Why?

I wanted to dip my toes into embedded software development.

There's this cute little dev kit called a "CYD" (Cheap Yellow Display), I think I got two of them off Amazon for $15.

It uses an ESP32 microcontroller, which was perfect. I wanted something that could run a little program, but I didn't think I should need a whole operating system for it.

I wanted to make my brother-in-law something for his birthday, since he got me a 3d printer for Christmas. Of course, I missed that deadline.

It took me another few months to actually print something and send it to him, but in that time I learned some 3d modeling and microcontroller programming.

So I present to you, The Captain Underpants King of St Louis.

I think he likes Captain Underpants (truthfully, I ran out of time and just stole a model. The cape wouldn't print so I cut a piece off the Christmas tree skirt).

He won a marathon in St Louis a little bit back. I programmed the CYD to display a clock (of course), and the seconds counter was an animated GIF of a little running fella.

At a specific time (twice a day), the screen will display a little animation I made that congratulates him on his winning time.

How?

I just programmed it and printed a case for it. I had to learn how to use vernier calipers, so that was a nice bonus.

With What?

C++, Arduino Studio, bitbank2 GIF and SPI libraries