Looking for a project for your Raspberry Pi Pico? If you've ever lived with an unreliable power grid, whether it be due to planned rolling blackouts that don’t go according to schedule, or living in a time of crisis, as are many citizens in Ukraine, it’s important to keep track of uptime and downtime so you can spot patterns and make useful inferences and predictions.
 
Pico blackout logger
Blackout Logger. Source: Dmytro Panin on Twitter


With Dmytro Panin’s blackout logger, he easily keeps track of when the power goes out in his native Kyiv, which helps him “make better short-term plans.”

The Build

Dmytro’s blackout logger is a power-bank-sized device. Its 3D-printed enclosure is barely bigger than the WaveShare epaper display it houses. It keeps track of when the power goes off. 
 
blackout logger build
The logger has three main components: The ePaper display, a Raspberry Pi Pico, and a Dallas Semiconductor RTC. Source: @dr2mod 

For a brain, it uses a Raspberry Pi Pico, along with a Dallas Semiconductor real-time clock module. Sure, you can get time off the internet using a Pico W, but then you need to be sure that both your internet is also stable, which is not always the case when keeping the electricity on is already a challenge. The ePaper is also ideal because it uses no power when it's not being updated.

The Software

Panin ties it all together with well-documented scripts that he’s made available for you over on his GitHub, so you’ll find replicating this project as easy as .py.

If you like it, you can also buy him a coffee right there!