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Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

healeycodes.com

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Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#3
> I realized I was asking Google Assistant the same questions over and over again. Like What’s the current weather? or What’s on my calendar for today? So I set out to build a small dashboard for my Raspberry Pi that I could check instead.

Why not use a widget on the home-screen of your phone?

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#4
I almost bought this eink yesterday to test it out, but as I'm seeing here and I thought, it seems a bit small.

I am also considering getting a kindle and just putting a small html page on it so I don't have to get down to the pixel-level. I remember when I tried to use my now-defunct kindle that JS was giving some funny errors, probably should be treated as an old browser. Been holding out to see if a usb-c kindle comes up but people have been complaining for years now.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#5
post #3

> I realized I was asking Google Assistant the same questions over and over again. Like What’s the current weather? or What’s on my calendar for today? So I set out to build a small dashboard for my Raspberry Pi that I could check instead. Why not use a widget on the home-screen of your phone?

Not everyone's phone can do that :(

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#8

I almost bought this eink yesterday to test it out, but as I'm seeing here and I thought, it seems a bit small. I am also considering getting a kindle and just putting a small html page on it so I don't have to get down to the pixel-level. I remember when I tried to use my now-defunct kindle that JS was giving some funny errors, probably should be treated as an old browser. Been holding out to see if a usb-c kindle c…

I did something like this on an old rooted kindle paperwhite.

I wrote the script in bash, it uses a cross-compiled imagemagick to render an image, then pushes it to the screen using the 'eips' command.

I still use it every day, it's my only living room clock now.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#9

I almost bought this eink yesterday to test it out, but as I'm seeing here and I thought, it seems a bit small. I am also considering getting a kindle and just putting a small html page on it so I don't have to get down to the pixel-level. I remember when I tried to use my now-defunct kindle that JS was giving some funny errors, probably should be treated as an old browser. Been holding out to see if a usb-c kindle c…

The html browser on e-ink kindles is absurdly terrible (I think intentionally to discourage using the 'free' 3G for surfing). You may be able to get it to work, but godspeed. While not e-ink, I bought a handful of cheap used iPad-minis and mounted them on the wall. Serve them a little HTML UI from a raspberrypi in the closet. I tried a cheapo kindle fire, but it wasn't possible to get the browser to go "full-screen".

I get the appeal of e-ink for a dashboard, but having fast-refresh, color, fast touch-response, a modern browser, and other things make for a much more pleasant UX (at the expense of being bright and having to worry about powering the thing).

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#10
I'm loving this group of E-Ink projects. First the newspaper, then the resources for buying the best screen, now this. Thanks for sharing. Especially around the Image API.

I think I'll have to take inspiration from (Copy!) parts of this project myself.

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