ExplorInk

E-ink maps for exploration, online or offline. Readable in full sun, no nightly charging.

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

Waiting for a fix used to be a blank panel and the word searching. Now the sky is on the panel: satellites over a horizon, and the honest answer when there is nothing up there. Shipped today for the @lilygo9 T5 S3 Pro.

#eink #GNSS #OpenStreetMap

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

ExplorInk now runs on a second Xteink reader, the X3. First flash today: it boots, names itself, and draws the map from a phone fix over Bluetooth, tiles arriving as you walk. 3.7 inch e-ink, 528x792. #eink #esp32 #maps

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

Roads in our map tiles were one record per OSM fragment. A bridge in Bratislava was 12 records for a line straight to the centimetre. Now they are whole lines: up to a third off a tile, and on the device 0.2 % of pixels moved.

#OpenStreetMap #eink #cartography

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

First boot of our firmware on the Xteink X4 Pro. Its board ID string says SSD1677, the units benched before ours were UC8179, ours is a UC8279. The firmware now asks the panel which chip it is instead of trusting the label.

#eink #esp32 #maps

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

E-paper map on a fuel tank, parked. No glass over the panel, no backlight, no phone connected. Place name, scale bar, a dot, two pins off the edge. Buttons, no touchscreen.

No route line, no next turn. Just where you are.

@lilygo9 T5 S3 Pro
#epaper #openstreetmap #esp32

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

Gloves beat touchscreens, so the two readable buttons on the LilyGo T5 S3 Pro (@lilygo9) had to earn their keep. Hold one and the frontlight walks its levels, let go where you want it. Tap the other and you step back a screen.

#eink #esp32 #opensource

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

@RaemondBW We build ExplorInk, an e-ink trail map on the T5 S3 Pro you ship on. Read your display-ghosting notes closely. We measured refresh cost and runtime on our own board and would like to compare, plus an epdiy finding: https://t.co/bhqxfDYQft

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

A WebDAV GET on our device answered HTTP 200, the right Content-Length, and exactly one byte.

An upstream refactor wrapped the file handle in a Print, not a Stream. The overload stopped matching, so the compiler took operator bool() and wrote 0x01.

#embedded #cpp #ESP32

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

Our 4.7in prototype can now ignore your hand.

Touch has three modes: whole screen live, only the labelled buttons, or off. The key below the panel: tap selects, double tap locks the screen, hold turns on the light.

Handy in a bag, or in rain.

#eink #ESP32 #hiking

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

20 minutes standing perfectly still in Barcelona.

Our GNSS receiver logged 1251 fixes and 42 metres of walking, all of it inside a 4 metre box.

The staircase is the receiver snapping to a ~10 cm grid. That is what "not moving" looks like from orbit.

#GNSS #ESP32 #epaper

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

test

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

Pick a city at home and its map is on the reader before you leave. The queue survives reconnects, and squares the server has not built yet wait their turn instead of failing.

Photo is mid-transfer at 3.9 kB/s. Same link does 13.6 now.

#eink #ESP32 #OpenStreetMap #BLE

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

@RaemondBW @lilygo9 We love what you've created; we're working on a very similar project.

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

A crash on a real ride, no panic reason, no stack. The coredump had it: our BLE teardown races the NimBLE host task into a null callback. Not our bug, but our firmware triggers it on every map exit. Reported upstream: https://t.co/lYDyeL3ThP

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

A car dashboard, morning sun straight on the panel, frontlight off. E-paper does not wash out, and that is the whole reason this project is not an app. Reading it in sun: settled. Refreshing it in sun: still the open one.

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

Our firmware now runs on the LilyGo T5 E-Paper S3 Pro. Boot, touch, SD, Bluetooth, the front light, and a 4.7" 960x540 map drawn from tiles the phone sent over BLE with nothing driving it. Open source, as always. With support @lilygo9

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

ExplorInk firmware 0.2.0-alpha is out: contour lines, hachures and a relief layer on the map (tile format v4), rendered here over Vratna dolina in Mala Fatra. Flash it and let the app refetch your tiles.
https://t.co/cpZmbNULXD

[ExplorInk @explorink_com]

ExplorInk: an e-ink navigation device for motorcycle and trail riding, built by Comsultia. Days of battery life, sunlight-readable screen, no glowing phone mount. Follow along as we build it.