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Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

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Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#21

Post by PascalW »

jcun4128 wrote: post #16
bergie wrote: post #9

If you don't have a spare Kindle lying around, smallish e-paper modules are nowadays quite cheap, and can be driven easily from a Raspberry Pi (Zero W upwards). That's what we did on our boat: https://github.com/meri-imperiumi/dashboard

I am thinking about this (e-paper) but drive it from an ESP (preferably 01) and connect it to a battery where it could last say months/years that would be nice. I was able to do a hardware mod someone posted where you can put it into a self-wake deep sleep if that makes sense for power saving. Otherwise I currently do desktop notifications/speech text. I have a basic Kindle too (paper?) And it's amazing the battery l…

I considered this as well but didn't really want to mess with the hardware. But if you're up for that you can buy the components yourself, or go for something like inkplate [1] which is an E-paper display + ESP microcontroller and battery in one package.

[1] https://inkplate.io/

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#22

Post by theshrike79 »

firasd wrote: post #15

Very cool! I've been thinking about this.. let me just paste my tweets thread from a few weeks ago: -- An issue with mobile UX is that it's tricky to maintain 'ambient awareness'. How do you 'keep an eye' on Slack? You have to foreground it & disable screen locking, or get push notifications. On desktop you can just alt+tab to it every so often, plus the taskbar icon lights up. I sometimes use Chrome on desktop to ad…

> Would be cool if there was a cheap always-on tablet that could display arbitrary web widgets like a calendar, slack etc

You can do this with any $100 Android tablet or - to a lesser degree - a left-over iPad that's too old for anything relevant.

Software-wise you have a bunch of options: Magic Mirror and Home Assistant are the most common ones. Dakboard works as a SaaS solution without their custom hardware, the free option is way too limited. HA is more for home automation though and Magic Mirror's actual purpose is to mount the display behind a two-way mirror (thus the "Magic" part)

I've got a cheapo chinese dual boot Atom Windows/Android tablet mounted on my kitchen wall with an analog clock, our shared family calendar, Netatmo data (indoor+outdoor) and weather forecast. Works like a charm.

If it wasn't so crappy I could use something like Kiosk Browser[1] to have it use the front-facing camera and only turn the display on when it detects motion. Now I just use Tasker to turn the display off at night and dim it during evenings.

A bunch of people are just mounting old computer monitors on the wall and using a Rasperry Pi (Zero/2/3/4) as a kiosk-browser. The Wife Acceptance Factor is a bit lower on those though. Most likely you'd need to disassemble the display and add some fancy frames.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ozerov.full...

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#23

Post by spuz »

PascalW wrote: post #20
spuz wrote: post #14

I love this idea - roughly how long do you think the battery would last if you had a dashboard that updated every hour?

I don't know exactly yet, but from what I'm now seeing it consumes 3-4% battery per day, with the dashboard updating every 30 minutes for 10 hours a day. I'm only letting it update during office hours, so I reckon I should get around a month of battery life with this usage.

That is great. A month of usage is what I would consider acceptable for this kind of product.

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#24

Post by jcun4128 »

PascalW wrote: post #21
jcun4128 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am thinking about this (e-paper) but drive it from an ESP (preferably 01) and connect it to a battery where it could last say months/years that would be nice. I was able to do a hardware mod someone posted where you can put it into a self-wake deep sleep if that makes sense for power saving. Otherwise I currently do desktop notifications/speech text. I have a basic Kindle too (paper?) And it's amazing the battery l…

I considered this as well but didn't really want to mess with the hardware. But if you're up for that you can buy the components yourself, or go for something like inkplate [1] which is an E-paper display + ESP microcontroller and battery in one package. [1] https://inkplate.io/

$100? hmm this price may not be that bad though, considering the display seems to be the most expensive aspect and I'm not finding a similar price/size on Amazon.

One thing I want to learn/address personally is a charging circuit so I'd rather build it myself. Still it is nice to know this is out there ready to go.

Also I have to use these ESP01's I bought haha. The code itself I imagine wouldn't be difficult eg. an http get request firing at whatever interval to your own local/remote endpoint. Would have to see about the ESP driver part to display to eInk.

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#26

Post by sradman »

Since updating an eInk screen is relatively expensive, I suspect this system could be made more efficient by issuing conditional HTTP requests (last-modified or eTag) and only refreshing the screen when the dashboard image changes. This assumes both the ht client and dashboard server support conditional requests.

The system consists of a set of shell scripts that run on a jailbroken Kindle. It includes ht, an HTTPie clone written in Rust that makes requests to a dashboard server using software like Dashbling.

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#27

Post by wasmitnetzen »

PascalW wrote: post #21
jcun4128 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am thinking about this (e-paper) but drive it from an ESP (preferably 01) and connect it to a battery where it could last say months/years that would be nice. I was able to do a hardware mod someone posted where you can put it into a self-wake deep sleep if that makes sense for power saving. Otherwise I currently do desktop notifications/speech text. I have a basic Kindle too (paper?) And it's amazing the battery l…

I considered this as well but didn't really want to mess with the hardware. But if you're up for that you can buy the components yourself, or go for something like inkplate [1] which is an E-paper display + ESP microcontroller and battery in one package. [1] https://inkplate.io/

The Inkplate 10 is being crowdfunded right now for 129$ + shipping.[1] I hope it will be available directly on the website soon as well, as they get shipped from Croatia to the US to be shipped to customers, which would make it unnecessarily expensive to me in Sweden, as I'd have to pay customs duty.

[1]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica/inkplate-10

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#28

Post by bovermyer »

htk wrote: post #18

This code does not render the dashboard itself. It's expected that what to display on the screen is rendered elsewhere and can be fetchd via HTTP(s). This is both more power efficient and allows you to use any tool you like to produce the dashboard image. I love these “under engineered” solutions. I’d be tempted to do everything in the Kindle itself, but he achieved what he needed with much less effort and higher fle…

Agreed. This is both clever and simple, a rare combo.

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#29

Post by dalbasal »

It's a pity there isn't more action in the e ink application/device world. Seems like there's so much potential. I'd love a kindle-like laptop for writing.

I guess it's just extremely hard to compete for a beachhead against an incumbent (mobile touch displays) that's more general and mass produced.

Re: Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard

#30

Post by jbarrow »

dalbasal wrote: post #29

It's a pity there isn't more action in the e ink application/device world. Seems like there's so much potential. I'd love a kindle-like laptop for writing. I guess it's just extremely hard to compete for a beachhead against an incumbent (mobile touch displays) that's more general and mass produced.

In terms of a Kindle-like laptop for writing, I’ve seen people enjoy the Freewrite Traveler (though it’s not for me):

[1] https://getfreewrite.com/products/freewrite-traveler

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