Firmware Breakthroughs & App Milestones: A Month of Major Progress

It's been a month since my last update, so I wanted to share what I've been up to. I’ve been completely heads-down coding, and I'm excited about the progress, especially on the firmware front. The biggest win has to be the ePaper display speed. After working directly with the vendor, I was able to get some fixes into my code and the open-source CalEPD library that made a massive difference. Partial updates are now incredibly fast, many of them taking less than a second. This completely changes the feel of the device, making the settings screen and other interactions feel snappy and responsive. It's a huge improvement, and I'll post a video soon to show you the before-and-after because it's pretty dramatic.

Along with the screen refresh, I also managed to improve the Over-The-Air update process by speeding up the downloads and made some tweaks so the device boots up almost instantly now. Of course, it's not all smooth sailing. I'm currently trying to troubleshoot a tricky timing issue since I don't have a dedicated RTC chip, but I'm confident I'll figure it out.

On the app front, things are moving along nicely. I have the first drafts for the new device and configuration screens worked out. I also officially joined the Apple Developer program and got the app working with TestFlight for internal distribution, which is a good milestone.

In other news, I was also finally able to replace the mini-LIDAR on my Bambu Labs X1 printer and get it working again, so it's great to have my main prototyping tool back online. All in all, it feels like I'm making really great progress. Once I nail down this time-tracking puzzle in the firmware, I’ll be focusing on finalizing the app and then spending more time on the enclosure.

Thanks for following the journey!