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MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

jan.miksovsky.com

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

#211

Post by GTP »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #183
trashcan wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done this, you will also most likely want to setup a javascript timer that also triggers a refresh in case the meta refresh fails. And a weekly reboot of the machine in case there is a memory leak or some other issue.

That sounds like defensive programming; what makes you think meta refresh will not trigger always? If you can demonstrate it, it'd be worth filing a bug report with the respective browser(s). Same with the reboot, although the user does not control every software in the e-reader. That said, e-readers and tablets are designed to be always-on, so memory leaks should be rare nowadays.

There's nothing wrong with defensive programming, especially if it is supposed to run on a device where you don't have easy and/or immidiate access in case something stops working.

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

#212

Post by HenryBemis »

I quickly searched for Google Calendar and nothing came up.

A good 'trick' would be to have a Gmail account (calendar, and all), share the password with the 'inner circle' and anyone can post anything they want and it will appear on the google calendar, in "Agenda" mode

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

#213

Post by graypegg »

bool3max wrote: post #191
albert_e wrote: post #19

> One small challenge was maximizing the size of the message text. Sometimes a message is just a word or two; other times it might be several sentences. A single font size can’t accommodate such a wide range of text content. I couldn’t find a pure CSS way to automatically maximize font size so that a text element with word wrapping would display without clipping. > I ended up writing a small JavaScript function to ma…

How the hell is this not already a CSS feature? font-size: "as-big-as-possible-while-still-fitting-parent-container"; or maybe just font-size: max;

Would combine quite well with `text-wrap` actually! [0] That way, the renderer knows the area it needs to fill (the implicit `max-content`, defined width/height, or flex/grid size of the container) and it knows how to best split up the text amongst the lines. Feels like the renderer would be capable of finding the optimal font size to satisfy those two constraints.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-wrap

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

#214

Post by mixmastamyk »

asddubs wrote: post #129
bravura wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has struggled with getting CSS to do normal layout stuff that had clear precise semantics but required weird CSS trickery, it's actually more scary than lucky that stuff like container queries have arrived 30 years after CSS was introduced. I agree with GP that CSS should be scrapped.

container queries have a very obvious chicken and egg problem if used a certain way: If this container is less than 30px wide, make its content 60px wide. Otherwise make it 20px wide. Now that container exists in a quantum state of being both 30 and 60px wide. I actually haven't looked into container queries to see how they ended up dealing with this yet. Obviously this is a very contrived example but it can also exp…

Comeau has a piece on that. Another property to constrain it is the solution.

https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/container-queries-introducti...

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

#215

Post by inanutshellus »

oarsinsync wrote: post #164
Nition wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to do pretty much this on a Kobo reader and discovered the Kobo browser doesn't support javascript. :|

It sounds like there’s a lot more edge case complexity to this than the GP originally thought. Like most DIY tinkerer solutions, unfortunately, which is why people like paying money for productised solutions - the time it takes to debug and troubleshoot home made solutions is often prohibitive for a lot of people who aren’t techheads.

This is both fair and obvious... but at the same time, the nits folk are bringing up are not fleshed out.

  "I had to reboot my raspberry pi"
and

  "whoops rando eInk display doesn't do javascript"
are both super weird and frankly unfair to consider as criticisms of the original solution.

... In short - if our parish priest above sees the original post, I'd suggest he give it a go. It's an hour to set up and won't cost him or his parish anything (aside from buying the eink display ofc).

If it turns out that the DIY solution is insufficient, or his parish is wealthy enough to spend money on a thing like this, great, then upgrade to that.

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

#216

Post by JKCalhoun »

pbronez wrote: post #7
yrxuthst wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be interested in https://github.com/aceinnolab/Inkycal , it looks like it's out of stock at the moment but they have pre-made devices or you can make your own with a list of parts.

That is super cool! I might need to build one of those. My family needs a way to keep the fridge calendar up to date with our digital calendar.

My most "starred" GitHub repo is probably SystemSix [1], an e-ink display masquerading as a little 68K Mac.

[1] https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SystemSix

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

#217

Post by magicalhippo »

edarchis wrote: post #186
bregma wrote: post #45

My wife acquired anterograde amnesia after a car accident. This device may or may not have worked for her: she would probably have discovered the device anew every time (as in, every 10 minutes or so), although she would probably be pleased each time. Thankfully she fully recovered after a few weeks. It takes a lot of patience to deal with someone like that, and you could tell it frequently caused a lot of frustratio…

That illustrates the difference between anterograde amnesia and dementia. Dementia is a general degradation of the brain that includes memory but you can have amnesia with an otherwise perfectly functional brain. A patient with dementia would never text her kids as in OP's case. Glad that your wife got over it.

My grandpa had dementia. Last time me and my mom flew over to visit he didn't recognize either of us the first day. He didn't even remember having a daughter. Second day he vaguely recognized my mom but not me.

Third and last day of our stay, as soon as I entered the living room he lit up and exclaimed my name. We sat and talked for hours, reminiscing past events with great details, until we had to leave for the plane home.

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

#220

Post by mwagstaff »

konschubert wrote: post #181
steezeburger wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a backer, but this would probably fit your bill https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/usetrmnl/trmnl-the-e-in... I wanted the same kind of general eink device, but this is also supposedly super hackable!

There is also this bigger display: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/invisible-computers/e-p...

I have the earlier, smaller model of this, and it works well.

I've backed the new, bigger display, which should be shipping soon.

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