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What a beautiful use of technology to uphold someone's personhood, and let them know they are loved, despite (and with regard to) a profound injury. This remin
by grahameb 2y ago
What a beautiful use of technology to uphold someone's personhood, and let them know they are loved, despite (and with regard to) a profound injury.
This reminds me of a desire I've had for a long time: a simple, wall-mountable eInk device that could be configured with a URL (+wifi creds) and render a markdown file, refreshing once every hour or so. It would be so useful for so many applications – I'm a parish priest and so I could use it to let people know what events are on, if a service is cancelled, the current prayer list, ... the applications would be endless. I'd definitely pay a couple of hundred dollars per device for a solid version of such a thing, if it could be mounted and then recharged every month or two.
- djbusby 2y agoThere has been a number of these on HN. Other features too. The first one I remember seeing was MagicMirror (not e-ink) ages ago.
- yrxuthst 2y agoYou may be interested in https://github.com/aceinnolab/Inkycal https://github.com/aceinnolab/Inkycal, it looks like it's out of stock at the moment but they have pre-made devices or you can make your own with a list of parts.
- pbronez 2y agoThat is super cool! I might need to build one of those. My family needs a way to keep the fridge calendar up to date with our digital calendar.
- ryanckulp 2y agofor your family cal, check out TRMNL. can go on a fridge w/ magnets: https://usetrmnl.com https://usetrmnl.com (disclaimer, i'm the founder)
- emilburzo 2y agoAre there any plans to have a version without the battery? It looks exactly like what I've been looking for otherwise. Also, what country are the orders shipped from? US?
- ronakjain90 2y agoInternally we are debating on releasing a Hackable DIY kit. Feel feel to send a message to support@usetrmnl.com. It's shipped from USA.
- ryanckulp 2y agocurious what your use case is without a battery. currently you could keep it plugged in, are you wnting NFC-powered etc?
- emilburzo 2y agoNothing spectacular, I just want to have a display by the door that shows various things I'd like to check on before leaving, like: which windows are open, outside temperatures, etc. I don't want a battery because: - although every X months is quite ok, I don't want the hassle of remembering to charge it (first world problems, I know) - but I also have a fear of leaving devices with a battery plugged in for a long time / having to monitor for battery swelling or other abnormalities I already have a classic battery-powered display which shows temperature info from some sensors and it's really convenient, but annoying when the battery is dead right when you need the info. Even if that only happens every X months.
- oarsinsync 2y agoA GP in this thread linked to Inkycal, which is a RPi0W based solution, no batteries: https://github.com/aceinnolab/Inkycal https://github.com/aceinnolab/Inkycal
- miles 2y agoYou might want to update this image on your homepage: https://usetrmnl.com/assets/section2-3-d6887b41db12ad0659992f57decb7c6158e87c6d55e23efa035547c9ad388a8d.jpg https://usetrmnl.com/assets/section2-3-d6887b41db12ad0659992... as the first character, タ (ta), is missing from the display, making it read "(a)minaru".
- JKCalhoun 2y agoMy most "starred" GitHub repo is probably SystemSix [1], an e-ink display masquerading as a little 68K Mac. [1] https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SystemSix https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SystemSix
- joseda-hg 2y agoI'm in, can we crowdfund something like this? If eInk wasn't a monopoly this would be 100% a project I'd love to do
- ryanckulp 2y agowe crowdfunded one this summer and now we ship same-day. :) https://usetrmnl.com https://usetrmnl.com
- joseda-hg 2y agoDoesn't seem like you ship to my region, cool product nevertheless
- ryanckulp 2y agoah really?? feel free to email us (team@usetrmnl.com). we've been granted a bunch of EC licenses lately but maybe missed a few country check boxes on our store.
- IanCal 2y agoNot super relevant but your site is super janky for me (chrome, ubuntu). I get a scrollbar for the second part of your site, which then captures scrolling so if my cursor is in the middle of the page and I go down then up I am stuck. https://streamable.com/sm0oek https://streamable.com/sm0oek
- conception 2y agohttps://crowdfund.news/crowdfunding-project/blotch-the-worlds-best-e-ink-smart-frame/ https://crowdfund.news/crowdfunding-project/blotch-the-world... funded recently and there are others with similar if perhaps less slick implementations on the software side.
- steezeburger 2y agoI'm a backer, but this would probably fit your bill https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/usetrmnl/trmnl-the-e-ink-display-for-your-favorite-apps-and-news https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/usetrmnl/trmnl-the-e-in... I wanted the same kind of general eink device, but this is also supposedly super hackable!
- ryanckulp 2y agohackable indeed :) https://docs.usetrmnl.com https://docs.usetrmnl.com no longer a Kickstarter btw, shipping same-day now (see homepage)
- gknoy 2y agoFor anyone else that followed the "buy a device" link on the docs page, and found yourself on the (ended) Kickstarter page, editing the URL to https://usetrmnl.com/ https://usetrmnl.com/ works :) (This is fantastic. Thank you for sharing about it!)
- philips 2y ago> Most IoT products support SSH-ing directly into peripheral devices. We've heard too many horror stories about how this can go wrong, and decided to invert the paradigm. > Your TRMNL device pings our server, never the other way around. > Each request made to our /api/display endpoint includes only the minimum details needed to support customers -- an API key, device mac address, firmware version, battery voltage, and wifi signal strength. Super hackable but it pings their hosted server and nothing else?! Is there a way to run your own server?
- philips 2y agoThe docs aren't super encouraging either. https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/diy/byod-s https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/diy/byod-s > Purchase a TRMNL from our home page: https://usetrmnl.com https://usetrmnl.com > Then follow the instructions on BYOD/S > Server. > More TBD.
- 2y ago
- harpastum 2y agoIf you're comfortable with microcontrollers (esp32/arduino), I can definitely recommend Inkplate. I found them when I was making a similar setup for my parents, and they have various sizes up to 10" and up to 6 colors they can display. You can either just get the module, or buy with a battery and mountable case already attached. I think all of the models are also available via Digikey and Mouser if people don't trust random websites. https://soldered.com/categories/inkplate/ https://soldered.com/categories/inkplate/
- xd1936 2y agoSeconded. I matted and framed one InkPlate 10 and hung it on our wall, then wrote a simple "show the next three days from everyone in the family's Google Calendars" image creation script and it's been wonderful.
- pflenker 2y agoI looked into inkplate. I have no experience at all with microcontrollers. How difficult is it to build something like you did?
- allenrb 2y agoJust an aside, but “parish priest” must surely be the opposite of “software developer” on the Hacker News Table of Occupational Frequency. Neat!
- Spooky23 2y agoThe principal of my son’s former school was a Sister of St Joseph, and a huge HN fan. More amazing was how creative the sisters were in managing themselves with technology. Many decisions are made by votes, done in real time globally! Religious people get short shrift.
- Hunpeter 2y agoReminds me of the monks in the third season of Babylon 5. Who says you can't both be an IT person and a cleric?
- vanderZwan 2y agoGiven their history as archivers it seems like a natural complement, really
- lostlogin 2y agoAnd scientists. Gregor Mendel comes to mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
- parthianshotgun 2y agoThat episode with the reformed murderer was especially hard...what a brilliant show
- tengwar2 2y agoLay preacher here. There are dozens of us, dozens!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- oliviergg 2y agoIf you have a hacker’s soul, an old Kindle, a jailbreak, and a Python installation, anything becomes possible. I’m working on something like that (though I hadn’t thought about markdown!). The Kindle is a particularly fun device once it’s hacked!
- hattmall 2y agoI looked into this a while back, but can you post some notes on jailbreak kindles? Aren't there certain models of Kindle that can be had very cheaply. That are possibly locked or have some dead component, but the screen can be used with a jailbreak? They were like only ~$10 on ebay.
- inanutshellus 2y agoassuming your eink display would be on the same LAN as some always-on PC... 1. install python 2. make a file named `index.html` somewhere. 2a. put this in the "head" tag, so it'll refresh hourly: `<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3600">`. 3. run `python -m http.server` from the same folder This will start a single-threaded web server on 8000 4. On another machine on your network verify you can pull up http://firstmachine:8000/. 5. having proven it works, go buy an e-ink display and point it to http://firstmachine:8000/, make it the default homepage. Voila. Any time you have anything to say, just edit the `index.html` file and the eink display will update. No need for fancy subscription services or kickstarter projects or crowdfunding... just... batteries included python.
- trashcan 2y agoHaving done this, you will also most likely want to setup a javascript timer that also triggers a refresh in case the meta refresh fails. And a weekly reboot of the machine in case there is a memory leak or some other issue.
- Nition 2y agoI tried to do pretty much this on a Kobo reader and discovered the Kobo browser doesn't support javascript. :|
- oarsinsync 2y agoIt sounds like there’s a lot more edge case complexity to this than the GP originally thought. Like most DIY tinkerer solutions, unfortunately, which is why people like paying money for productised solutions - the time it takes to debug and troubleshoot home made solutions is often prohibitive for a lot of people who aren’t techheads.
- inanutshellus 2y agoThis is both fair and obvious... but at the same time, the nits folk are bringing up are not fleshed out. "I had to reboot my raspberry pi" and "whoops rando eInk display doesn't do javascript" are both super weird and frankly unfair to consider as criticisms of the original solution. ... In short - if our parish priest above sees the original post, I'd suggest he give it a go. It's an hour to set up and won't cost him or his parish anything (aside from buying the eink display ofc). If it turns out that the DIY solution is insufficient, or his parish is wealthy enough to spend money on a thing like this, great, then upgrade to that.
- marmaduke 2y agoHow would you want to host or update the markdown file? Sending an email for instance? Or run your own host?
- injidup 2y agoI've seen these in a few restaurants as menus listing the special of the day. They were mounted elegantly in some stone mounting so didn't give the ipad mcdonalds touchscreen feel. They just looked printed but on closer inspection were e-ink