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Comment by reacharavindh | Hacker News Reader

I would really love to make one of these for myself. This would be my first Raspberry Pi project. However, I'm a little to scared to even step into it because I'm not a hardware guy at all - I wouldn't know which pins from the display goes where. I can solder stuff, but I'd need help figuring out what goes where.

Second scare is about how to get the software onto Raspberry pi W. In the past, all how-tos I have read just say "flash it" and go on to the next cool step, but I'm lost right there.... how to get the software into the thing? - SSH?

My point is, I'd appreciate a really beginner friendly write up of your project. From the parts list, how to connect everything, and how to get the software on to it. I'd pay for such a tutorial rather than the finished product. I know it is your time that I am asking for, but I wish you found time to spare to help a beginner like me.

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This is much easier than you think:

- What wire goes where will generally be explained to you. These boards all have a set of pins that do standard things, and are labelled via a "pinout" diagram. See https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2012/06/simple-guide-to-th... for details if you're interested.

- Getting software onto a Pi is super easy. You have to "flash" a linux distro onto an SD card. There's a GUI tool that does this for you, all you need is an SD card, a computer with an SD card reader. Then you pop the SD card into your Pi, and you can boot into a full linux desktop, complete with internet, Gnome, etc. https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/insta...

This was a labor of love, so it’s definitely not that I don’t have time - more that no project of mine has ever been this popular, so normally no one asks for the tutorial!

As others have commented, this project is mostly software and would be a great introduction to building physical electronic gadgets.

How about this - I think there’s enough context in the blog post and source code to recreate it, but if you start out and run into any issues, send me an email and I’ll get you unstuck. In exchange, I’d ask that you take detailed notes of your process and post a blog post/github readme of how you got it running for others to follow, and I’ll link to it.

Normally the first step to flash an SD card is to use Balena etcher, very easy to do: https://youtu.be/kWRx40Q8B_A (random YT tutorial)

After that, you can indeed use SSH and the command line to install the software of your choice, e.g. with Docker (you should assign your RPi a static IP for convenience).

Lastly, here's a random example, installion of Hassio on an RPi: https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/installation/

Watch a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VO4vGlQ1pg

Pimoroni sells HAT form factor of epapers. They also have nice tutorials. Have a look: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-phat?variant=1254925...

Going to guess you're a programmer?

If you're like many others, you very likely teach yourself things often by investigating and experimentation :)

No reason you can't do that here.

These are (relatively) safe low voltage parts, a bit of googling and you'd be on your way :).

Except it's not that hard to accidentally fry a Raspberry Pi. I did that to two or three of them when I was experimenting. They would still boot up at first, but the CPU chip would immediately get burning hot to the touch, and the only way to get it to stay on was to blow on it continuously. I don't remember what I did to fry them.

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