Some MiSTer users put a small secondary “marquee” display on the FPGA board that can show information about the system such as the currently loaded core and what game it happens to be running. Generally these take the form of a small monochrome OLED display, likely the one most of us have sitting in a parts bin somewhere.

But [Erico Mendonca] wanted a something with a bit more style, so he’s come up with a firmware for the ESP32-C3 that connects to MiSTer’s existing secondary display protocol but works with slightly more visually impressive panels such as the round GC9A01 that so many hackers have been playing with as of late. If the whole circular display thing isn’t your…thing, you can even run the firmware on the Cheap Yellow Display for a turn-key rectangular experience.

Because [Erico] didn’t want to fiddle with anything on the MiSTer side of the equation, his firmware has to do the heavy lifting when it comes to the art that shows on the display. So there’s a web-based editor that lets you put together your own artwork to show on the marquee based on what command the MiSTer has actually sent out. Flashing the firmware on the ESP32 can be done through the browser as well, as is becoming increasingly common these days, making it relatively easy to get this project up and running.

With this project it’s also possible to control multiple client displays over WiFi from one system, just in case you wanted to show off what console you were booting up in multiple places.

We’re fans of the round display here at Hackaday, so it’s been great to see more folks putting them to use as of late.

We’re big fans of pushing hardware into situations it wasn’t designed for here at Hackaday, but sometimes you’ve got to appreciate a nicely designed gadget doing more or less exactly what it was intended for — especially when it’s courtesy of code that’s freely available for you to run and hack on however you like.

That’s precisely what [mircemk] has done with their “Universal Timer” project. The 2.1 inch CrowPanel “Rotary Display” at the heart of the build combines an ESP32-S3 with a 480×480 round touch screen display and a rotary encoder.

The all-in-one device — clearly meant to be reminiscent of the Nest thermostat and similar commercial offerings — is technically all you need, but in this case it’s been joined by a PCF8574 I2C I/O expander which in turn is used to drive a buzzer that provides a bit of audio feedback at the end of the countdown.

With the code [mircemk] has provided flashed onto the board, the rotary encoder ring built into the housing makes for an exceptionally intuitive input for setting the desired time. It’s a bit like a high-tech version of the classic kitchen timer, as shown in the video below, you simply twist the ring and the graphics on the display rotate accordingly. Unlike grandma’s clockwork timer of old however, this one can change color as it nears zero, which makes it easier to estimate how much time remains from across the room.

As the popularity of smartwatches has brought the cost of these circular displays down, we’ve started to see some very slick projects utilizing them. The various efforts to turn them into desktop “radar” displays for nearby flights are a particular favorite.