Annota

• The device, powered on (USB or its battery).
• A microSD card, formatted FAT32. Audio files (.mp3, .wav) go in the root folder; subfolders and hidden/dot files are ignored.
• Optionally, a WiFi network and an AI provider API key, for transcription and the web file manager. Recording, playback, deleting, reading transcripts and USB drive mode all work offline.

1.54 (two buttons)

• Next (labeled BOOT) — moves the highlight forward.
• Select (labeled PWR) — short press opens/confirms, long press (about 0.7 s) backs out or cancels.

3.97 (rotary switch + BOOT)

• Down — moves the highlight forward (same as Next on the 1.54).
• Up — moves the highlight back.
• Press — the Select button: short press opens/confirms, long press backs out.
• BOOT — goes back (same as a long Select). On the Notes list it opens the Home screen.

On both boards

• The bottom line of every screen is a hint showing what the buttons do right now.
• Hold both buttons for 5 seconds to reboot — Next + Select on the 1.54, Press + BOOT on the 3.97. Works even if the device seems frozen.

The black bar at the top is always visible:

• Left: WiFi status — the device's IP address when connected, blank when WiFi is off, or a short message while connecting.
• Right: battery percentage and, when a card is inserted, an SD card icon.

On the 1.54 the battery percentage is estimated from the battery voltage and dips during playback/recording. The 3.97 reads it from its power management chip; with no battery fitted it shows 100%.

The main screen lists every audio file on the card — your notes. A Record new row is always at the top. Under each note's filename, the AI title of its transcript is shown once it has been transcribed.

Notes not yet transcribed come first, then transcribed ones, newest transcript first.

• Next / Down — move down (wraps around). Up (3.97) — move up.
• Select on Record new — starts recording straight away.
• Select on a note — opens its action menu.
• Long press Select — opens the device Menu.
• Long press Next (1.54) or BOOT (3.97) — opens the Home screen.
• Jump back to the top: double-press Select quickly on the 1.54; hold Up on the 3.97.

If no card is detected, the screen shows "Insert an SD card to see your audio files" instead. Insert one and reboot.

Recording

Recording writes a new RECnnnn.wav file (uncompressed 16-bit WAV) to the card. The screen shows "Recording RECnnnn.wav..."; press Select to stop. The new note appears at the top of the list. If the microphone or the card fails, an error message replaces the recording screen.

Recording and playback share the audio hardware, so starting one stops the other.

Action menu

Opened with Select on a note:

• Play — plays the note through the speaker. Select stops; the list comes back by itself when the track ends.
• Transcribe — sends the note to the AI provider (see Transcription). Once a note has a transcript, this item becomes View transcription instead.
• View transcription — opens the transcript for reading. On the 1.54, Select scrolls down, Next scrolls up, long press Select closes. On the 3.97, Down/Up scroll and BOOT closes.
• Details — name, size and playing time, plus the transcript's size and date when there is one. Select goes back.
• Delete — asks to confirm, then deletes the note. If the note has a transcript, the confirmation warns you and deletes both the audio and its .txt.
• Cancel — closes the menu.

Volume (3.97 only)

While a note is playing, hold Up or Down for 3 seconds to open the Volume menu: Low, Medium or High. Up/Down move, Press applies the level immediately (playback keeps going, so you can try them), BOOT closes. The level is remembered.

Menu

Opened with a long Select press on the Notes list:

• Refresh — re-scans the SD card.
• Offline / Online — turns WiFi off, or connects to a saved network. The label shows the action available right now. Saved networks are never erased from here.
• Reboot — asks to confirm, then restarts the device.
• Close — closes the menu.

A carousel, one item at a time (three items on the 3.97, four on the 1.54):

• Notes — re-scans the card and shows the Notes list.
• File transfer — connects to WiFi and shows the web file manager's address as text and a QR code to scan with a phone. Select closes the screen and turns WiFi off again. If no saved network is in range, it opens WiFi management instead.
• USB drive — exposes the whole SD card to a computer as a USB drive (see USB drive mode).
• Usage (1.54 only) — shows the same summary the 3.97 shows on its sleep screen: number of notes, how many are not yet transcribed, battery level, SD card space used/total, and firmware version. Select goes back to Home.

Next/Down (and Up on the 3.97) cycle, Select chooses, long Select or BOOT goes back to the Notes list.

Transcribe uploads the note to the AI provider and saves the result as a .txt file with the same name (REC0007.wav → REC0007.txt). With OpenAI (the default build), the text file contains:

1. a short AI-written title,
2. an abstract of the note,
3. the full transcript,

in the language that was spoken. If the title/abstract step fails, the plain transcript is still saved.

What happens when you choose Transcribe:

• WiFi is off by default, so the device connects to a saved network first and turns WiFi off again when done (unless you had already switched it on yourself).
• If no saved network is reachable, the device scans and lists your saved networks that are in range; pick one to join and the transcription carries on. Back out to cancel.
• The progress screen shows each step — 1/5 Connecting WiFi, 2/5 Uploading (with a progress bar), 3/5 Waiting for transcription, 4/5 Writing title & abstract, 5/5 Saving — then "Transcription saved." or an error. Select closes it. The device can't be used while this runs.
• On failure, a diagnostic log is saved next to the note as <name>_error.txt and named on the result screen. It is deleted again by the next successful transcription of that note.

Notes larger than 2 MB on the 1.54 or 4 MB on the 3.97 are too big for the device to upload itself; the screen tells you to use the web file manager's Transcribe button instead, which has no such limit.

An API key must be saved on the web Settings page first.

First setup

With no network saved, the device opens its own open access point, Annota-Setup, and shows a prompt. Join it from a phone or laptop; a captive portal (or http://192.168.4.1) lets you pick your WiFi network and enter its password. To skip setup and work offline, long press Select (1.54) or press BOOT (3.97).

Saved networks and reconnecting

The device remembers up to 5 networks; manage them on the web Settings page. It never connects on its own at boot — WiFi stays off to save battery until something needs it: a transcription, File transfer, or Online in the Menu.

When connecting, it first tries the network you joined most recently by hand, then any other saved network in range, strongest signal first. If none is reachable it simply stays offline; only the status bar changes.

If WiFi has been left on but the network disappears, the device turns WiFi off by itself after about 15 minutes.

On-device WiFi management

Shown by File transfer when no saved network is in range:

• Join an access point — scans and lists the saved networks that are in range, strongest first. Pick one to connect. Networks you haven't saved are not listed — add them on the Settings page.
• Create an AP — starts an open access point named Annota-AP and shows how to reach the web UI through it, with no router needed. On the 3.97 two QR codes appear together: scan the first to join Annota-AP, then the second to open the web page. Select stops the access point.

Once connected, a screen shows the device's web address as text and a QR code. Select closes it and turns WiFi off.

Starting over

To get back to the Annota-Setup portal, remove every saved network on the Settings page and reboot.

Home → USB drive turns the device into a USB drive: connect it to a computer with a USB cable and the SD card shows up like a memory stick. Copy notes off, or drop audio files on, then eject the drive on the computer — the device restarts and re-scans the card by itself.

• WiFi is turned off while the drive is mounted.
• Pulling the cable also ends the mode (the device restarts).
• To leave without a computer: long press Select (1.54) or BOOT (3.97). Eject the drive on the computer first if it was mounted, or files being copied may be damaged.
• Copies are fairly slow, so prefer the web file manager or the card reader for large batches.

When the device is online, open http://<device-ip>/ in a browser on the same network. The address is in the status bar and on the File transfer screen. Three pages, linked from the top bar: Files, Settings, About.

Files

A card at the top shows SD card space used/free. Below it:

Notes — one row per audio file, with its transcript folded in: the AI title under the filename, the date and the size. Per-row actions:

• Play — plays the note in the browser.
• Transcribe — transcribes it from your browser (see below). Becomes View transcription once a transcript exists.
• Download — downloads the audio and, if present, its transcript.
• Delete — deletes the audio and its transcript, after confirming.

Tick rows (or Select all) to Download, Transcribe or Delete several at once. Click Name or Date to sort; clicking again reverses, a third time goes back to the device's own order (untranscribed first, then newest transcript).

Sync transcribes, one after the other, every audio file that has no transcript yet. Files that failed before (that only have an _error.txt) are retried.

Other files — everything else on the card (stray .txt files, error logs, files copied over USB), with view, download and delete.

Uploading from the browser is not supported; copy files with USB drive mode or a card reader.

How browser transcription works: your browser fetches the API key from the device, downloads the audio, sends it to the AI provider itself, then sends the finished text back to the device to save. Progress is shown step by step at the top of the page (download, upload, waiting, title & abstract, saving). Because the device only serves the file and stores the result, there is no size limit, and long notes upload more reliably than from the device. Keep the page open until it finishes.

Changes made here show up on the device's Notes list by themselves the next time it is on the Notes list or Home screen.

Settings

• Language — English, Italiano or Français, for the device screen and the web pages. Applies immediately.
• Status — WiFi connection and whether the clock has synced.
• SD card — capacity, space used, number of audio and text files.
• WiFi Networks — the saved networks (up to 5), each with Edit (enter a new password) and Remove, plus a form to Add network (leave the password blank for an open network). Reconnect WiFi retries the connection; the page stops responding for up to 30 seconds while it does.
• Power — Sleep after idle, 1 to 180 minutes (default 30). Applies immediately.
• API Key (e.g. "OpenAI API Key") — shows whether a key is saved, never the key itself. Paste a new key and Save API Key, or Clear API Key. Saving an empty field keeps the current key.

About

What Annota is, the board it runs on, and credits for the open-source software, fonts and icons it uses.

After a period with no activity (default 30 minutes, set on the Settings page) the device goes into deep sleep to save battery. Button presses and any use of the web pages count as activity. It never sleeps while recording, playing, transcribing (on the device or from the browser) or in USB drive mode.

The sleep screen shows the Annota logo and how to wake the device. On the 3.97 it also shows a summary: number of notes, how many are not yet transcribed, battery level, SD card space used, and firmware version (on the 1.54, see Home → Usage).

To wake: hold Select on the 1.54 (BOOT/Next does not wake it); press the knob on the 3.97. Waking is a full restart, the same as turning the device on.

• "Insert an SD card..." — no card detected. Check it is seated and formatted FAT32, then reboot.
• Screen frozen or device unresponsive — hold both buttons for 5 seconds to reboot (Next + Select on the 1.54, Press + BOOT on the 3.97). If it's showing the sleep screen, it's asleep: wake it as above.
• "No ... API key set" — save a key on the Settings page.
• "File too large to transcribe on the device" — use Transcribe in the web file manager instead.
• Transcription failed — open the <name>_error.txt file named on the result screen (web file manager → Other files) for the details. Long notes on a weak WiFi signal are the most common cause; try again closer to the router, or transcribe from the browser.
• "Could not join the WiFi network." — the network chosen from the list didn't accept the connection. Check its password on the Settings page.
• Can't reach the web file manager — WiFi is off by default: use Home → File transfer, or Menu → Online, then use the address on screen from a device on the same network. With no router around, use Create an AP on the WiFi management screen.
• Notes copied in over USB don't show up — make sure they are in the card's root folder and end in .mp3 or .wav, then use Menu → Refresh.