Flutter Meets Hardware: LED Badges, ePaper and Pocket Science Lab

Transcript

So hi, I am Dhruv and welcome to the future where Flutter meets hardware. So in this talk, I will discuss three fascinating projects that use Flutter. It's Magic, Paper Badge Magic, and Peasley. All these projects will allow users to interact with an idea and take it out of the digital world. So imagine you are running a restaurant and every time you have to update a price or change a menu.

So you just don't need to print a new one. You just open the application, update the design, just tap it, and boom. It's updated. So it's crazy, right? So Magic E-Paper is an open-source project that converts the image into an optimized dithered bitmap and transfers that via NFC to the badge without a battery-powered connection. And it works on four processes: design, pack, transfer, and refresh. So what are those?

So at first, the user creates a design in the application. Then, we pack that data and convert it into a bitmap where there are eight pixels stored per byte. Then the NFC file will transfer that data to the ST25DV device in multiple packets, and in multiple packets because it's the NFC memory limitation. And finally, the microcontroller reads the data through the I2C protocol and transfers that data through the SPI protocol.

And finally, it triggers the badge to refresh and update with the new design. Crazy, right? So, this technology is actually used by companies like Walmart and many restaurants for updating the e-badges of the price tags and the menus . Crazy, right? So what if we have to expand this concept and we use animation that is not just static and moves with the animation ?

Right? So for that, we have another project. Badge Magic. So for Badge Magic, I will just give you an example, like you are in a cricket match and you have to support your team with an animated badge . So for that, we have Badge Magic. So what is it, Badge Magic? So Badge Magic is an open-source project that lets users customize LED displays with text, graphics, and animated messages.

And transfer the data to the badges using a technology called BLE, which is Bluetooth Low Energy. So it also has four processes: create, encode, write, and play. At first, the user creates a text graphical animation on the application, then we convert the data into a 1-bit bitmap where each pixel represents an LED pixel.

So after that, we transfer the data to the badge in 16-byte chunks, which is the standard for Bluetooth. And finally, the display stores that data and animates it locally without needing the phone to send new frames continuously. So that's the crazy thing. Like once the image is transferred, you don't have to worry about Bluetooth. You can just turn it off and it will run until the battery dies.

So, that is the one which helps you in events, conferences, or exhibitions like I'm wearing it. You can see it here, right? And it's looking cool. So, this is Badge Magic. Now let me introduce one more project, PSLab. So it's one of the crazy projects because it lets users have a complete portable lab inside their phone, in a mobile.

What does it do? It first captures the analog data and samples it using the onboard ADC and finally it transfers the data to the Flutter application, and that data is then visualized into real-time waveforms through that Flutter application. It also works on four processes: condition, sample, transfer, and plot. So what are those?

At first, the PSLab captures the analog signal and then it conditions it using the built-in circuitry, and finally it samples the data using the onboard ADC and it transfers the data from PSLab to the Flutter application and finally the Flutter visualizes the data. So, this is the PSLab and these are all three projects from FOSSASIA that connect hardware with the Flutter application. So, these are the applications. Now since they are open source, you can contribute to them and yeah, and become a part of this journey. So, thank you everyone and you can have these badges

for yourselves as well from the FOSSASIA desk.