As I was thinking about a gift for my partner, I saw an ad on Instagram a few weeks ago that was a simple box with a e-ink screen that simple displays a verse based on the time. So if it is 3:16, the screen would display the verse for a book in the Bible that contains a verse at chapter 3, verse 16. I thought that would be simple enough to build myself and give for her birthday.

The hardware is pretty easy to conceptualize (subject to change once I start putting wires to hardware):

ESP powered device
eInk display
(optional) RTC sensor

Since Python is the language I'm the most comfortable with, I've been looking for a project to dip my feet into Micropython.

Current status:

Logic for making an API call to Crossway's ESV Endpoint
Parse returned JSON to make it more presentable (fixing special characters, closing open quotes, removing footnotes, etc)
Add timeout decorator for times that are do not commonly have a verse/chapter association (i.e 11:58).
Remove the 0 for any "xx:0x" timestamp as verses do not have 0s for numbers under 10.

To Do List:

If timeout triggers, display generic verse on screen with the current time
Check time every x seconds and run the functions if the time has changed from previous value.
Setup micropython files & functions, including display libraries.

Longer term plans to make this "giftable":

Create Wi-Fi SSID & Interface to connect to your own Wi-Fi network
Web UI to remove/add specific books from being shown