Check Out This Delightfully Funky E Ink YouTube Counter

If you take your YouTube channel even slightly seriously, there are two things you need to know at all times: how many subscribers you have, and how many views you’re getting. That’s easy enough to check on your smartphone or computer, but it’s even easier to have a clock-like display that shows those numbers at all times. After all, your subscriber count is more important than the time anyway. That’s why Martin Mander built this funky E Ink YouTuber counter, and he has a tutorial on how he did it.

There are probably hundreds of YouTube counter projects floating around out there, and each one is a testament to their creator’s style and skill. In this case, that style is ’70s funky, retro goodness all the way. It’s the kind of YouTube counter your uncle Jerry would have bought for his shag-carpeted apartment back in 1972. In fact, the enclosure is upcycled from a Digitron digital alarm clock from the 1970s. On the back of the YouTube counter is switch to change between showing either views or subscribers, and those are shown in a psychedelic font on a E Ink display.

Inside of the enclosure is a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which pulls the YouTube statistics with their API using some simple Python code. Alternatively, that could also be accomplished with something like an ESP8266 microcontroller development board. Once the stats have been gathered, they’re shown on a 2.13" tri-color (red, white, black) 212x104 Pimoroni Inky pHAT E Ink display. Those components were then mounted inside of the enclosure with the help of some LEGO bricks and glue. If you want a YouTube subscribe counter yourself, this is certainly a project you can draw inspiration from.