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I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

hawksley.org

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Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#271

Post by prforated »

fredoliveira wrote: post #257
Barrin92 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally every person I know who is obsessed with home automation has spend thousands of bucks and hundreds if not more hours on automating things that take a second or cost two bucks for a paper version that doesn't use electricity The article is about a 2000$ eink display that shows a calendar and the weather. Your phone does that for free and you don't need to walk to the hallway every time. This is basically ant…

So you see no value in the learning that comes with the tinkering?

I love how every chain in this thread starts off defending the practical utility of all this but ends with defending "learning" and "hobbies" when someone points out that you don't need to spend $2000 and 100 hours to know when a washing machine cycle ends.

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#273

Post by prforated »

eb0la wrote: post #75
bengale wrote: post #6

I’m always surprised how much people seem to want to constantly know the weather.

If you have to walk the dog and know in advance it will stop or start raining in 20 minutes....

No forecast is accurate to 20 minutes. You get x% of rain over the next hour or so at best.

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#274

Post by mfld »

sockbot wrote: post #197

https://soldered.com/collections/inkplate-e-paper-displays/p... Inkplate devices are a great entry point. They're recycled Kindle displays with an ESP32.

Agree. I used a color e-ink to display my son's school timetable (previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42408546), and it has been running reliably for 18 months, with charging needed every 4-5 months. I note that the author (cool project!) also earlier took the route of displaying websites as PNGs.

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#275

Post by prforated »

IanCal wrote: post #269
AuthAuth wrote: post #18

This is awesome but I still find it funny that he said he wants a healthy relationship with technology then goes and fits his entire house out with technology. It doesnt seem like any of this would really be useful as you'd have to enter all the useful data manually(calendar). For example the washing machine. You dont need real time information because you know how long it takes since you've done it 1000s of times an…

A healthy relationship with technology isn't the same as not using technology. > It doesnt seem like any of this would really be useful as you'd have to enter all the useful data manually(calendar). You have to enter calendar data somewhere, right now I often have the same info or different subset split between my calendar, work ones, my wifes one and the one on the wall. Even the paper version requires having entere…

You can set an alarm on your phone when it starts like millions of people do instead of spending $2000 overengineering a solution to this "problem".

The fact that people are complaining about the cognitive load and beeping sound when running a washing machine is utterly baffling to me. This goes beyond sheltered "first-world problems". There is something insidious about this about micro-optimising for non-issues, something dystopian.

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#276

Post by trcf23 »

rolfus wrote: post #73
NikxDa wrote: post #2

This is super cool, and I wish something like this existed at my place, as it enables information sharing without the need for phones/actual screens that shine in your face when the lights are low or tempt you to doomscroll. That said, the large primary display this uses is $2000. That's very hard to justify for any "normal" household, and that's without any mounts, backend, services etc.

I made this thing [1] for us, it uses a cheap 10" e-paper display off aliexpress, an ESP32 and a couple of I2C sensors. The case is 3D-printed. It runs on two 18650 batteries, and all in all it cost less than 100$. The OpenWeather API is free for personal use. [1] https://mjones-foui.no/img/wall_clock_1.png

Nice! Do you think it would be easy for someone with no hardware experience to build one?

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#277

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

IshKebab wrote: post #28

This is cool. I bought an Inkplate for this and got as far as writing a custom image format suitable for e-ink sort of things (4-bit RLE; trivial to decode, but good compression for diagram/text type images). Where I got stuck is calendars... Unfortunately Google Calendar doesn't seem to provide a nice API where you can just say "give me the events for these days", instead you can only download all of your events in…

Maybe I'm missing something, but I believe that any app that can understand caldav etc can show you "today".

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#278

Post by tvbusy »

trcf23 wrote: post #276
rolfus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this thing [1] for us, it uses a cheap 10" e-paper display off aliexpress, an ESP32 and a couple of I2C sensors. The case is 3D-printed. It runs on two 18650 batteries, and all in all it cost less than 100$. The OpenWeather API is free for personal use. [1] https://mjones-foui.no/img/wall_clock_1.png

Nice! Do you think it would be easy for someone with no hardware experience to build one?

If you already have Home Assistant running, I think it should be simple. Most of the time you can buy devices with pins already soldered and it's just the matter of connecting them together. AIs are pretty good with ESPHome configs. You can even take a picture so that they can help you identify the correct pins. Some coding may be required for drawing things on the display though.

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#279

Post by IanCal »

prforated wrote: post #275
IanCal wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A healthy relationship with technology isn't the same as not using technology. > It doesnt seem like any of this would really be useful as you'd have to enter all the useful data manually(calendar). You have to enter calendar data somewhere, right now I often have the same info or different subset split between my calendar, work ones, my wifes one and the one on the wall. Even the paper version requires having entere…

You can set an alarm on your phone when it starts like millions of people do instead of spending $2000 overengineering a solution to this "problem". The fact that people are complaining about the cognitive load and beeping sound when running a washing machine is utterly baffling to me. This goes beyond sheltered "first-world problems". There is something insidious about this about micro-optimising for non-issues, som…

I'm not arguing to spend lots of money, I'm saying that this is not an unhealthy tech setup. It's quite clear from this writeup that they either enjoy it or were thinking about selling it, or both, and money does not seem to be a particular concern for them. They even explicitly say it's too much for typical consumers, so they're not trying to sell you on the idea of spending this.

> You can set an alarm on your phone

I don't see "manually setup another bit of technology make an annoying noise" as a nicer or more healthy integration of technology in my life compared to a note written on the wall.

> The fact that people are complaining about the cognitive load and beeping sound when running a washing machine is utterly baffling to me

Perhaps you're reading it in some tone that suggests these are huge issues for people to deal with. I am reading them as just niceties in life. I have tried for some time to practice responding to being baffled with assuming I've not understood something, I think you might be baffled here because you have misinterpreted what people have been saying or not understood their personal issues or how easy it can be to setup some of these things.

Same as the timer on my oven is useful, but I don't need one - I could do it entirely manually right?

I have things setup to notify me if we haven't setup the dishwasher and/or the door has been left open when we head to bed. I'm not in dire need of this and my life was not falling apart at the load of remembering to do it, but it took me less time to add an automation for that than it did to either go and check the dishwasher a few times or clean up bowls in the morning for breakfast by hand. It's caught things a few times, and it's another thing I don't need to keep in my head. I'm not sure why deliberately choosing to increase cognitive load is somehow a good thing, and these things all do build up. I could remember all my appointments and schedules and tasks I need to complete, but calendars and reminders and todo-lists are useful.

Re: I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

#280

Post by IanCal »

prforated wrote: post #270
jon-wood wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All these things are just managed in our heads subconsciously. That’s certainly true for some people, and I envy them. Others of us can easily forget the washing machine was on and needs emptying for anything up to three or four days, running it each day before promptly forgetting to empty it before it needs doing again.

Why not just use an alarm?

It depends if that works for you or not. For some if that alarm goes off while they're in the middle of something they'll either snooze it (now you're getting disturbed more times) or turn it off, perhaps both. This seems quite a bit more intrusive than what is essentially a little todo list that's updated without having to remember to do it.

This also just adds a series of manual steps, along with having tech setup to deliberately get your attention at a time that may not work for you. I'm not sure why this is seen as a nicer solution than having it happen automatically for you.

Peoples brains work in different ways, and they have different lives. Some days I can more calmly go around dealing with things, others I have a very large number of parallel things to do with more interruptions happening as well (two young kids will do that).

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