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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

#231

Post by withinboredom »

xp84 wrote: post #228
johschmitz wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dispe…

> cook anything you can fit in the air fryer

Why would I want to cook my milkshake?

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

#232

Post by trashcan »

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.

I have setup a raspberry PI dashboard before and run into these exact issues. They are not defensive or pre-emptive. An e-reader will probably not have the same issues, just sharing my experience.

* Browser runs out of memory or has other issue and stops refreshing.

* Wifi connection drops and browser displays an error page and stops executing your refreshes. The power-saving options on the RPIs wifi caused me quite a bit of grief before I disabled them.

* Raspberry Pi crashes with kernel errors due to cheap SD card, underpowered USB power supply, or something else.

I ran into these issues one by one over a few months and fixed each one as I ran into it. What I ended up with was:

* Browser set to run at OS startup displaying my page.

* That page having a meta refresh tag, and javascript code to reload the page periodically.

* A browser extension to automatically reload the page as well if both of those failed.

* A watchdog daemon that detects when the RPI has frozen and reboots it.

* A cron job that reboots periodically.

With all of those my dashboard would run for months without any issues or interruptions. Just sharing so others can be aware of potential issues.

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

#233

Post by evan_ »

Flex247A wrote: post #155
vitorbaptistaa wrote: post #122

I love these kinds of projects. Congratulations to the OP. Unrelated, but does anyone know a good TV remote for elders? I'd like something like a Stream Deck with big buttons for things like : * Turn it on/off * Switch to TV channel 315 * Switch to TV channel 517 * Play Planet Earth on Netflix * Play Young Sheldon on Netflix My grandparents are 92 and 97 and even big remotes aren't cutting it. Not only that, but I'd…

There are some cheap android phones which come with an IR sensor. But the app for such functionality needs to be custom made.

a person with dementia absolutely will not be able to keep a phone charged

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

#234

Post by michaelsalim »

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,…

I'm developing something so that everyone can do this easily[0]. It's a plugin based presentation software. Real time connection through websocket.

So all you need to do is create a project and use a plugin(existing or your own) to generate your view. The plugin is flexible, so it could be a custom UI or uploading a HTML file for example.

Then, you can open a link on any machine like the e-ink display.

Open-source and self-hostable. But you can also use the online version I'm hosting.

It's still very new so things will break but I'm already using it in church and other meetings.

[0] https://theopenpresenter.com

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

#235

Post by Nition »

inanutshellus wrote: post #215
oarsinsync wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Kobo readers are fairly non-rando, they're the second most popular eInk readers after the Kindle I think. I agree that lack of Javascript support is not a blocking issue on the use case though (although it does make it a little more annoying).

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

#236

Post by causality0 »

Dealing with dementia in the elderly is difficult enough, but it has a progression and you can feel how close you're getting to the end. Having to provide a similar level of care to someone who may live on for decades seems like a living nightmare. My heart goes out to this man and any others with similar burdens.

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

#237

Post by ayewo »

ANarrativeApe wrote: post #200

Dementia is a progressive multi-system failure (CPU, RAM, SSD, Motherboard) Anterograde Amnesia, on its own, is a failure to write to the SSD. Medical amateurs, like tech amateurs, might struggle to differentiate between the two. Medical professionals, like tech professionals, should not. When it is not possible to upgrade the SSD, using the CPU and the RAM to compensate for the faulty SSD is an excellent hack. There…

Although this is a PC-centric way of explaining the difference between Dementia and Anterograde Amnesia, I really like it nonetheless :)

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

#238

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#239

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by darkwater »

steezeburger wrote: post #37
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…

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!

Seems very nice buuuut why did they put the USB-C on the back if it is supposed to be wall mounted and needs to be charged every couple of months? Why not on one side??
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