A resin.io name badge

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Ever since I started at resin.io, I’ve wanted a name badge that I can update with a git push. I came across the PaPiRus ePaper HAT a few weeks back and realized I could finally make that happen!

self-portrait with openstack t-shirt and messy bathroom
badge.jpg400×534 43 KB

I’ve put the code that drives this in a github project named resin-nametag. It’s pretty simple:

  • It sets up the driver and userspace utilities for the PaPiRus HAT
  • It generates a QR code from a provided URL
  • It uses Imagemagick to combine a black and white image (of my face unless you change it :slight_smile: ) with the QR code and some text
  • Finally it just draws that image to the ePaper display

I stuck some metal on the back (properly insulated, of course!) so that I can attach it to my shirt with a magnet.

don't do this if you have a pacemaker

This way I can update my badge and then unplug the Pi so I don’t have to carry a battery around with me. Because the display is ePaper, it won’t clear until I plug back in and push a change.

I can’t wait to go to the next conference with this! :smiley:

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This is awesome, I really want one of these too! :slight_smile:

You are going to a handful of conferences next week, this should come handy, right? :name_badge: I really like the approach you took for generating the image (pulling in the info and making the image on the fly). Looking at the code was a big “duh!” feeling, why I wouldn’t ever have considered that. :blush:

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Yeah, I plan to try this out next week at SCALE. We’ll see how it goes!

And I think there’s a good reason why you might not have generated the image on the fly in previous projects – Imagemagick is difficult to use! Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing tool. But it has so many options and can do so many things that it can be difficult to figure out exactly which option you want. I think I spent about 60% of the time on this project just reading manpages and tweaking options :slight_smile:

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Yeah, cool! I’ve tried to hack it a bit, and include a whole vCard in the QR code instead of the URL alone, but it gets pretty big pretty quickly (just a 2-3 fields and int was covering my face in the badge :head_bandage: :). I wonder if the resolution could be adjusted for the QR code to scale it down a bit and still be scannable… (something to hack on later :slight_smile:

The metal idea is pretty good for attachment, I’m thinking whether to thread something through the corner holes to attach… That might look a bit toooooo DIY (your’s is DIY but cleverly hidden:)

Designing the picture with GIMP’s threshold function was pretty easy, just needed to scour pictures with relatively uniform background.

2017-02-24 10.15.45-min.jpg5376×3752 671 KB

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Hah, that looks great! :smiley: I agree that adding more to the QR code is good, but it does get large quickly. I don’t have a good solution to that, other than maybe putting all your contact details on a URL shortening service, but then they can’t be picked up directly to the address book on a phone.

And we really need to find an artist to make us black-and-white cartoon pictures of our faces… @taahirisaacs are you bored? :slight_smile:

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