I'm not certain about their wording 'companion', although I'm not sure what else you'd call it. This is a device which pulls a screen's worth of data, chosen by you at an interval you prefer, for...
I'm not certain about their wording 'companion', although I'm not sure what else you'd call it. This is a device which pulls a screen's worth of data, chosen by you at an interval you prefer, for display on it's eink screen. A device so useful, I made my own a few years ago (and it's useful every single day, still). So you can have your calendar, to-do list, whatever. Hang it on your fridge or whatever is handy.
What's neat about this one is it's entirely open source. You can download their firmware to run on your own hardware, or you can mod it to run on theirs in a way you prefer or whatever. Which is nice to see.
I wonder if this could be used as an interactive home assistant display. Edit: it doesn’t have a touchscreen but it could be an updated dash to show non-interactive information
I wonder if this could be used as an interactive home assistant display.
Edit: it doesn’t have a touchscreen but it could be an updated dash to show non-interactive information
It certainly seems like a good option for hanging next to the front door and displaying upcoming departures from your local bus stop- a project I've been meaning to get on with for some time, as...
It certainly seems like a good option for hanging next to the front door and displaying upcoming departures from your local bus stop- a project I've been meaning to get on with for some time, as I'd prefer to line up leaving with a bus if possible. Less waiting around in the cold.
The more scrolling I did the more I anticipated the pricing to be a punch in the face but it's downright reasonable. Also open source so when it's discontinued it's not necessarily e-waste
The more scrolling I did the more I anticipated the pricing to be a punch in the face but it's downright reasonable.
Also open source so when it's discontinued it's not necessarily e-waste
It's less than the cost of the sum of it's parts, at least for me buying at retail. Which is very reasonable. Even allowing for scale pricing they can't be making all that much on each unit. I'd...
It's less than the cost of the sum of it's parts, at least for me buying at retail. Which is very reasonable. Even allowing for scale pricing they can't be making all that much on each unit.
I'd usually make my own of this kind of thing but it's cheaper and easier not to. Albeit probably less fun. I may still make another of my own anyway, but I do like a colour screen for ambient information delivery.
Just know it might take a while to be shipped when you order. I ordered mine two weeks ago and got a mail that they had a rush of people buying it because it was featured in a snazzylabs video. So...
Just know it might take a while to be shipped when you order. I ordered mine two weeks ago and got a mail that they had a rush of people buying it because it was featured in a snazzylabs video. So they sold out their current stock much quicker than expected and couldn't in time update the website. They offered me refund if I thought the expected shipping date was too far away. Which, for me, is expected to be end of March the earliest.
Saw this on Snazzy Labs' YouTube channel last week and thought it looked cool. I like the ideas of smart displays being able to display the time, weather, calendar appointments, etc. I used to...
Saw this on Snazzy Labs' YouTube channel last week and thought it looked cool. I like the ideas of smart displays being able to display the time, weather, calendar appointments, etc. I used to have a Google Nest Hub thing that would serve that purpose for me but now that I just live with my parents and spend the majority of my time at my desk working, I haven't needed it. I was actually recently thinking about selling some of my unused tech and picking up the Pixel Tablet to serve as my tablet/smart display but I just haven't acted on that idea.
I was very pessimistic looking at their site because I'm very hostile towards useless technology. But honestly for $150 it seems like something I'd be into. I use a flip phone, so maybe something...
I was very pessimistic looking at their site because I'm very hostile towards useless technology. But honestly for $150 it seems like something I'd be into. I use a flip phone, so maybe something like this could fill in the gaps functionality-wise.
I would be more interested if it was more portable. It seems too big to put in your pocket or something. I'm also not a fan of having to get data from a web server.
I'm not sure it would work as a portable device. You'd need to have your phone in hotspot mode all the time so it can use the wifi to update. By the time you've put a sim card in it and the...
I'm not sure it would work as a portable device. You'd need to have your phone in hotspot mode all the time so it can use the wifi to update. By the time you've put a sim card in it and the required extra battery and other hardware and software it's very not the same class of device any more.
Curious as to where do you do like to get data from if not over http?
What I was hoping for was a palm sized device that can locally run user made apps. Notes, calendar, music player, maybe a GPS if the refresh rate is high enough. It still looks like a cool device,...
What I was hoping for was a palm sized device that can locally run user made apps. Notes, calendar, music player, maybe a GPS if the refresh rate is high enough. It still looks like a cool device, I'm not trying to criticize it.
Please be warned that Good E-Reader is not a reliable source and doesn't have journalistic integrity. I'm not saying that the stuff they say is wrong, I'm saying don't trust it. Especially when...
Please be warned that Good E-Reader is not a reliable source and doesn't have journalistic integrity. I'm not saying that the stuff they say is wrong, I'm saying don't trust it. Especially when they're reviewing the products they themselves sell, which they inevitably add the disclaimer either not-at-all or at the very end of the video/bottom of the article.
I think GER are a good-enough source of what devices currently exist in various categories. I wouldn't trust them much further than that, but I should have mentioned that or found a better source.
I think GER are a good-enough source of what devices currently exist in various categories. I wouldn't trust them much further than that, but I should have mentioned that or found a better source.
The entire point is that the device itself does not do any computation. All it does is wait for the current image to expire, then fetch a new image and expiration time. It is possible to change...
It seems too big to put in your pocket or something. I'm also not a fan of having to get data from a web server.
The entire point is that the device itself does not do any computation. All it does is wait for the current image to expire, then fetch a new image and expiration time. It is possible to change the target URL to a local address and use a self-hosted server to send the image.
In any case, it's really meant to be something to hang on a wall or sit on a shelf, in a similar way to a weather clock or paper calendar. I'm personally considering it but I'd really like a bigger display than 7". I'd like it in the living room so I can keep my schedule in mind, but that needs a screen big enough to read the calendar from across the room. The firmware is open-source so in principle I could grab a bigger E-Ink panel, driver board, and some microcontroller and get going.
I think that gives you an account to use their hosting service for your own plugins? It is supposed to be possible to flash your own firmware to the board and self-host the server. I guess the $20...
I think that gives you an account to use their hosting service for your own plugins?
It is supposed to be possible to flash your own firmware to the board and self-host the server. I guess the $20 is a one-time fee rather than a subscription to avoid that.
But I don't know for sure. If indeed it is locked down somehow I'm suddenly more interested in building my own rather than ordering one of these. I don't think that's the case.
I found https://usetrmnl.com/blog/developer-edition that goes into a bit more detail. The device itself doesn't do any compute, it just fetches and displays an image from a web-server. The...
The device itself doesn't do any compute, it just fetches and displays an image from a web-server. The firmware on the device is open-source, so you can build your own and change the target URL.
The server is not open-source. You can use their pre-made plugin ecosystem without the extra $20, but if you want to run your own plugins on their servers, you need to pay the fee. It looks like the business model is a one-time $20 instead of a subscription.
But you could write your own server and change the target URL to use it instead. All the server has to do is serve an image and some metadata over HTTP. You only need to implement three endpoints.
On the usetrmnl github I see do see three open-source server implementations which I guess one could use as a starting point: byos_django (python), byos_sinatra (ruby), and byos_phoenix (elixir). But from what I understand none of those are the trmnl website, since that convenience and plugin api is their value proposition.
I'm not sure if this is right for me, but I'm glad it exists! E-ink displays are extremely under-utilized, in my opinion. We have ugly, bright, and harsh screens on everything nowadays - give me...
I'm not sure if this is right for me, but I'm glad it exists! E-ink displays are extremely under-utilized, in my opinion.
We have ugly, bright, and harsh screens on everything nowadays - give me something easy on the eyes! And as a bonus, they are much more energy efficient.
I've used a similar product, the Inkplate (specifically the Inkplate6). Its enclosure is 3D printed, so it's not quite as clean as some others. Its software is also open source, as they provide an...
I've used a similar product, the Inkplate (specifically the Inkplate6). Its enclosure is 3D printed, so it's not quite as clean as some others. Its software is also open source, as they provide an SDK and some example projects, but they don't have an equivalent to the "plugins" here. You have to be comfortable with coding in C. (They might have MicroPython bindings?) It's based on an Arduino ESP32, and some have buttons, touch screens, and color. It's also in the same price range.
I hope they release a color e-ink version of this. I have a color e-ink display hooked up to a Raspberry Pi as a digital picture frame, and it works really well. But it’s a bit annoying to add...
I hope they release a color e-ink version of this. I have a color e-ink display hooked up to a Raspberry Pi as a digital picture frame, and it works really well. But it’s a bit annoying to add photos to it and it requires things like manually updating the OS (and fixing scripts that break during updates). This seems like it would be a much more user friendly option.
What sort of screen do you have to do photos with? I've been wanting one of those for a while, but Eink Spectra is still crazy expensive and the 7-colour Inky screen I have to do calendar stuff...
What sort of screen do you have to do photos with? I've been wanting one of those for a while, but Eink Spectra is still crazy expensive and the 7-colour Inky screen I have to do calendar stuff doesn't handle photos well at all (not to mention the dithering operation takes upwards of five minutes per image on my Pi Zero)
I'm using a 7" Inky Impression with a Raspberry Pi Zero W. It takes ~5-10 seconds to process the image before the screen starts to refresh. The core of the script is this function: from PIL import...
I'm using a 7" Inky Impression with a Raspberry Pi Zero W. It takes ~5-10 seconds to process the image before the screen starts to refresh. The core of the script is this function:
And resize_image is copied from this old (now removed) function in Pillow. I found the photos looked terrible until I added saturation=1. It's not as good as a real photo print or a good LCD screen, but it's certainly not bad. With a few feet of distance, the dithering is much less noticeable.
I'd love to get a bigger one, but yeah, I'm not paying that much. I wish e-ink weren't so expensive.
I can recommend looking into hitherdither, I've got some pretty good results with that and an Inky specific palette. Still not acceptable for photos to my eyes, which is why I mostly only use it...
I can recommend looking into hitherdither, I've got some pretty good results with that and an Inky specific palette. Still not acceptable for photos to my eyes, which is why I mostly only use it with cartoon images and graphic art (on the rare occasions my calendar doesn't have anything for the next week). Although it does take bloody ages to run.
8 inch Spectra screens were around £200 last I looked. But nothing comes close to Spectra for colour rendering. I guess it's only twice as much as the Inky, but it's still more cash than I have to spare on fun toys!
here's my dithering script, it outputs various types of dither so you can pick the best - some work better or worse for different images
importsysimporthitherditherfrominky.inky_uc8159importInkyfromPILimportImage# Advanced dithering example using Hitherdither by Henrik Blidh:# https://github.com/hbldh/hitherdither# usage: ./dither.py <image_file> <saturation># Image file should be RGB and can be a jpg, PNG or otherwise.# Saturation should be from 0.0 to 1.0 and changes the palette that's used to dither the image.# a higher saturation will generally result in a more saturated end image due to how colours are mixed.inky=Inky()saturation=0.8thresholds=[64,64,64]iflen(sys.argv)==1:print("""Usage: {file} image-file""".format(file=sys.argv[0]))sys.exit(1)iflen(sys.argv)>2:saturation=float(sys.argv[2])palette=hitherdither.palette.Palette(inky._palette_blend(saturation,dtype='uint24'))image=Image.open(sys.argv[1]).convert("RGB")dmeths=["stucki","burkes","sierra3","atkinson"]fordindmeths:image_dithered=hitherdither.diffusion.error_diffusion_dithering(image,palette,method=d,order=2)svpth=sys.argv[1][0:-4]+"_dither_"+d+"_.png"image_dithered.save(svpth)
I'm tickled pink at the idea of coming over to someone's house and hearing them say "oh drat. I'll need to charge my picture frame. I always forget to do that."
I'm tickled pink at the idea of coming over to someone's house and hearing them say "oh drat. I'll need to charge my picture frame. I always forget to do that."
I mean… if it’s really a twice-per-year action, statistically, I don’t think you’ll be likely to witness them being out of charge on a random sporadic visit.
I mean… if it’s really a twice-per-year action, statistically, I don’t think you’ll be likely to witness them being out of charge on a random sporadic visit.
Heard about it a week or two ago. Researched it and then ordered right away. What really sold me is that the server is written in Ruby using the sinatra framework. I do love me some Ruby. And, as...
Heard about it a week or two ago. Researched it and then ordered right away.
What really sold me is that the server is written in Ruby using the sinatra framework. I do love me some Ruby. And, as someone who worked at Heroku for 5 years on the public API (also a Sinatra app), this speaks one of my love languages. Because you can self-host the server, I'm going to have a good good time.
I really want a "clock" on my fridge that displays just the current date (so I can write it on packages I open without doing complex operations like "remembering which day of the week it is")....
I really want a "clock" on my fridge that displays just the current date (so I can write it on packages I open without doing complex operations like "remembering which day of the week it is"). This seems like it could do that but also I feel like I should not have to spend more than maybe $20 to have a screen showing me today's date. Does anyone have any recommendation?
Get a simpel digital alarm clock with a date function? I did a quick two second search and found various things like that, just one random example, which all seem to hit your price mark roughly. I...
Get a simpel digital alarm clock with a date function? I did a quick two second search and found various things like that, just one random example, which all seem to hit your price mark roughly. I am fairly sure that with maybe a bit more targeted searching you can find what you want for your fridge.
Or you go the diy route. Something like this if you insist on an epaper display.
I really want ONLY the date though, I don't like to clock watch and I often am listening to an audiobook waiting in the kitchen while water boils etc. It's pretty peaceful and I can easily ignore...
I really want ONLY the date though, I don't like to clock watch and I often am listening to an audiobook waiting in the kitchen while water boils etc. It's pretty peaceful and I can easily ignore the tiny stove clock but I don't want a clock this big
epaper isn't necessary, but I really want a device showing the date and NOT the time which seems a lot harder to find than I'd expect
that DIY option looks perfect but I deeply hate working with electronic hardware so I'd rather not
Like I said, I am sure that with some more searching you will be able to find a device that does fit your needs. Or if you don't feel like doing that, buy one that still does time and tape over...
Like I said, I am sure that with some more searching you will be able to find a device that does fit your needs. Or if you don't feel like doing that, buy one that still does time and tape over the time :P
oh huh taping over the time actually might work lol, i'll search and see if i can find one with a big enough date that i think would work. thanks haha!
oh huh taping over the time actually might work lol, i'll search and see if i can find one with a big enough date that i think would work. thanks haha!
that's what I used to use, but then I forget what day it is, or even what WEEK it is. I really just want a screen that tells me today's date and I feel incredibly miffed that this isn't a normal...
that's what I used to use, but then I forget what day it is, or even what WEEK it is. I really just want a screen that tells me today's date and I feel incredibly miffed that this isn't a normal product
seems easier to find a clock that will tell me only the day of the week + combine it with a calendar, than to get only the date ;;
I know you said you don't like hardware stuff, but there are plenty of little screens which just plug right into low power compute devices (some even arrive ready to go) and that's barely hardware...
I know you said you don't like hardware stuff, but there are plenty of little screens which just plug right into low power compute devices (some even arrive ready to go) and that's barely hardware at that point, it's just a bit of software and maybe putting the thing in a pretty box.
That looks nice, but after reading the comments and looking at the Snazzy Labs video, I think its only selling point is the 3-months charge. It's not an interactive device, it literally just...
That looks nice, but after reading the comments and looking at the Snazzy Labs video, I think its only selling point is the 3-months charge.
It's not an interactive device, it literally just displays pre-rendered images at set times and/or intervals, and that's it. You can't use it to choose and display a recipe. If you asked it to show your weekly planning and your todo list, you either have to wait for it to show the correct screen, or mash both screens together (and lose information or use a smaller font).
I have a device almost exactly like the TRMNL. It pulls my family's shared calendar information, formats it into an image and shows that image on an eink screen. It updates once an hour, which is...
I have a device almost exactly like the TRMNL. It pulls my family's shared calendar information, formats it into an image and shows that image on an eink screen. It updates once an hour, which is probably slightly more than it needs to. It's incredibly useful, I use it multiple times daily. It does one thing and does it well.
I think the device you want this to be is an eink tablet, which it's not trying to be. They exist and definitely have their place, of course.
I guess, I just think that 165€ (the tablet + developer option + shipping) is expensive for a gadget that isn't even able to switch what's displayed with a button press. A used Android tablet...
I guess, I just think that 165€ (the tablet + developer option + shipping) is expensive for a gadget that isn't even able to switch what's displayed with a button press. A used Android tablet would be cheaper and (IMO) more useful.
Like I said, for me, the only selling point is the 3-months charge 🤷♂️
A used tablet doesn't have an e-ink display. It's not just the battery charge that makes these attractive for a lot of people. They don't require a backlight, are legible in bright conditions and...
A used tablet doesn't have an e-ink display. It's not just the battery charge that makes these attractive for a lot of people. They don't require a backlight, are legible in bright conditions and generally easier on the eyes.
Might still not be for you, but I just wanted to provide some context as it isn't just the battery life.
Off the topic of the product but on topic of the site that you linked to - the site hijacks the scroll event and I cannot actually navigate the site to save my life. Every tick of my scroll wheel...
Off the topic of the product but on topic of the site that you linked to - the site hijacks the scroll event and I cannot actually navigate the site to save my life.
Every tick of my scroll wheel seems to jump me like three screens. If I scroll up and down really fast I can sometimes get one of the hard-to-reach screens to show up.
Front end devs, please just scroll pages normally.
While that sort of layout/scrolling isn't my personal preference, the site is working fine for me in both Chrome and Firefox on both laptop and mobile. I don't have a mouse though, so no scroll wheel.
While that sort of layout/scrolling isn't my personal preference, the site is working fine for me in both Chrome and Firefox on both laptop and mobile. I don't have a mouse though, so no scroll wheel.
For me it... Works, kinda? It has a janky feeling to it and jitters a bit when scrolling, but it's usable. I don't understand why you'd need to mess with scrolling to this degree though.
For me it... Works, kinda? It has a janky feeling to it and jitters a bit when scrolling, but it's usable.
I don't understand why you'd need to mess with scrolling to this degree though.
They want to build a deck of cards you swipe through like a slide show. Because they don't have a document about their product, they have a pitch deck. But Instagram-slide-show is not a real thing...
They want to build a deck of cards you swipe through like a slide show. Because they don't have a document about their product, they have a pitch deck.
But Instagram-slide-show is not a real thing an HTML document has, and "swipe through" is not a thing a scroll wheel does.
So they build something that assumes you are touching the cards, bolt it to the scroll gestures on the TouchPad on their Mac so they can preview it, and ship it.
EDIT: they do in fact have quite a lot of document about their device. I have no idea why the hot thing in web design is to write a whole Gitbook of documentation and then make a janky landing page that offers no affordances to hide it behind. The crypto and AI people do this too and it's baffling.
I'm not certain about their wording 'companion', although I'm not sure what else you'd call it. This is a device which pulls a screen's worth of data, chosen by you at an interval you prefer, for display on it's eink screen. A device so useful, I made my own a few years ago (and it's useful every single day, still). So you can have your calendar, to-do list, whatever. Hang it on your fridge or whatever is handy.
What's neat about this one is it's entirely open source. You can download their firmware to run on your own hardware, or you can mod it to run on theirs in a way you prefer or whatever. Which is nice to see.
Also if you care about privacy it does that too.
I wonder if this could be used as an interactive home assistant display.
Edit: it doesn’t have a touchscreen but it could be an updated dash to show non-interactive information
It certainly seems like a good option for hanging next to the front door and displaying upcoming departures from your local bus stop- a project I've been meaning to get on with for some time, as I'd prefer to line up leaving with a bus if possible. Less waiting around in the cold.
Almost certainly. It would require custom plugins but almost certainly.
I would say it is a 'dashboard'.
The more scrolling I did the more I anticipated the pricing to be a punch in the face but it's downright reasonable.
Also open source so when it's discontinued it's not necessarily e-waste
It's less than the cost of the sum of it's parts, at least for me buying at retail. Which is very reasonable. Even allowing for scale pricing they can't be making all that much on each unit.
I'd usually make my own of this kind of thing but it's cheaper and easier not to. Albeit probably less fun. I may still make another of my own anyway, but I do like a colour screen for ambient information delivery.
Wow! Thanks for sharing. I was looking for something exactly like this a couple of months ago.
Just know it might take a while to be shipped when you order. I ordered mine two weeks ago and got a mail that they had a rush of people buying it because it was featured in a snazzylabs video. So they sold out their current stock much quicker than expected and couldn't in time update the website. They offered me refund if I thought the expected shipping date was too far away. Which, for me, is expected to be end of March the earliest.
Saw this on Snazzy Labs' YouTube channel last week and thought it looked cool. I like the ideas of smart displays being able to display the time, weather, calendar appointments, etc. I used to have a Google Nest Hub thing that would serve that purpose for me but now that I just live with my parents and spend the majority of my time at my desk working, I haven't needed it. I was actually recently thinking about selling some of my unused tech and picking up the Pixel Tablet to serve as my tablet/smart display but I just haven't acted on that idea.
I hate this type of marketing. Really, the world's first? No one's made a screen dedicated to "things that matter" before?
Why didn't anyone think of it before! (slaps forehead)
I was very pessimistic looking at their site because I'm very hostile towards useless technology. But honestly for $150 it seems like something I'd be into. I use a flip phone, so maybe something like this could fill in the gaps functionality-wise.
I would be more interested if it was more portable. It seems too big to put in your pocket or something. I'm also not a fan of having to get data from a web server.
I'm not sure it would work as a portable device. You'd need to have your phone in hotspot mode all the time so it can use the wifi to update. By the time you've put a sim card in it and the required extra battery and other hardware and software it's very not the same class of device any more.
Curious as to where do you do like to get data from if not over http?
What I was hoping for was a palm sized device that can locally run user made apps. Notes, calendar, music player, maybe a GPS if the refresh rate is high enough. It still looks like a cool device, I'm not trying to criticize it.
You might be interested in the BOOX Palma.
So you want a... phone? With an eink screen?
They exist
Please be warned that Good E-Reader is not a reliable source and doesn't have journalistic integrity. I'm not saying that the stuff they say is wrong, I'm saying don't trust it. Especially when they're reviewing the products they themselves sell, which they inevitably add the disclaimer either not-at-all or at the very end of the video/bottom of the article.
I think GER are a good-enough source of what devices currently exist in various categories. I wouldn't trust them much further than that, but I should have mentioned that or found a better source.
The entire point is that the device itself does not do any computation. All it does is wait for the current image to expire, then fetch a new image and expiration time. It is possible to change the target URL to a local address and use a self-hosted server to send the image.
In any case, it's really meant to be something to hang on a wall or sit on a shelf, in a similar way to a weather clock or paper calendar. I'm personally considering it but I'd really like a bigger display than 7". I'd like it in the living room so I can keep my schedule in mind, but that needs a screen big enough to read the calendar from across the room. The firmware is open-source so in principle I could grab a bigger E-Ink panel, driver board, and some microcontroller and get going.
Why is it $20 to unlock the API on an open source project? Is that actually required? Can I not just modify it?
I think that gives you an account to use their hosting service for your own plugins?
It is supposed to be possible to flash your own firmware to the board and self-host the server. I guess the $20 is a one-time fee rather than a subscription to avoid that.
But I don't know for sure. If indeed it is locked down somehow I'm suddenly more interested in building my own rather than ordering one of these. I don't think that's the case.Edit: https://usetrmnl.com/blog/developer-edition
Why do I need a server?
I found https://usetrmnl.com/blog/developer-edition that goes into a bit more detail.
The device itself doesn't do any compute, it just fetches and displays an image from a web-server. The firmware on the device is open-source, so you can build your own and change the target URL.
The server is not open-source. You can use their pre-made plugin ecosystem without the extra $20, but if you want to run your own plugins on their servers, you need to pay the fee. It looks like the business model is a one-time $20 instead of a subscription.
https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/diy/introduction
But you could write your own server and change the target URL to use it instead. All the server has to do is serve an image and some metadata over HTTP. You only need to implement three endpoints.
On the usetrmnl github I see do see three open-source server implementations which I guess one could use as a starting point:
byos_django(python),byos_sinatra(ruby), andbyos_phoenix(elixir). But from what I understand none of those are the trmnl website, since that convenience and plugin api is their value proposition.I'm not sure if this is right for me, but I'm glad it exists! E-ink displays are extremely under-utilized, in my opinion.
We have ugly, bright, and harsh screens on everything nowadays - give me something easy on the eyes! And as a bonus, they are much more energy efficient.
I've used a similar product, the Inkplate (specifically the Inkplate6). Its enclosure is 3D printed, so it's not quite as clean as some others. Its software is also open source, as they provide an SDK and some example projects, but they don't have an equivalent to the "plugins" here. You have to be comfortable with coding in C. (They might have MicroPython bindings?) It's based on an Arduino ESP32, and some have buttons, touch screens, and color. It's also in the same price range.
I hope they release a color e-ink version of this. I have a color e-ink display hooked up to a Raspberry Pi as a digital picture frame, and it works really well. But it’s a bit annoying to add photos to it and it requires things like manually updating the OS (and fixing scripts that break during updates). This seems like it would be a much more user friendly option.
What sort of screen do you have to do photos with? I've been wanting one of those for a while, but Eink Spectra is still crazy expensive and the 7-colour Inky screen I have to do calendar stuff doesn't handle photos well at all (not to mention the dithering operation takes upwards of five minutes per image on my Pi Zero)
Pocketbook are just about to release these absolute monsters of eink posters but they are a long way from affordable.
I'm using a 7" Inky Impression with a Raspberry Pi Zero W. It takes ~5-10 seconds to process the image before the screen starts to refresh. The core of the script is this function:
And
resize_imageis copied from this old (now removed) function in Pillow. I found the photos looked terrible until I addedsaturation=1. It's not as good as a real photo print or a good LCD screen, but it's certainly not bad. With a few feet of distance, the dithering is much less noticeable.I'd love to get a bigger one, but yeah, I'm not paying that much. I wish e-ink weren't so expensive.
I can recommend looking into hitherdither, I've got some pretty good results with that and an Inky specific palette. Still not acceptable for photos to my eyes, which is why I mostly only use it with cartoon images and graphic art (on the rare occasions my calendar doesn't have anything for the next week). Although it does take bloody ages to run.
8 inch Spectra screens were around £200 last I looked. But nothing comes close to Spectra for colour rendering. I guess it's only twice as much as the Inky, but it's still more cash than I have to spare on fun toys!
here's my dithering script, it outputs various types of dither so you can pick the best - some work better or worse for different images
You need to put a blank line before and after any markdown inside a
<details>tag.Ah, that's what it was. Should be fixed now. Thanks!
I'm tickled pink at the idea of coming over to someone's house and hearing them say "oh drat. I'll need to charge my picture frame. I always forget to do that."
I mean… if it’s really a twice-per-year action, statistically, I don’t think you’ll be likely to witness them being out of charge on a random sporadic visit.
Heard about it a week or two ago. Researched it and then ordered right away.
What really sold me is that the server is written in Ruby using the sinatra framework. I do love me some Ruby. And, as someone who worked at Heroku for 5 years on the public API (also a Sinatra app), this speaks one of my love languages. Because you can self-host the server, I'm going to have a good good time.
I really want a "clock" on my fridge that displays just the current date (so I can write it on packages I open without doing complex operations like "remembering which day of the week it is"). This seems like it could do that but also I feel like I should not have to spend more than maybe $20 to have a screen showing me today's date. Does anyone have any recommendation?
Get a simpel digital alarm clock with a date function? I did a quick two second search and found various things like that, just one random example, which all seem to hit your price mark roughly. I am fairly sure that with maybe a bit more targeted searching you can find what you want for your fridge.
Or you go the diy route. Something like this if you insist on an epaper display.
I really want ONLY the date though, I don't like to clock watch and I often am listening to an audiobook waiting in the kitchen while water boils etc. It's pretty peaceful and I can easily ignore the tiny stove clock but I don't want a clock this big
epaper isn't necessary, but I really want a device showing the date and NOT the time which seems a lot harder to find than I'd expect
that DIY option looks perfect but I deeply hate working with electronic hardware so I'd rather not
Like I said, I am sure that with some more searching you will be able to find a device that does fit your needs. Or if you don't feel like doing that, buy one that still does time and tape over the time :P
oh huh taping over the time actually might work lol, i'll search and see if i can find one with a big enough date that i think would work. thanks haha!
Buy an old used tablet.
Maybe what you want is just an old fashioned paper calendar?
that's what I used to use, but then I forget what day it is, or even what WEEK it is. I really just want a screen that tells me today's date and I feel incredibly miffed that this isn't a normal product
seems easier to find a clock that will tell me only the day of the week + combine it with a calendar, than to get only the date ;;
I know you said you don't like hardware stuff, but there are plenty of little screens which just plug right into low power compute devices (some even arrive ready to go) and that's barely hardware at that point, it's just a bit of software and maybe putting the thing in a pretty box.
For now I am going to try this clock and find an attractive sticker to put over the time, hopefully it works decently well!
That looks nice, but after reading the comments and looking at the Snazzy Labs video, I think its only selling point is the 3-months charge.
It's not an interactive device, it literally just displays pre-rendered images at set times and/or intervals, and that's it. You can't use it to choose and display a recipe. If you asked it to show your weekly planning and your todo list, you either have to wait for it to show the correct screen, or mash both screens together (and lose information or use a smaller font).
I have a device almost exactly like the TRMNL. It pulls my family's shared calendar information, formats it into an image and shows that image on an eink screen. It updates once an hour, which is probably slightly more than it needs to. It's incredibly useful, I use it multiple times daily. It does one thing and does it well.
I think the device you want this to be is an eink tablet, which it's not trying to be. They exist and definitely have their place, of course.
I guess, I just think that 165€ (the tablet + developer option + shipping) is expensive for a gadget that isn't even able to switch what's displayed with a button press. A used Android tablet would be cheaper and (IMO) more useful.
Like I said, for me, the only selling point is the 3-months charge 🤷♂️
A used tablet doesn't have an e-ink display. It's not just the battery charge that makes these attractive for a lot of people. They don't require a backlight, are legible in bright conditions and generally easier on the eyes.
Might still not be for you, but I just wanted to provide some context as it isn't just the battery life.
Off the topic of the product but on topic of the site that you linked to - the site hijacks the scroll event and I cannot actually navigate the site to save my life.
Every tick of my scroll wheel seems to jump me like three screens. If I scroll up and down really fast I can sometimes get one of the hard-to-reach screens to show up.
Front end devs, please just scroll pages normally.
Yeah, the website is literally unusable for me on mobile right now
While that sort of layout/scrolling isn't my personal preference, the site is working fine for me in both Chrome and Firefox on both laptop and mobile. I don't have a mouse though, so no scroll wheel.
For me it... Works, kinda? It has a janky feeling to it and jitters a bit when scrolling, but it's usable.
I don't understand why you'd need to mess with scrolling to this degree though.
They want to build a deck of cards you swipe through like a slide show. Because they don't have a document about their product, they have a pitch deck.
But Instagram-slide-show is not a real thing an HTML document has, and "swipe through" is not a thing a scroll wheel does.
So they build something that assumes you are touching the cards, bolt it to the scroll gestures on the TouchPad on their Mac so they can preview it, and ship it.
EDIT: they do in fact have quite a lot of document about their device. I have no idea why the hot thing in web design is to write a whole Gitbook of documentation and then make a janky landing page that offers no affordances to hide it behind. The crypto and AI people do this too and it's baffling.