It’s not something we always think about, but the reality is that many of the affordable electronic components we enjoy today are only available to us because they’re surplus parts intended for commercial applications. The only reason you can pick up something like a temperature sensor for literal pennies is because somebody decided to produce millions of them for inclusion in various consumer doodads, and you just happened to luck out.
The vPlayer, from [Kevin Darrah] is a perfect example. Combining a 1.69 inch touch screen intended for smartwatches with the ESP32-S3, the vPlayer is a programmable network-connected display that can show…well, pretty much anything you want, within reason. As demonstrated in the video below, applications range from showing your computer’s system stats to pulling in live images and videos from the Internet.
With an ESP32 at its heart, you can obviously program the vPlayer to do your bidding just like any other development board based on the chip. But to speed things along, [Kevin] is providing demo code to accomplish several common enough tasks that there’s a good chance he’s already got your use case covered.
Out of the box it will play videos stored on the SD card, though you’ll first have to run them through ffmpeg to get the format right. There’s also code written to have the vPlayer act as a weather display, or pull down data and images from public APIs.
The vPlayer is intended to be powered via the USB-C connection, but the VUSB and 3.3 V pins from the ESP32 are broken out on the back should you want to inject power that way. Just be warned, the documentation notes that doing so while plugged into USB may release the Magic Smoke. [Kevin] has also provided a 3D model of the vPlayer and its stock case, should you want to design your own 3D printed enclosure.
Admittedly, there’s nothing exactly groundbreaking about the vPlayer. You could easily roll your own version with existing modules. But as enjoyable as it can be to come up with your own solutions, there’s something to be said for this sort of polished, turn-key experience.
Thanks to [LegoManACM] for the tip.
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This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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