Remember the good old PDAs or Personal Digital Assistants that people used for taking notes, keeping schedules, keeping a tab on contacts, and such stuff? Here is what can be said as a modern take on the PDAs of yore but with a twist. As Hackaday revealed, this one comes with an E Ink display, a secondary OLED panel, and a keypad made of soft silicon that is encased within a see-through case. It has been designed and developed by Ashtf and can only function as a note-taking device in its current form.
The device comes powered by an ESP32-S3 processor and supports Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2. The larger E Ink panel serves as the primary display and is not backlit, which means it depends on the ambient light for its readability. The display is monochrome and has high contrast, which makes everything look sharp and crisp.
However, since the E Ink display has a low refresh rate, developer Ashtf has devised an interesting solution. He has a smaller OLED display on which anything you type shows up instantly. Only after you press the space bar is it transferred to the e-paper display. This serves as a nice workaround for the otherwise slower E-Ink display.
A user-replaceable battery powers the device. There is also a USB-C port for recharging the battery. The device runs a fundamental software written in C++ using the Arduino IDE. Currently, all the device offers is an app launcher that also serves as the home screen, a basic text editor, and a file management feature. All of the files can be found in the EinkPDA GitHub repository.
Ashtf is considering adding more functions in future iterations, which means a more advanced version is possible. Stay tuned.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
