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Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

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Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#61

Post by Polylactic_acid »

reom_tobit wrote: post #58
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Turning off" the screen seems like an invalid concept as the screen has no "off" state, white pixels are just as much off as black. Seems like all you need to do here is to just blink the screen every now and then. Even one blink cycle per day should be enough since ereaders usually go longer than that and are just fine.

I believe the danger is not necessarily when you are leaving the capsule in one state or another for a long period of time, I believe it is more to do with a transition. So if you’re going from black -> black you need to cycle to white to ensure you don’t burn the black in. I’m not an expert though I’ve just faffed around with these displays myself a bit. The datasheets always err on the side of caution, I managed to…

Interesting stuff. I know my old ereader would flash the whole screen black and then white on each page flip. I'm actually really interested in creating a little dashboard that sits under my monitor so I can look down and see some important stats like if there are any peer reviews waiting on me and stuff like that.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#62

Post by Rebelgecko »

glomph wrote: post #44
jandals wrote: post #33

It’s possible to get one of these e-ink display boards with an ESP32 microprocessor for not much more than the display alone. It has onboard WiFi and makes for an even smaller unit since there is no need to attach it to a Pi. It also ditches the operating system so you get an instant boot. Programming is via PlatformIO, MicroPython or Rust (if you’re adventurous! - Rust is not quite ready for ESP32). Has reignited my…

Would it be possible to link to an example of what you mean?

I've used one of the Lilygo Eink boards (this one I think: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32869729970.html). Their documentation (https://github.com/lewisxhe/TTGO-EPaper-Series) is marginally better than most Aliexpress sellers (still not great, and blatantly wrong for some things like the width of the JST battery connector).

There is a little driver funkiness with some of the boards and I've actually experienced something that looks similar to burn-in on mine, but the price is right and the form factor is great as long as the 2-3 inch screens are big enough for you.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#63

Post by reom_tobit »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #61
reom_tobit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the danger is not necessarily when you are leaving the capsule in one state or another for a long period of time, I believe it is more to do with a transition. So if you’re going from black -> black you need to cycle to white to ensure you don’t burn the black in. I’m not an expert though I’ve just faffed around with these displays myself a bit. The datasheets always err on the side of caution, I managed to…

Interesting stuff. I know my old ereader would flash the whole screen black and then white on each page flip. I'm actually really interested in creating a little dashboard that sits under my monitor so I can look down and see some important stats like if there are any peer reviews waiting on me and stuff like that.

yeah I believe that was the only option for older / cheaper displays. I recently got a kindle for a present and notice that when it can, it will try to refresh the screen as little as possible.

For example, when you press the top of the screen to bring up the settings, only the top cycles, and then the same when you tap below to get rid of the settings.

To that end, I would be interested in watching some high-speed camera footage of the displays just to see the gears turn. I’ll have a look round and edit this comment if I find any.

e: found one.

https://youtu.be/xc6cFkCr1-8

also a video from an engineering channel that normally gives good insight into these things, I have watched it yet so it may not be great, but Applied Engineering normally brings some interesting material.

https://youtu.be/MsbiO8EAsGw

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#64

Post by elgatoblanco »

robocat wrote: post #31

An alternative might be to jailbreak a Kindle 2 or 3, looks like you just need a computer and a USB cable to do so. https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Python_on_Kindle https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Hacks_Information The original OS runs, so what you can do is limited. There are examples of changing the “screensaver” from Python, but I couldn’t see how easy it is to get data into the Kindle (maybe needs USB, w…

Thats what I did with my old Kindle. It does not support running a fullscreen browser, so I jailbreaked it and run a cronjob that downloads a png image of the dashboard each minute. The dashboard is just an html page that is saved as a greyscale png file on my server, also via a cronjob. Kind of a ghetto setup, but hey - it works :)

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#65

Post by gjs278 »

xixixao wrote: post #57

I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you? I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.

there isn’t. it doesn’t even look better than a normal monitor or phone

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#66

Post by zhoujianfu »

xixixao wrote: post #57

I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you? I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.

Yep, I’ve been dreaming about this for years.. for me the critical component of it is no power cable.. just some (C?) batteries in the frame, and then it updates via infrared across the hall like grocery store eink price tags do. Bonus points if it’s color eink. Somebody please?

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#67

Post by Cthulhu_ »

xixixao wrote: post #57

I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you? I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.

There's https://shopkits.eink.com/product/42%CB%9D-monochrome-epaper..., a 42" monochrome display module, but it costs $2500 and it's a component, not a full solution. But, it could be made into a product, the components are all present. It'd likely retail at an easy $5000 - $10000 though, and I don't know if that is competitive with e.g. the Surface Hub (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-hub... only found one price for it but it's $10K, but you get a full computer, high resolution color touch screen, etc.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#68

Post by psandersen »

xixixao wrote: post #57

I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you? I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.

Yeah definitely, I'd stick a few around the house if it was easy to create a nice dashboard from multiple data sources. Current top tasks on to-do list, habbitrpg overview, last nights sleep quality, exercise amount/progress, weight status, indoor air quality, time and weather would be great.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#69

Post by Cthulhu_ »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #66
xixixao wrote: post #57

I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you? I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.

Yep, I’ve been dreaming about this for years.. for me the critical component of it is no power cable.. just some (C?) batteries in the frame, and then it updates via infrared across the hall like grocery store eink price tags do. Bonus points if it’s color eink. Somebody please?

I read a thing on HN the other day that was about being able to change an eink display off of wireless power (not sure if it was "ambient" energy like wifi signals or a directed thing like Qi); it's slow but apparently possible to incrementally change an e-ink screen like that. Could work with solar panels, and I'm sure that could be integrated into the screen.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#70

Post by sq_ »

robocat wrote: post #31

An alternative might be to jailbreak a Kindle 2 or 3, looks like you just need a computer and a USB cable to do so. https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Python_on_Kindle https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Hacks_Information The original OS runs, so what you can do is limited. There are examples of changing the “screensaver” from Python, but I couldn’t see how easy it is to get data into the Kindle (maybe needs USB, w…

Only tangentially related, but has anyone tried jailbreaking early Nook e-readers from B&N?

Noticed I have one just sitting in the back of a drawer while cleaning the other day.

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