[HN Gopher] Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule
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Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule
Author : dh-g
Score : 224 points
Date : 2023-09-25 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| demondemidi wrote:
| Keep it out of the sun. E-Ink does not like direct sunlight. I
| built a similar thing, more of central panel for all my home-
| grown cloud gadgets (because I hate backlit LCD), and after a
| summer of afternoon sun, half the panel died. Which was a bummer
| because it was a $300 panel.
| politelemon wrote:
| I repurpose all my old ereaders (Kindles and Kobos) into displays
| for something, weather, agendas, some even do images (albeit very
| low resolution). It's great to have these around the house,
| quietly doing their thing.
|
| One thing I will point out from observation, the radios on
| ereader devices aren't great for heavy use; they were originally
| created for occasional syncing. Projects like these will require
| an HTTP request to somewhere to fetch data, on a regular basis,
| and the radio eventually stops working. It's not a terrible thing
| considering it's just an unused device. If you're looking for
| something longer lived, the waveshare screen are worth
| considering for mini projects.
| landgenoot wrote:
| I don't think the resolution is the problem with images on
| e-readers, but the amount of grayscale levels is.
|
| Dithering works brilliantly on these devices. I made a photo
| frame out of one of these by calling some imagemagick from
| golang.
| dh-g wrote:
| Nice result.
|
| I agree, dithering on these devices works really well. After
| this project I worked on displaying images of the sun from
| the NOAA satellite. Until I got dithering working displaying
| the image with just 4 levels of grey was was very lackluster.
| Yoric wrote:
| I want to repurpose an older Kobo as a multipurpose boardgame
| accessory (e.g. with dice, a bunch of custom card decks, etc.)
|
| Do you have any pointers on where to start?
| ta988 wrote:
| Kobo are super easy to hack. There are a lot of examples in
| the mobileread forum: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kobo_e
| Reader_hacks#Writing_...
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I did something similar with a first gen kindle. Some day it
| stopped working, I opened the enclosure to find a completely
| cracked-open kindle with a battery the size of a weather balloon
| inside.
|
| This was about a month after I returned from a six week trip
| during which I kept that thing running.
|
| Reminder that a lot of battery-powered devices really don't like
| to be connected to power all the time.
| nightpool wrote:
| Also they don't like being kept in hot enclosures without
| adequate ventilation / cooling.
| realharo wrote:
| That's not an issue for a device like this. The typical use
| case is refreshing the screen once every 5, 10, 15, etc.
| minutes, which takes a few seconds (including connecting to
| wifi, downloading the data, etc.), and then spend the rest of
| the time in some super low power deep sleep mode, drawing
| maybe tens of microamps. Or maybe checking over Bluetooth LE
| whether to trigger an update, once every couple seconds. This
| will never get hot enough to the point where it would matter.
| nightpool wrote:
| OP said that they did this with a first-gen kindle, and I
| would not be surprised if it had an always-on wifi
| connection and was processing data much more frequently
| then you suggest. I agree that there are plenty of ways to
| build this in a power-efficient way, I just want to suggest
| that given modern battery controllers, heat is a much more
| likely cause of failure then keeping the kindle plugged in
| all the time.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Reminder that a lot of battery-powered devices really don't
| like to be connected to power all the time.
|
| Shitty ones don't, yeah. A thing you can do with those is
| remove the battery fully, so it's not being recharged/used at
| all.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| No you can't. That works for laptops but not phones, tablets
| etc.
| downrightmike wrote:
| use a light timer to help https://xkcd.com/1495/
| dh-g wrote:
| Yea, to avoid this I run tbis device(kindle non-touch v4)
| unplugged and get 3 months on a charge with a fairly new
| battery.
| scottwick wrote:
| Does this use the battery? Not clear to me if the Kindle program
| is running continuously or if it just periodically starts up,
| refreshes the screen and then powers back down.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I presume it does, but would only need charging once every
| couple of months. If it's going to be in a fixed position,
| e.g., on a desk, then it could just be left plugged in.
| wjdp wrote:
| I've set up my own DIY version of this. It pulls a new image
| via a cron job and repaints the screen with it. I've not
| invested time looking into it but by default if the device
| sleeps, which it does very quickly after loosing wall power,
| the cron job will no longer run and the display gets stuck. You
| need to poke the power button to get it to wake again.
| PascalW wrote:
| Instead of using a cronjob you can put the device into sleep
| and use the RTC to schedule the next wakeup (see [1]). This
| takes only very little power, as the device is only turned on
| for mere seconds and sleeps the remaining time.
|
| [1] https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-
| dash/blob/main/src/dash.sh...
| dh-g wrote:
| It goes into deep sleep and only wakes up once a day after
| midnight. It gets about 3 months on a charge.
|
| I use to leave it plugged in but got sick of looking at the
| cord.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| If you're even slightly interested in getting into
| jailbreaking/hacking of devices, the Kindle is a great place to
| start.
|
| There's a lot of low-hanging fruit there. Particularly because
| the device has a USB port and, by design, exposes a user
| partition that you can read/write to (so you can upload files and
| documents and ebooks to the device).
|
| There's definitely been an effort by Amazon to lock them down,
| but just taking your reverse-engineering tool of choice and
| decompiling their firmware binary will give you tons of readable
| code to dig through. They use a mix of java, native c, and
| javascript.
|
| Fun fact, at startup the Kindle looks for certain files in the
| user partition, with certain naming patterns. You can, for
| example, disable the screensaver by dropping a file with a
| special name there. They patched this once, but after doing a
| grep for the user-partition mount location (to see all the places
| in their code where they read from user partition files) I was
| pretty quickly able to find another way to do this. It's fun
| stuff.
| miohtama wrote:
| Are new Kindles still hackable or are they fully closed like
| consoles?
| Andrew018 wrote:
| [dead]
| afavour wrote:
| An aside but I've long thought that if Apple was truly committed
| to the environment and equipment reuse they'd let us use old
| iPads for stuff like this. I'd love to make a digital photo
| frame/day planner from an old iPad mini I have kicking around.
| They could even integrate Siri etc.
|
| (I know you can get some way toward this with various apps but
| it's definitely not the same as something OS-level)
| ignorantguy wrote:
| I have an old ipad Mini running ios9. there is an app called
| liveframe and it has integrations with google photos. i have
| been running it as a picture frame for a couple of years now
| alexb_ wrote:
| Why would Apple ever be "truly committed" to something which
| gives them less money? They have no reason to encourage people
| to use old technology.
| donor20 wrote:
| They have by far the longest support historically compared to
| the rest of the ecosystem. It's not even close. A while ago
| my parents bought an android device that SHIPPED one version
| behind and was never updated. Totally pathetic. I've seen
| fixes for surprisingly old iOS devices and even new features
| often go back some generations.
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| > Why would Apple ever be "truly committed" to something
| which gives them less money?
|
| Because they claim to be!
| rtpg wrote:
| I have done something like this with my kindle. I then got kind
| of mad at myself for doing something so utilitarian. I wrote a
| little script to instead generate random wordle playthroughs,
| display that, be happy with the code... then immediately throw
| the kindle in my drawer.
|
| Still, "generate a static image from a computer and send it to a
| display at a certain rate" is an underrated way to do fun things
| blagie wrote:
| What I really want is a simply end-to-end way to program these
| devices to display something: basically, something as easy as
| QBasic, P5.js, or Scratch.
|
| What I don't want is to run a server to host something for them
| to display. I want it self-contained, so once made, it's alive
| until the device breaks. My experience is 95% of the cost of
| these is maintenance, and that goes away once a project is no
| longer new, glitzy, and flashy.
|
| What I actually want to build myself is a clock which displays
| time in time zones where my friends, relatives, and family are.
| Most of the other things I'd like are equally esoteric. I'd like
| this to be a <3 hour project (so it sustains a child's attention
| span too).
| harlanji wrote:
| WaveShare screens are very reasonably priced and are starting
| to have 3+ color options. Using a RasPi and Python one can
| simply display any image via Python Imaging and some code to
| transmit the data via the connector pins. The image remains
| fixed on the screen even when it's powered down.
|
| I got a little screen and the demo code worked, didn't know
| Python well enough at the time to keep running with it (part of
| the motivation to learn Python in the past year). Might need
| some work to build a case/enclosure, but beyond that it's a
| little piece of hardware that does what you wish. I'm thinking
| similar things, some specific cases in mind.
|
| (I can be hired to do work like this for $15/hr for the first
| 90 days, contact info in profile).
| joelthelion wrote:
| Is there a way to use them in a low power setup, with a
| battery that lasts at least several days?
| yankput wrote:
| I have just bought aranet4, a CO2 meter, which uses eink and I
| think partly because of that has a ridiculously long 5 year
| battery life.
|
| But I understand why... it's 169eur, the cheaper CO2 meters are
| just much cheaper.
| [deleted]
| ros86 wrote:
| I can recommend checking out https://openepaperlink.de/. It's a
| project to repurpose e-ink electronic shelf labels (in various
| sizes, ranging from 1.54" to 7.4"). I have been playing around
| with it the last few weeks and it's a lot of fun! The community
| around this is very active on Discord.
| artursapek wrote:
| Very cool. I'd been thinking about building something like this.
| Do you look at it every day? Seems really useful.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The crispness of e-ink is 99% of what makes me want it for semi-
| static displays. It's just ridiculously satisfying to look at.
| hinkley wrote:
| I just wish I could figure out a power scheme that would make
| it worth my trouble to use them as information radiators.
| Perhaps rechargeable batteries.
|
| Displays like this would be a good candidate for wireless power
| schemes, but they aren't sited in places with a good set of
| power scavenging options. Maybe solar.
| 0x38B wrote:
| More than any other piece of technology I own - phone, laptop,
| watch - my Kindle makes me happy. A big part of that is the
| display and it's paper-likeness.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I also love how simple it is. It's a book of books. No
| distractions. It does what it does well. Waterproof. Battery
| lasts forever.
|
| I'm getting into having more purpose-built gadgets even if
| they seem to 70% overlap with each other.
|
| Reading a book on my phone or tablet just isn't the same.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| I use a Kindle Fire (non E-ink) tablet as a dedicated calendar
| viewing tool as:
|
| 1. It's very easy to put it into developer mode and set "don't
| lock screen if plugged in"
|
| 2. I can just open it to a web page of my calendar.
|
| This is great as I don't get nerd-sniped into some dev project
| trying to set it all up and actually get a functional calendar so
| I don't miss things.
| 0x38B wrote:
| Another option for displaying things on a jailbroken Kindle is to
| use kterm to ssh into a computer and then connect to a tmux
| session. I've used this to read man pages - it's quite satisfying
| to press 'f' on my laptop and see the page scroll on the Kindle.
|
| Connectivity is easy, as you can connect over USB or WiFi (my
| Kindle connects to my iPhone's hotspot).
| zephrx1111 wrote:
| There are many android eink reader out there the can be used
| easily for this scenario, why ppl are always bothered on kindle?
| corobo wrote:
| Kindle popularity I'd imagine. I've got an old kindle knocking
| around somewhere, I'd rather reuse that than buy a new device
| to tinker with
| konschubert wrote:
| Hi OP!
|
| You're writing
|
| > I use FBInk on the kindle to display the images after curling
| them from a API Gateway.
|
| I am the founder of this smart screen product:
| https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
|
| Curling an image is the same approach that I use for my e-paper
| smart screen as well. It should be quite easy to bring your
| dashboard to my device... maybe we can work together on
| something? My email is info@invisible-computers.com
| QuinnyPig wrote:
| I bought one of your devices after seeing you on HN a month or
| two ago; after nearly 3 weeks of DHL doing god-alone-knows-
| what, it finally arrived and I can say it's super well built.
| konschubert wrote:
| Thanks Corey! There are always things I want to improve of
| course :)
|
| I want to be fair to DHL here: The parcels are shipped
| through the letter network to make the overseas shipping more
| affordable. It's expected that they take bit longer than the
| normal DHL packages.
| asadm wrote:
| I like how you submarine each e-ink HN post :)
| konschubert wrote:
| Guilty as charged.
| phanimahesh wrote:
| Why do you proxy eveything through your api backend? Can
| the device not check the url directly? Also, does the
| checking result in full image download always or do you
| respect etags and other caching headers like if-modified-
| since?
| konschubert wrote:
| > Why do you proxy eveything through your api backend
| Because it makes development and maintenance soo much
| easier, faster and reliable. I don't have to debug stuff
| that breaks on somebody's embedded esp32. If something
| breaks, it's in the backend and I see it in Sentry.
|
| > Can the device not check the url directly
|
| Yes, it could (with some modifications). But then you
| need to transmit and store the URL on the device, which
| requires establishing a bluetooth connection to change
| it. I am considering to offer this as an option to give
| myself and other peace of mind.
|
| > Do you respect etags and other caching headers like if-
| modified-since
|
| Not yet, but I could implement this very quickly if you
| send me an email and tell me you need this. :) (This is a
| great example how proxying things though the backend
| makes development easier: If I wasn't proxying, this
| change would require a firmware update.)
| pitched wrote:
| Instead of having your backend download and retransmit
| the file, you could return a redirect to it instead? Plus
| maybe lower the poll rate from a few times per minute to
| once an hour or so to avoid the need for caching to save
| battery.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| I would love to use your product, but there is certain data I
| can't send through a remote proxy (like my work calendar). Is
| there anyway to run whatever the backend is locally on a
| machine on my network? Or to have the device pull from a custom
| URL that is local to my network instead?
| konschubert wrote:
| This isn't possible yet. I want to add as an option that in
| the future, but it's not possible yet. Sorry :(
| praveen9920 wrote:
| Is there documentation on how the custom content can be
| rendered on this?
| konschubert wrote:
| Hmm, what do you have in mind?
|
| Some custom content just for yourself, or an app that others
| can install as well?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Why are you evading the question? The answer should be a
| simple "yes, I allow you to pull or push content using the
| following methods:"
|
| I can buy an ESP32 e-ink screen and run esphome or any of
| several other open source projects and put a piece of wood
| on the front of it, too.
| konschubert wrote:
| I was trying to understand your question better. There
| are two ways to build software for it:
|
| One: https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-
| calendar/image...
|
| Two:
|
| https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-
| gallery/blob/ma...
|
| Both of these require rendering the content via an HTTP
| endpoint and both of these currently only work together
| with the device backend.
|
| > I can buy an ESP32 e-ink screen and run esphome or any
| of several other open source projects and put a piece of
| wood on the front of it, too.
|
| Yes, you can! And if you do this, you have absolutely no
| need to use my e-paper smart screen. (Though, for the
| record, it's not just a piece of wood in front, it's a
| CNC'd frame)
| dh-g wrote:
| Very nice. You've made a beautiful looking device. I'll be in
| touch.
| konschubert wrote:
| Cool!
| plugin-baby wrote:
| This looks really neat! Does it have an ethernet port? And
| maybe PoE?
| konschubert wrote:
| It's powered by a USB plug... is there a way to convert PoE
| to USB power?
|
| And the connectivity is through Wifi. (And Bluetooth during
| Setup)
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The PoE to USB solution is a "PoE splitter" and they're
| cheap and very useful. The website says the device has a
| USB-A connector for power. That's a bit of an odd connector
| to power a device from (since A is supposed to be a host
| port). Is that port really an A?
| konschubert wrote:
| I am referring to something like this: https://www.newnex
| .com/images/usb-2-a-male(UH2-AE)_small.png
|
| Isn't this called a USB-A plug?
|
| EDIT: I cannot respond to the child comment, but yes: The
| Device has a male USB plug, and then the cable goes right
| into the device, no receptacle on the device.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I think I'm misunderstanding. The device has a captive
| cable with a USB-A plug on the end (i.e. not a female
| receptacle on the device), doesn't it?
|
| Edit: I understand. I'm used to devices with receptacles
| rather than captive cables. Any reason why you went that
| way?
| konschubert wrote:
| I was going back and forth on this for a long time, but
| ultimately I decided that a cable entering the device
| looks sleeker than a plug that is plugged into a socket
| on the frame.
|
| Also makes it easier to place it on the included stand.
| Arelius wrote:
| For sure, there are tons of off the shelve adapters that'll
| do it. But may be hard to fit in your package.
|
| The big part, is the power is delivered at a pretty high
| voltage, so you are going to need a buck converter to get
| it down to the 5V usb expects.
| avivo wrote:
| If you can provide a script that takes in an HTML file and
| provides an image ready for rendering, that would be amazing.
| Then I can automatically take any website and have a cron job
| that dumps the result into a shared dropbox link where it can
| be used by the screen.
| konschubert wrote:
| > If you can provide a script that takes in an HTML file and
| provides an image ready for rendering, that would be amazing.
|
| Yea, that's something I have been trying to build, but it's
| surprisingly non-trivial. There are a bunch of headless
| browser options, but I haven't found a good way to tell them:
| "Render the page in X width and Y height and then take a
| screenshot".
|
| That seems like a problem that should have 100 open source
| solutions for it, and I am sure there are some that work
| really well! But I personally haven't found one yet.
| simonbw wrote:
| I made something almost exactly like this before. I needed
| to convert svgs to pngs and have them display the same way
| they looked in the browser. It turned out that spinning up
| chromium and taking a screenshot was the easiest thing way
| to do that. I think I used puppeteer.
|
| Headless Chrome seems like it should be able to do what you
| want pretty easily.
| https://developer.chrome.com/blog/headless-chrome/
| mlunar wrote:
| Hi! A while ago I had exactly the same problem and thought
| process, so I made this:
| https://github.com/SmilyOrg/website-image-proxy
|
| Hopefully you find it useful :)
| IanCal wrote:
| It feels fairly reasonable imo to specify something like
| "this uses phantomjs with the following screen size" and
| just say peoples work has to fit that.
| ticoombs wrote:
| > "Render the page in X width and Y height and then take a
| screenshot".
|
| Isn't this the exact example of phantomjs?
|
| ``` page.viewportSize = { width: 600, height: 600 }; ```
|
| At least that is what I use to do for screen testing for
| some of our low-hanging-fruit QA. At some point I rewrote
| it in puppeteer and it was as simple as the above line.
|
| The screenshot results in being the X/Y size.
|
| I'd be interested in why this doesn't work in your usecase.
| stavros wrote:
| I did kind of the same thing with a LilyGo display, and it looks
| amazing:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-timeframe/
|
| I had to turn it into a generic signage platform first (it lets
| you show any image you want), and then screenshot GCal onto that
| image. It works really well, though.
|
| Nowadays it's an electronic power meter, which also looks great.
| dh-g wrote:
| I didn't realise they made 4.7inch version. I find that a
| little small for my uses but you really did a lot with it. Nice
| project.
|
| I made a solar powered conways game of life with an esp32 and a
| 4.2 waveshare display but the whole time I wanted a few more
| pixels.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I have a 7.3 inch, 7 color eink display coming in the mail.
| Built-in raspberry pico with wifi. Can't wait till it gets
| here... < 100 usd price, it sounds too good to be true.
|
| Edit: can you believe it?
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-
| frame-7-3?variant=40...
| ripley12 wrote:
| I've been playing with one of those for the last month,
| made a little household dashboard thing:
| https://twitter.com/reillywood/status/1705373370215449033
|
| The refresh time blows (something like 30 seconds), but
| otherwise I've been pretty happy with it.
| Neil44 wrote:
| That's cool. I regret throwing my ancient kindle away now.
|
| The expensive corporate version of this is called a Joan -
| https://getjoan.com/digital-signage/
| rmccue wrote:
| A more affordable alternative to this is the Inkplate series,
| which uses recycled e-ink screens from tablets:
| https://soldered.com/categories/inkplate/
|
| The software runs on an ESP32 and is all open source:
| https://inkplate.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
| foul wrote:
| It's affordable but some displays cost as much as waveshare
| displays, and waveshare displays are new, not
| refurbished/repurposed.
| gregoryl wrote:
| Ooft. 900 euro and a subscription.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > I regret throwing my ancient kindle away now.
|
| Amazon also gives you a 20% discount for buying a new one, if
| you send the old one in, even if it doesn't work at all
| anymore.
| omershapira wrote:
| The most fun part of these projects is seeing people quickly
| build ad-hoc renderers for E-Ink. Very quickly you find out you
| need render passes, dithering, debanding, etc.
|
| Here's my weather E-Ink board (which consistently gives a faster
| result than waiting for the iOS weather app to fetch & render):
| https://github.com/OmerShapira/theres-some-weather-outside
| jes5199 wrote:
| what's the screen refresh time like on this? I have a small
| e-ink display that I got from Adafruit and it takes 10+ seconds
| to redraw
| dh-g wrote:
| Yea doing that the first time was a pain but FBink is pretty
| widely supported on these type of devices and really lowers the
| barrier to entry.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's a shame that this open-source project is lower than the
| guy spamming and astro-turfing his locked-in calendar display.
| omershapira wrote:
| To be fair:
|
| 1. His project does allow rendering any HTML:
| https://www.invisible-computers.com/programmable-e-paper-
| scr...
|
| 2. It is in stock. :) Raspberry Pi Zero 2 and the waveshare
| displays are in a bit of a stock crunch, and the frame I
| ended up mounting this in, along with the special flat USB
| cable, pushed the project cost to the same price. It's my own
| aEsTheTic tho.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Also it actually looks nice. But I do agree it's lame that
| it's locked down.
| artursapek wrote:
| Love your readme lol
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Still dreaming of the day when we can have E Ink Dice
| Arubis wrote:
| If you're not up for DIY, I've been using a unit from
| https://www.invisible-computers.com/ for years and I love it. Not
| affiliated; just a happy customer.
| konschubert wrote:
| My heart made a little jump when I saw this, I've been working
| on this project for years and I do not take it for granted that
| my users are starting to recommend the product.
|
| I am here to answer any questions anyone might have.
|
| There are some more pictures on the shop page here:
| https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| This thing looks like a lot of fun, however it looks like the
| device is "tethered" to some kind of back-end service you
| provide, rather than just being a standalone device on the
| network. Can you explain how communication with the device
| works?
| konschubert wrote:
| Yes, it needs a backend service. It is just a dumb screen
| that pools from a backend URL.
|
| The upside of this is that you can easily configure it
| remotely, because all settings after the initial setup are
| stored server-side...
|
| ... and it makes the whole development flow easier when you
| can build, iterate and deploy on a server.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Is there any option to self-host that backend service?
| I'm not comfortable, from a mental health perspective,
| with integrating a device into my life routines that
| could suddenly stop working through loss of a hosted
| service.
|
| What's the actual communication technology? Is it Wi-Fi?
| Cellular?
|
| Edit: I see elsewhere you state it's Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
| From a Wi-Fi perspective and workplace deployment does it
| support 802.1x?
| konschubert wrote:
| > Is there any option to self-host that backend service?
|
| Not yet, I want to support that in future but it's not
| possible yet. I have personally decided that I will keep
| the backend running even if I decide the project isn't
| worth it for me any more... but of course, I understand
| the this is no 100% guarantee.
|
| > From a Wi-Fi perspective and workplace deployment does
| it support 802.1x? Uhhh, I don't know.. how would I check
| that?
| ISL wrote:
| How are the colors of multiple calendars rendered? ( can one
| be cross-hatched and the other black? )
| konschubert wrote:
| It's not something I have tried yet. I would be worried
| about the readability of text in this case.
|
| When it comes to the layout, there is definitely a lot that
| could be done, that hasn't been implemented yet. I am
| always working to add features but of course there are
| always more ideas than time. :D
|
| (For example, I recently, I added the option to display the
| calendar vertically:
|
| https://shop.invisible-
| computers.com/cdn/shop/files/IMG_0304...
| loginatnine wrote:
| I understand your desire to build out an "ecosystem" of app
| and everything, however, I'd really like an option to go
| fully on my own and skip your iOS/android app.
|
| Is it something that you plan on doing and document? Or is
| there an easy way I can ssh into the device and figure out on
| my own?
|
| TIA!
|
| EDIT : well, 1 minute later you answered part of my question
| here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645339. How
| about ssh-ing?
| konschubert wrote:
| ssh-ing is hard because there is no USB port. There isn't
| even an USB controller on the board, just some rudimentary
| UART pins. The usb plug is just for power.
| Arubis wrote:
| It's frequently visible in the background on Zoom calls, and
| I get both compliments and inquiries; hopefully a few folks
| followed through!
| konschubert wrote:
| :)
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Oh man, glad you're still going. For some reason I remember
| you getting a ton of critical feedback last time this was
| posted - glad you've persisted. Keep on my friend.
| konschubert wrote:
| Last time I posted, the bezel on the screen was about twice
| as wide still... :D And even so, while I had a few comments
| who were ripping me for the huge bezel, most people still
| liked it! So this actually encouraged me :D
| carimura wrote:
| Second sentence mentions an API, but then, no API docs
| anywhere...?
| konschubert wrote:
| The docs are here:
|
| https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-
| gallery/blob/ma...
|
| I admit that this is still a bit rough around the edges...
|
| As a simpler alternative, if you just want to build some
| layout for yourself and you do not need user management,
| you can simply render it as an image on the internet and
| point the device to it:
|
| https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-
| calendar/image...
| salzig wrote:
| > Privacy Information: Plese note that the data is
| proxied through the Invisible Computers API backend and a
| non-reversible hash of most recent image is stored for up
| to 48 hours.
|
| Wait? It's always proxied through your service? So there
| is no way to show something on the screen without you
| also being able to see it? That's a big nope for me.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Ooh that looks interesting and not TOO expensive, for a "out of
| the box" solution. Does it work well / is it self-sufficient
| without phone once you set it up? Can you adjust the scale,
| scroll easily, etc?
| konschubert wrote:
| Founder here. You can adjust how many of the upcoming days
| are shown, and you can adjust the first and the last hour of
| the day. This really allows you to dial in the information
| density.
|
| For scrolling, I am not quite sure what you mean - are you
| referring to a button that would allow to move the time
| forward on the calendar? (That doesn't exist yet)
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Thanks! I wasn't sure if it's touch-screen (like e.g.
| Kindle) or an entirely passive unit; so for example if it's
| showing this week, can a user scroll on the unit to see
| what's coming next week? :)
| konschubert wrote:
| It's not a touch screen, it's fully passive.
|
| A touch screen might be cool, maybe for a future
| version... but it would drive up the price.
|
| From a product perspective, I wonder if people wouldn't
| rather pick up their smart phone if they want to look at
| their calendar more deeply. I don't think the device
| should try to compete with the smart phone, it can only
| lose.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Everybody will have their opinion, 100% :)
|
| FWIW: In family scenario, being able to quickly check
| next week (a simple scroll), can be very beneficial as we
| plan our kids activities etc (but I understand you don't
| want to overcomplicate it, and everybody has "just one
| more thing it needs":). I'll have a chat with my wife on
| whether it's something she would use as currently is;
| I'll be happy to share feedback either way if it's
| helpful :).
| konschubert wrote:
| Yea, you are definitely not the first one who suggested
| adding one or two "action buttons", even if there isn't a
| touch screen. So I am definitely taking that idea
| seriously.
| jwong_ wrote:
| Recently went the DIY route to show a Notion board on my 4th gen
| kindle. This is much nicer though, as it's optimised for display
| on the lower resolution screen.
|
| I just wanted to avoid having to pull data out of Notion & re-
| build a UI. Would be nice for some way to apply CSS to a page to
| make it more viewable.
| landgenoot wrote:
| Nice project.
|
| I did something similar, but with photos. I managed to process
| everything on the device in 100% golang with imagemagick
| C-bindings.
|
| As Imagemagick is also able to render text, it might be a
| solution for you to get rid of the need for an external server.
| The ARM build process happens on GitHub actions, so you can check
| it out.
|
| https://github.com/landgenoot/kindle-synology-photos-photofr...
| dh-g wrote:
| Cool, it looks like your processor is only slight newer then
| mind and is also on a 32 bit version of ARM so this approach
| would probably work. I'll keep this in mind for next time mine
| needs some work.
|
| Really nice project.
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