Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#91

Post by omershapira » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #89

omershapira wrote: post #40

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

It's a shame that this open-source project is lower than the guy spamming and astro-turfing his locked-in calendar display.

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.

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#92

Post by konschubert » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #88

konschubert wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, what do you have in mind? Some custom content just for yourself, or an app that others can install as well?

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.

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)

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#93

Post by corobo » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

zephrx1111 wrote: post #37

There are many android eink reader out there the can be used easily for this scenario, why ppl are always bothered on kindle?

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

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#94

Post by konschubert » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

phanimahesh wrote: post #90

konschubert wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guilty as charged.

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?

> 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.)

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#95

Post by downrightmike » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #18

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.

use a light timer to help https://xkcd.com/1495/

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#96

Post by konschubert » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

loginatnine wrote: post #66

konschubert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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 ab…

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.

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#97

Post by ros86 » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

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.

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#98

Post by avivo » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #28

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 emai…

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.

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#99

Post by jes5199 » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:46 PM UTC

omershapira wrote: post #40

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

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

Re: Show HN: E-Ink Day Schedule

#100

Post by hinkley » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #8

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.

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.