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MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

jan.miksovsky.com

71–80 of 259 posts

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#71
post #54
post #47

"I was concerned about the possibility of e-ink burn-in" Happily, e-ink displays don't suffer from burn-in.

Had the same thought but then I remembered coming across this. Can't say if it is due to burn-in but some manufacturers do recommend refreshing the display image periodically like every 24 hours [1]. See precautions #4 https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/4.2inch_e-Paper_Module_(B)_Ma...

Interesting. Waveshare makes this recommendation across their product line, and from what I can glean from google, their displays really do develop permanent artifacts if they're not refreshed. I've never seen another epaper company say this, and anecdotally I've seen ereaders that held the same image for months or years work perfectly fine, even with no power for refreshes. I don't know why there would be a difference.

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for your family cal, check out TRMNL. can go on a fridge w/ magnets: https://usetrmnl.com (disclaimer, i'm the founder)

Are there any plans to have a version without the battery? It looks exactly like what I've been looking for otherwise. Also, what country are the orders shipped from? US?

Internally we are debating on releasing a Hackable DIY kit. Feel feel to send a message to support@usetrmnl.com.

It's shipped from USA.

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#73
The author mentions needing a small storage service and paying for JSONStorage. In fact, when I've needed this sort of thing in the past, Google Sheets is an amazing tiny database for projects. It has pretty generous API rate limits and it's convenient to be able to manage your DB live in a spreadsheet. In fact, even levels.fyi got away with a Google Forms / Google Sheets backend for a long time[1].

1. https://www.levels.fyi/blog/scaling-to-millions-with-google-...

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#74
post #20

a commercial product along the same lines is KOMP https://komp.family/en/ . We had it to communicate with our elderly grandparents until they died. Its a bit like a senior accessible social network feed for the family, including its dynamics, because the app shows what is being shown to everybody else of the family. In that regard it's a disadvantage you have some of the same dynamics going on. You dont only communic…

20£ per month is a pretty steep subscription

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#75
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for your family cal, check out TRMNL. can go on a fridge w/ magnets: https://usetrmnl.com (disclaimer, i'm the founder)

You might want to update this image on your homepage: https://usetrmnl.com/assets/section2-3-d6887b41db12ad0659992... as the first character, タ (ta), is missing from the display, making it read "(a)minaru".

great catch, thank you! will do

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#76

Does any commercial version of this exist? Using an existing tablet makes the DIY aspect a little less but then you have to roll your own site as well.

You should check out usetrmnl.com. It's commercially available and has 50+ native plugins and many community driven recipes[1].

Disclosure: I'm from the TRMNL team.

[1] - https://github.com/usetrmnl/plugins

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for your family cal, check out TRMNL. can go on a fridge w/ magnets: https://usetrmnl.com (disclaimer, i'm the founder)

Are there any plans to have a version without the battery? It looks exactly like what I've been looking for otherwise. Also, what country are the orders shipped from? US?

curious what your use case is without a battery. currently you could keep it plugged in, are you wnting NFC-powered etc?

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#78
post #3

What a beautiful use of technology to uphold someone's personhood, and let them know they are loved, despite (and with regard to) a profound injury. This reminds me of a desire I've had for a long time: a simple, wall-mountable eInk device that could be configured with a URL (+wifi creds) and render a markdown file, refreshing once every hour or so. It would be so useful for so many applications – I'm a parish priest…

Just an aside, but “parish priest” must surely be the opposite of “software developer” on the Hacker News Table of Occupational Frequency. Neat!

Re: MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

#79

Really nice project. One idea for “if we fail to take down a message that no longer applies, it confuses her.” Put a start and end date/time on messages and implement in the board. That way you can pre schedule them and have them fall off automatically.

Agreed, or an expiry timer (e.g. this message expires in 12 hours).
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