Tidbyt is a smart, retro display. It can show users stock prices, weather information, lo-res photos, calendar events, spotify tracks, and all sorts of stuff. All this on a physical 64x32 LED matrix display.
We're looking for developers who can help us build out the ecosystem of "Tidbyt apps", i.e. applications that users can configure their Tidbyt device to run. For this particular project, we wish to develop a simple news app that pulls data from a few major publications' RSS feeds and displays it in a compelling way a on a Tidbyt unit. Longer term, we hope to establish relationships with skilled freelancers who can take on more projects of a similar nature.
Tidbyt apps are written in a Python-like language called Starlark. We have open sourced an SDK called Pixlet (available on Github under tidbyt/pixlet) that helps rendering the graphics to be displayed, performing API calls, retrieving data over HTTP, etc. Behind the scenes we have a backend written in Go, which is beyond the scope of this project, but may be something to dig into for more complex integrations down the road.
Stuff you need to be good at to do this well:
- Python-like scripting languages
- Using APIs and doing simple parsing of data
- Designing very lo-res pixel graphics (64x32 pixels)
The final deliverable would be a Starlark script that can be run with the Pixlet SDK, that produces an up to date graphic for a news ticker style app. It should support a couple of major publications, let's say the BBC and NYTimes as a minimum (we can do something else if they turn out to be problematic).
Attached is an animated gif showcasing a Tidbyt device running a few of the existing applications, which hopefully helps contextualize the project.
Hourly Range: $20.00-$40.00
Posted On: May 05, 2021 23:00 UTC Category: Front-End Development Skills:Python, Design
