Sticky MicroNotes

Sticky MicroNotes is a community writing firmware for Seeed Studio reTerminal Sticky. It is a port/update of MicroSlate to the Sticky's ESP32-S3, e-ink panel, GT911 touch, and power rails.

Pair a Bluetooth LE keyboard, write notes, and store notes as plain .txt files on a microSD card. Move files to a phone or laptop over Wi-Fi at http://sticky.local

Features

• Bluetooth keyboard — BLE HID host. Stores up to 4 keyboards and auto-reconnects. Classic Bluetooth keyboards will not connect (ESP32-S3 BLE only).
• Note management — browse, create, rename, and delete notes on the SD card.
• Named notes — each note has a title. New notes default to MicroNote, then MicroNote_2, and so on.
• Text editor — cursor navigation, word-wrap, fast e-paper refresh.
• Writing modes
  • Scroll — standard scrolling editor (default)
  • Typewriter — current line only, centered
  • Pagination — page flips instead of per-line scroll
• Auto-save — after 10 seconds idle or every 2 minutes while typing. Back, Esc, power, and sleep also save.
• Safe writes — write-verify plus .bak rotation. A failed write does not replace the last good file.
• Clean mode — hide editor chrome (Ctrl+Z).
• Dark mode — inverted panel.
• Orientation — portrait, landscape, and inverted variants. Optional gyro auto-rotate in Settings.
• Transfer — join a 2.4 GHz network, then open http://sticky.local/ to upload, open, download, or delete .txt notes.
• Sleep — hold power. From the editor, the current note can stay on the panel without editor chrome.
• Settings backup — BLE pairings, Wi-Fi credentials, and UI prefs are stored under /sticky/ on the SD card.

Controls

Sticky has three physical keys plus a bottom touch bar and a BLE keyboard. The touch bar is Select / Back / Up / Down on every menu.

Control	Action
Touch bar Select, or short power press	Confirm
Touch bar Back	Back / cancel
Touch bar Up / Down	Move
Hold power (~3 s)	Sleep (does not confirm the highlighted item)
BLE keyboard	Type and use the shortcuts below

Main menu

Browse Notes, New Note, Settings, Transfer.

Key	Action
Up / Down	Move
Enter / Select	Open
Esc / Back	Stay / no-op

Editor

Key	Action
Arrow keys	Move cursor
Home / End	Start / end of line
Backspace / Delete	Edit
Tab	Cycle Scroll → Typewriter → Pagination
Ctrl+S	Save now
Ctrl+N	Edit title
Ctrl+Z	Clean mode
Ctrl+T	Typewriter
Ctrl+P	Pagination
Ctrl+Left / Right	Previous / next page (Pagination)
Esc / Back	Save and leave

Header badges: [S] Scroll, [T] Typewriter, [P] Pagination.

Settings

Item	What it does
Dark mode	Invert black / white
Orientation	Portrait, landscape, and inverted
Gyro	Auto-rotate from the IMU
Font size	Editor type size
Word count	Show or hide in the editor header
Bluetooth	Scan, pair and manage saved keyboards

Key	Action
Up / Down	Move
Enter / Select	Toggle or open
Esc / Back	Main menu

Bluetooth

Key	Action
Up / Down	Move
Enter / Select	Connect
Esc / Back	Cancel / settings

Put the keyboard in pairing mode before you scan. Saved keyboards reconnect on boot. Status in the header updates when the link comes up (KB connected).

Transfer

Pick a 2.4 GHz network (saved networks still use the stored password when you select them; the device does not auto-join). After connect, the panel shows http://sticky.local/ and the IP.

On a phone or computer on the same LAN, open that URL to list, open, download, upload, or delete notes. Back turns Wi-Fi off.

Key	Action
Up / Down	Network list
Enter / Select	Join / continue
Esc / Back	Cancel and stop Wi-Fi

Hardware requirements

• Seeed Studio reTerminal Sticky (ESP32-S3R8, 800 × 480 SSD1677, GT911)
• microSD card formatted FAT32
• USB data cable (WCH UART bridge, not native USB-CDC)
• Bluetooth LE HID keyboard

First boot

1. Insert the SD card.
2. Flash from Playground or from the factory image in firmware/1.0.0/.
3. Open Settings → Bluetooth, scan, and pair a keyboard.
4. New Note to write, or Transfer to pull files from a phone.

File format

Notes are .txt files in /notes/. Titles become lowercase filenames with spaces as underscores (My Note → my_note.txt). Drop extra .txt files into /notes/ from a computer if you want; the on-device title is derived from the name.

Settings live in /sticky/ (ui_prefs.json, wifi.json, ble_kb.json).

Firmware package

• Registry firmware version: 1.0.0
• License: MIT (Copyright 2026 Joshua Hinton; Sticky port: LowFlowIO)
• Flash: merged image at offset 0, DIO, 40 MHz, 32 MB declared size.
• Do not flash QIO / 80 MHz. That bootlooped this board.

Build and flash locally

pio run -e reterminal_sticky
./scripts/flash_sticky.sh PORT app      # already running this firmware
./scripts/flash_sticky.sh PORT full     # first install

Factory image for Playground:

python3 -m esptool --chip esp32s3 merge_bin \
  -o sticky-micronotes-1.0.0-reterminal-sticky.bin \
  --flash_mode dio --flash_freq 40m --flash_size 32MB \
  0x0     .pio/build/reterminal_sticky/bootloader.bin \
  0x8000  .pio/build/reterminal_sticky/partitions.bin \
  0x10000 .pio/build/reterminal_sticky/firmware.bin

Hardware test record

Item	Result
Hardware	reTerminal Sticky production hardware
Firmware version	1.0.0
Power-on and first boot	Passed
Touch bar menus	Passed
BLE keyboard pair / reconnect	Passed
Editor, auto-save, sleep-with-note	Passed
Transfer at http://sticky.local/	Passed
Gyro auto-rotate	Passed
Note: DIO, 40 MHz. Do not flash QIO 80 MHz.