How To Make a DIY Tidbyt Display for HALF the Price?!

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this video is sponsored by PCB way more on that later what's up everybody I'm Charlie with modern hobbyist and I just finished making this DIY mini retro display and in this video I'm going to show you how I did it so you can make one too let's get started [Music] now the inspiration for this project obviously came from tidbit displays which are Super popular right now and for good reason simply put the tidbit display is a 64 by 32 pixel LED Matrix with a microcontroller that tells the pixels what to show they have a huge library of ready to go apps so you can install automatically using their mobile app you can configure what apps you want to show when you want to show them and you can even develop your own apps using the pixlip framework which basically just generates a gif or a webp image that you can upload wirelessly to your display so long story short tidbits are awesome and I'd love to have one but I also like to do things the hard way so that's why I built my own in fact in this video I'm going to be building it two and a half different ways so keep watching because I promise no matter how much experience you have with electronics you can build one too in the end this display won't have all the fancy features of a tidbit but it will be a nice and simple starting point to hopefully get you addicted to Electric projects so without further Ado let's build one to start you're going to want to pick up a Raspberry Pi Pico W and the wave share Pico RGB Matrix Display Kit that's a lot of words the kit not only comes with the 64 by 32 pixel Matrix that makes up the majority of this project but it also comes with a baseboard that makes setup a breeze a diffuser and a wiring harness to power the display now I really like this version because it's literally Plug and Play you don't even have to use a screwdriver to assemble it all you have to do is Mount the picot onto the baseboard and then the baseboard onto the display and then you're ready for the software now if you're new to programming Electronics then you might be starting to get a little bit nervous right now but I promise it's super easy so bear with me I am going to go kind of fast though because I got a lot of stuff to get through this project uses circuit python which is a simplified version of python targeted specifically at beginners and lazy people like me and it's super easy to set up and get started first download the latest circuit python binary for the Pico W which will be a uf2 file and prepare the Pico for flashing by holding the boot select button as you plug it into your computer this will put the Pico into mass storage mode and it'll Mount onto your computer as a flash drive titled RPI rp2 once the picot is mounted drag and drop the uf2 binary onto the new Drive which will Flash the circuit python firmware onto your Pico and remount it as a new Drive called circuit Pi now here's the fun part all you have to do is drag and drop the code files which are also linked in the description onto the circuit PI drive and you're almost ready to go but there's one small change that you need to make first you need to open up the secret stop Pi file in a text editor enter your Wi-Fi connection settings the ID of your YouTube channel and the API key for your Google analytics account I'll have instructions linked below that will walk you through setting up an API key but once you have it you'll just copy and paste it into the secrets file and you should be good to go and that's it for this version like you could literally stop watching right now and go build one of these yourself I mean don't stop watching yet because I have more to show you but in literally five minutes you could have a version of this project up and running however my code is really just the starting point the Pico baseboard is so packed with extra features that it's definitely worth the extra price but what if you don't care about all those extra features and you just want to save a little bit of money well that's where version 1.5 comes in it does take a bit more work but you could save almost 40 dollars by ditching the kit and wiring the Pico directly to the display the setup and the code stay pretty much exactly the same with the only difference being that you'll have to wire each pin of the display to the picot directly luckily if you buy the wave share display without the Pico baseboard it actually comes with a 16 pin IDC connector so you can wire everything up easily so obviously skipping the baseboard in favor of hardwiring everything yourself is a good bit more work but it could be worth the money if you feel comfortable doing that but before you go running off to build that version of the display there were a few downsides to the Pico that I wanted to talk about and that helped to explain why I built multiple versions it turns out I had a really hard time fitting all the necessary libraries on it to run this project the Pico comes with two megabytes of onboard flash storage which is actually pretty damn good but once you've flashed the required version of circuit python onto it you'll be looking at closer to 500 kilobytes of space and that 500 kilobytes goes pretty quickly when you start copying all the necessary libraries and in the end I just ran out of space so what do you do when you want to include more images or use more libraries or make more API calls well I'll tell you right after a word from today's video sponsor PCB way PCB way is a company that specializes in prototyping and small volume production making it the perfect One-Stop shop for all your DIY project needs with PCB way you can easily upload your designs and get them manufactured with precision and speed using their online tool you can upload a gerber file select your design settings and get 10 custom pcbs for only five dollars and that's not all PCB way offers a range of other services including 3D printing CNC Machining sheet metal fabrication and injection molding services and as a special offer my viewers can get five dollars off their first order using the link in the description below so whether you're a professional engineer like me or a hobbyist like me after four o'clock you can trust PCB way to help bring your electronics projects to life huge thanks to PCB way for sponsoring this video now let's get back to it so how did I solve the problem of the Raspberry Pi Pico not having enough space for this project well I swapped it out for an out of fruit Matrix portal M4 The Matrix portal comes with a 20 pin IDC connector directly on the bottom of it for a quick and easy connection to the display and it's also got 512 kilobytes of flash storage and two megabytes of qspi flash storage which is pretty cool the setup is basically the same too except once you've downloaded the correct circuit python binary you have to double-click the reset button on the Matrix portal to get it into flashing mode before dragging and dropping the firmware onto it followed by the code files speaking of the coated is a little bit different but it basically functions the same as the first surgeon you still have to overwrite the Wi-Fi and Google API credentials in secrets.pi file but once you do you should have a perfectly functioning DIY retro display and this time you should have around one and a half megabytes of space left to do whatever else you want to do with it the only thing that I don't like about the Matrix portal is that it hangs off the side of the display when it's plugged in it's especially frustrating because it seems like such a simple fix to just flip the connector around but either way I just picked up an extension cable remove the E20 pin connector on the bottom and replace it with the extension cable so it fits inside the edges of the display that was definitely more work than the Pico version but I think it was worth it considering all the extra flash space that the Matrix portal has now all that's left to do is package it all up in an enclosure the real tidbit has a wooden box around it which I could try to do but I already 3D printed this one for it so ah fine I'll make it out of wood [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you and after some programming a little wiring and a ton of questionable woodworking here it is my DIY tidbit display complete with a handmade Walnut enclosure for the final version I spent around eighty dollars for everything including the wood which definitely isn't bad but you could easily get it under fifty dollars if you built a Bare Bones version with the Raspberry Pi Pico and a 3D printed enclosure personally I'm glad I went with the Walnut though it looks awesome and it gave me a chance to stretch my woodworking muscles a bit the muscles also obviously this one only shows the number of subscribers a given YouTube channel has but there's no reason you have to stop here you could turn it into a bitcoin price tracker a bus schedule display a weather app or any number of fun things unfortunately I don't have time to write all those other apps but I hope that I've inspired some of you to go out and give it a try and if you're interested I'll have the code and instructions linked down in the description to get you started also if you decide to build one and you have some questions then don't hesitate to hop on my Discord server and ask for help lastly let me know what you thought of this project down in the comments and do me a favor by hitting those like And subscribe buttons otherwise that's it for this project thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one thank you
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Channel: Modern Hobbyist
Views: 25,872
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: tidbyt diy, tidbyt the retro display, cool gadgets, tidbyt: the retro display, what is tidbyt, tidbyt apps, tidbyt, tidbyt display, diy tidbyt, how to make a tidbyt, tidbyt review, tidbyt setup, tidbyt configuration, making tidbyt clock, diy tidbyt clock, subscriber counter, youtube subscriber counter display, subscriber count display, subscriber counter display, subscriber count, how to make a tidbyt display, how to make a tidbyt app
Id: 8cMhLvUQvlk
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)
Published: Fri Mar 10 2023
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