Physical pomodoro: <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Il_pomod...>

I love this project! The UI feels so delightful and well thought out. I guess I found another weekend (multi-week?) activity.

If you're looking for hackathon projects, the E-ink ecosystem is well developed enough that they're pretty easy to program against and Claude/the AIs can pick up the API surface. Plus, people generally don't know what they're looking at -- you have to say "kindle-style screen" -- but people (me? but also guests) do seem to prefer having a e-ink screen in the living room over a backlit display because it's so much less intrusive.

FWIW, E-ink [0] AND pomdoros [1] are each a whole thing of mine.

[0] https://sambroner.com/posts/raspberry-pi-train

[1] https://sambroner.com/posts/personal-analytics-2024

Always interested to see a "device" type of project on here -- they tend to be the most challenging, even if the goal is simple. The intersection of object design, electronics and code is a great playground.

I really like the choice of screen, and generally the considerations given (and explained in the readme!) for purpose and usability.

Couple of notes on the object design (and this is something I find very challenging, and spend a lot of time iterating on)

- What if the knob was on top of the device, wide and flat? you could center the screen, make the device smaller, and the physical action of turning it would be less likely to push the box around

- Chamfers and fillets go a long way to make a thing look polished -- it's a small detail, but the difference between a sharp edge and a rounded one somehow seems to matter a lot.

- Since the menu always has three options, what if instead of the knob there were three buttons on the top surface (like the "snooze" of an alarm clock)? Fewer interactions to fiddle with!

- You can get translucent filament, and it makes for very cool "light conduit" parts -- eg, the LED box could be solid, and it would look like something from an 80s dashboard. Alternately, you could print a border for the screen, and light that up instead, making for a more minimalist design.

(Sorry, I can't help it, I like thinking about these things)

How did you design the knob, OpenSCAD? The knurling is a nice touch, and looks like it was done in a programmatic way.

Lasering in on the three different use cases (rather than just one generic 25min focus time) and also providing statistics are both cool additions. Nice.

It would be a good addition to your write up to mention, for the uninitiated, that pomodoro is of course named after a physical timer with a rotary encoder!

https://medium.com/@thejinxes/ditch-the-tomato-timer-d8bbf01...

If you ever get around to your goal of having a red e-ink screen, that would be a fun alternative to Pepe.

Cool project! I would recommend checking out the LVGL library [0], it’s an embedded graphics library to create UIs. It’s pretty simply to use and feels a bit like html. It’s a little bit harder to set up hardware communication, but once it’s set up, it streamlines making the UI and responding to input immensely.

[0] - https://github.com/lvgl/lvgl

Very interesting, I've been thinking on how to make physical pomodoro timer (or just display for one), but with circular screen and preferably no exact time remaining visible. as for me it is both distracting and anxiety-inducing. I've been using Visual Timer app [0] on my android phone and it has mostly been great, but putting phone away would obviously be better.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.cwiesner.an...

The whole idea of pomodoro comes from a physical kitchen timer in the shape of... you guessed it, a pomodoro.

The best UX for the pomodoro technique can be found in this physical kitchen timer, if you'd ask me.

I know assembling things is half the fun, but if you just want a universal ESP32 device with screen and buttons, I recommend M5stack. Cheap, programmable, uniquitous.

A guy I know tried to build a business around a physical pomodoro timer a while back - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/timechi-your-smart-produc...

A useful addition for those using this in an office, and even for those who don't want to look at the screen for the remaining time, would be to have an LED (maybe as a nice lightbar) on the top of the device which shines red or green to suggest to those who can't see the screen (viewing from the other side) if you are available to be interrupted or not. You could even make it as a progressive light bar if you were so inclined.

Absolutely love it. Inspires me to think about porting my own productivity tools to an IRL device.

Every time I see something pertaining to a pomodoro timer, I'm reminded of interviewing with a YC founder in downtown san mateo in the early 2010s (he was working on websockets + slide deck/prezi-like tech iirc), and half our interview consisted of him hyping up this technique. The company went under within a year, and I could never respect this technique afterwards

I love this! I’ve been playing around with browser extensions to achieve this, and it always seems to get lost in the clutter of my busy workspace. A physical timer for this is a brilliant idea.

Another thing I’ve been contemplating is a “do not disturb” signpost on my desk when in focus time; might be that this timer could also double as that.

It's very beautiful, lovely work. Sleek and shiny, it's a device that begs for interaction, which is important in something that you'll be engaging with every 24-30 minutes. I would like a version of the display to show grains of sand falling through a digital hourglass.

Not sure if author posted it here but don't forget use of "pomodoro" term is copyrighted.

https://www.pomodorotechnique.com/pomodoro-trademark-guideli...

$35 for the ePaper display seems pretty decent these days. Are these actually getting cheaper or am I off? I know it’s a patent riddled tech so that probably is the bit cost limiter, but I’ve been so excited seeing it more and more the last few years.

I'm so sad that ePaper displays are still so expensive. They'd be perfect for splashing some home assistant driven goodness around my house. But the tiny ones are too tiny for my taste, and the big ones too expensive.

I made an e-ink clock once. The display documentation basically said you'd break the display if you refreshed more frequently than some long interval. I refreshed it every minute and indeed it broke after a year.

GPLv3-licensed GUI Pomodoro app for Linux, for anyone who needs it: https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Solanum/

Neat project!

This is fantastic and I want to build one. The UI is delightful, and as other people have said, the multiple modes for different tasks is a great idea.

Awesome project :-)

I think the missing ingredient here is a way to export the tracked activities, but this looks like it was fun to make!

Anyone made a cool software Pomodoro or other time-related app with interesting variations?

I use this timer which has the advantage of being portable: https://gymboss.com/