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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

#221

Post by dewarrn1 »

This is a wonderful project. Many thanks to Jan for sharing it.

Separately, regarding dementia, it is both less and more complicated than many commenters suggest.

From UCSF Neuroscience’s excellent Memory and Aging Center resources:

“Dementia is a general term for any disease that causes a change in memory and/or thinking skills that is severe enough to impair a person’s daily functioning… There are many different types of dementia… Most types of dementia cause a gradual worsening of symptoms over the course of years due to progressive damage to nerve cells in the brain caused by the underlying disease process…” [0]

Even more briefly: dementia is an umbrella term, many diseases can cause dementia, and those diseases may or may not be progressive.

0: https://memory.ucsf.edu/what-dementia

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

#222

Post by tengwar2 »

Hunpeter wrote: post #170
Spooky23 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principal of my son’s former school was a Sister of St Joseph, and a huge HN fan. More amazing was how creative the sisters were in managing themselves with technology. Many decisions are made by votes, done in real time globally! Religious people get short shrift.

Reminds me of the monks in the third season of Babylon 5. Who says you can't both be an IT person and a cleric?

Lay preacher here. There are dozens of us, dozens!

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

#223

Post by ryanisnan »

ryanckulp wrote: post #44
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!

hackable indeed :) https://docs.usetrmnl.com no longer a Kickstarter btw, shipping same-day now (see homepage)

I will be buying one of these, looks super rad! Nice work!

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

#224

Post by [deleted] »

inanutshellus wrote: post #82
grahameb wrote: 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…

assuming your eink display would be on the same LAN as some always-on PC... 1. install python 2. make a file named `index.html` somewhere. 2a. put this in the "head" tag, so it'll refresh hourly: ` `. 3. run `python -m http.server` from the same folder This will start a single-threaded web server on 8000 4. On another machine on your network verify you can pull up http://firstmachine:8000/. 5. having proven it works,…

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by xp84 »

trashcan wrote: post #132
inanutshellus wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

assuming your eink display would be on the same LAN as some always-on PC... 1. install python 2. make a file named `index.html` somewhere. 2a. put this in the "head" tag, so it'll refresh hourly: ` `. 3. run `python -m http.server` from the same folder This will start a single-threaded web server on 8000 4. On another machine on your network verify you can pull up http://firstmachine:8000/. 5. having proven it works,…

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.

The primary issue I would imagine, would be not that a meta refresh fails to happen, rather, that any type of full refresh is attempted during a momentary 'blip' of the local network, leaving it showing a "cannot find server" type of error. To achieve the safest persistence of the refresh loop, it would probably make more sense to have the refresh function via

1. AJAX request for itself, with a timed retry in the case of any failure (optional: During this time, add a visible indicator that you're having connectivity issue) 2. Extract the contents of the tag of the fetched HTML 3. Set the innerHTML of the tag of the DOM to the fetched body.

To avoid memory leaks I'd still be tempted to also try to implement a "safe-ish refresh" that checks for a successful response and quickly fires off a location.reload() on like a daily basis.

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

#226

Post by speerer »

inanutshellus wrote: post #82
grahameb wrote: 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…

assuming your eink display would be on the same LAN as some always-on PC... 1. install python 2. make a file named `index.html` somewhere. 2a. put this in the "head" tag, so it'll refresh hourly: ` `. 3. run `python -m http.server` from the same folder This will start a single-threaded web server on 8000 4. On another machine on your network verify you can pull up http://firstmachine:8000/. 5. having proven it works,…

Thanks for the inspiration. I did essentially this as a project with the kids today, though I used js to allow updating by anyone in the family.

https://github.com/TrisSherliker/FridgeChalkboard/tree/main

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

#227

Post by trashcan »

xp84 wrote: post #225
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.

The primary issue I would imagine, would be not that a meta refresh fails to happen, rather, that any type of full refresh is attempted during a momentary 'blip' of the local network, leaving it showing a "cannot find server" type of error. To achieve the safest persistence of the refresh loop, it would probably make more sense to have the refresh function via 1. AJAX request for itself, with a timed retry in the cas…

Yep, exactly r:refreshing failing. If you are using a full featured browser you can also use a browser extension that forces the refresh.

Additionally for a raspberry pi, you can use a watchdog timer service that checks to see if the rpi has frozen, and reboots it.

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

#228

Post by xp84 »

johschmitz wrote: post #165
withinboredom wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran into this when teaching my son to tie his shoes. He now ties his shoes “upside down” from me, because I tied it from my perspective. It’s surprisingly hard to tie shoes in slow motion, it took some practice by paying attention to myself tying shoes quickly. Now I’m wondering if you can tell a kid is from an “even” or “odd” generation by which way they tie shoes…

Reminds me of https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm I wonder if what you describe is kind of the reason for this.

This Ian guy's shoe-tying tip you've linked is one of the most universally useful life-improving pieces of knowledge I have, which I try to evangelize to anyone I know who will listen. The only facts whose impact comes close are mostly household tips:

- cheap liquid dishwasher detergent including in the prewash cup instead of costly pods that deprive the prewash cycle of soap

- Put bleach in the washer's bleach dispenser and use hot water for any light sheets, no, it doesn't hurt prints or fade light colors

- cook anything you can fit in the air fryer to decrease total time ~70% vs an oven

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

#230

Post by bornfreddy »

ryanckulp wrote: post #46
pbronez wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Wow, that looks super interesting!

Just one comment:

> Developer Edition > Ability to build custom plugins for yourself and others. Unlocks our API. > $20

Isn't it in your interest that developers unlock the potential of your hardware in some new ways? Charging for it seems... weird.

I mean the price is not that high, it just doesn't feel right to pay for access to API. My 2 cents.

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