all have phones.
Which yea like valid point. But I wanted a clock in my room, always in the same spot, always on and showing the current time... but also not blinding me at 3am. E-Ink screens are really cool. They dont emit light like most LED/LCD screens. They reflect ambient light. They have insanely good viewing angles, and remain visible direct sunlight. You've probably seen one on a kindle or some other e-reader.

So I went and bought an E-Ink display. It came with a handy controller board which could be driven with an external micro-controller. I opted to go for a full on raspberry pi zero 2w. Certainly a little overkill for this use. But I had one on hand, and it already handled NTP (network time protocol) for me.

The case is a 2 part 3d print I designed using Fusion360 (yes.. again). I probably did 6 or 7 revisions to the case. I wanted something that felt crazy thin. But I also needed a place to stuff the Pi, the control board. And the breakout board for the USB power. So it has a thick base, which is slanted so the clock sits tilted back at a 15deg angle.

This worked great for a while, and was in use for about 18 months. Sadly the screen eventually failed. I didn't buy the best screen out there and with it updating at least every minute, it had refreshed almost 800,000 times during that period. Sadly I wish it hadn't it was a nice clock and I really appreciated its paper like aesthetic.
This may be a project I revisit and rebuild with a nicer screen. Something better suited to refresh millions of times without burn-in or failing.