Riverdi IoT Display — The Missing Link in the IoT Ecosystem

The IoT industry has long ignored the need for proper GUIs for the users. In the race for new connectivity options, with all thought directed at nodes and cloud providers and small form factor, the notion of the end user and their comfort was placed out of sight.

Let’s imagine a smart lighting system like the Philips Hue. It is certainly convenient to have a smart-house lighting system that uses a wireless dimmer or switch, with a mobile app that simplifies the handling of the whole system. However, something is missing from the picture — a control panel where you could handle the entire system, possibly one in each room.

A display that easily connects to any system and offers a powerful UI to control it. You can see how it works in this detailed demo with a Riverdi IoT display.

The missing link, of course, was an IoT display, designed and produced with everything an engineer might need.

That is why Riverdi has produced a Python-programmable, ESP32-powered IoT display with truly great graphical capabilities (thanks to the Bridgetek graphics controller onboard). It’s designed to be a part of every high-quality IoT project.

It’s easy to see why, with its low-power consumption, sleek design, and expandability options. Two MikroBUS sockets and two Grove connectors offer a simple and easy way to expand the display through Click Boards and Twigs. You can add everything from buttons to motor control, and temperature and humidity sensors.

Efficient IoT Applications in Python, Thanks to the Integrated Zerynth License

As I’ve mentioned above, Riverdi IoT displays are Python-programmable. Each one has a Zerynth license onboard, that means that you can program each without any limitation in Python and C/Python. The Zerynth toolchain offers advanced power management, firmware over the air updates, multi-threaded applications, support for HTTPS, SSL/TLS, MQTT and other protocols, hardware encryption, Blockchain libraries, and much more.

Thanks to the efficiency of the Zerynth toolchain and the simplicity of Python, you can connect a sensor to the cloud in just 15 lines of code.

If you’re not so proficient in Python, the Zerynth Academy offers many tutorials and articles that will soon make you an expert.

Riverdi IoT Displays

We offer three different versions of the IoT display:

• 5’’ capacitive touch panel
• 5’’ resistive touch panel
• 5’’ Ux touch panel (with a decorative cover glass in either black or white)

The displays offer an 800×480 resolution, low-power consumption, brightness of 510 cd/m², an SPI interface, and more.

The ESP32 integrates the Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, and WiFi. That ensures that the module has a direct connection to the Internet through the WiFi router, while the Bluetooth allows you to connect a smartphone or broadcast low energy beacons for detection.

The BT81x or EVE3 simplifies the system architecture for advanced human-machine interfaces (HMI) by providing functionality for display, audio, and touch as well as an object-oriented architecture approach that extends from display creation to the rendering of the graphics.

Two MikroBUS sockets and two Grove connectors offer a simple and easy way to expand the display through Click Boards and Twigs.

ESP32 — The Most Popular IoT Microcontroller

Moreover, one of the most popular microcontrollers in the IoT world is located on these IoT displays — the Espressif ESP32.

Thanks to its integrated WiFi and Bluetooth, you can easily connect your display to the cloud, and send and receive data.

It’s common knowledge by now that Espressif’s ESP32 microcontroller is ideal for low-power IoT applications and wearable electronics. That is why it can perform as a complete standalone system, reducing communication stack overhead on the main application processor.

Bridgetek Graphics Controllers

The BT81x controller on the Riverdi IoT display is a part of a family of advanced graphics controllers targeted at embedded applications for generating high-quality Human Machine Interfaces (HMI).

Thanks to Zerynth’s BT81x library, building a user interface in Python is not a problem; you can do it in minutes.

You can access the library here.

MikroBUS and Grove— Expand Your Display in Minutes

Every IoT display has two MikroBUS sockets and two Grove connectors onboard, making it easily expandable with hundreds of MikroElektronika Click Boards and SeeedStudio Twigs.

Each Click Board and Twig carries a certain functionality, that can be added to the display. You can choose from temperature and humidity sensors, voltage regulators, RF transceivers, motor control, button, switches, text to speech converters, and UV sensors.

So, you can see, it’s quite easy to get a perfectly customized IoT project in no time.

Conclusions

You can learn more about the displays on the official Riverdi IoT display category page.

Choose the one that you think works best for your project and rest assured that it will bring your work to the next level.