71–80 of 92 posts
The Nook Simple Touch is available used on eBay for $10-$20, and jailbreaks easily from the default shell to reveal a stripped down old version of Android, with browser and other pieces.
I used a custom Android app on my Nook build - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/turn-an-old-ereader-into-an... - that's the only way I could get information to display on it.
An alternative might be to jailbreak a Kindle 2 or 3, looks like you just need a computer and a USB cable to do so. https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Python_on_Kindle https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Hacks_Information The original OS runs, so what you can do is limited. There are examples of changing the “screensaver” from Python, but I couldn’t see how easy it is to get data into the Kindle (maybe needs USB, w…
Only tangentially related, but has anyone tried jailbreaking early Nook e-readers from B&N? Noticed I have one just sitting in the back of a drawer while cleaning the other day.
[0] https://lifehacker.com/turn-a-99-nook-into-a-fully-fledged-a... [1] https://getfreewrite.com/
I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you? I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.
We (https://www.visionect.com/) have been making non-ebook based E Ink solutions for a decade now. Except for Joan, our room booking solution (https://getjoan.com), we have not found a customer application that could survive the low-volume incurred high price of an E Ink solution (beyond E book readers and Note taking to some extent).
LCDs are simply too cheap and when customers get the option of going for a 75" color LCD display for a price of a 32" E Ink, it's a really tough sell to the consumer. The application really needs to make sense.
If you consider yourself as an outlier from the general feedback we got from the market, then do let me know - the 13" devices we offer come with a years worth of battery, have WiFi built in and our software allows you to display any web-based content or upload images. They even mount to the wall using a magnet. You can buy one on our online store.
I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you? I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.
So far 100% of HN articles re: E Ink contain a comment like this. Sadly it is highly unlikely that you will get something like this at an acceptable price point. We ( https://www.visionect.com/ ) have been making non-ebook based E Ink solutions for a decade now. Except for Joan, our room booking solution ( https://getjoan.com ), we have not found a customer application that could survive the low-volume incurred high…
I strongly believe there's a place in the market for displays that don't feel like displays. I don't think there's much need for interaction, but passive emitters of relevant, useful, hyper local information that feel like a wall feature or design piece rather than screen could have high success rate.
I built a Smart Mirror for this purpose. It was mostly a mirror, in a nice wooden frame, but it also subtly told me when the next bus running down my road would be and whether or not I needed an umbrella that day.
The only reason it's not back up on the wall yet is because it uses a backlit LCD which is fine during daylight as the half mirrored glass hides this with enough light, but at night it's all lit up. If it were backed by OLED instead (impossible at a 24" size) it would feel much more magical.
There's lots of other ways of taking the same approach - furniture / feature first, display second, that I think could succeed as a popular product.
An alternative might be to jailbreak a Kindle 2 or 3, looks like you just need a computer and a USB cable to do so. https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Python_on_Kindle https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Hacks_Information The original OS runs, so what you can do is limited. There are examples of changing the “screensaver” from Python, but I couldn’t see how easy it is to get data into the Kindle (maybe needs USB, w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every time I pick up my phone to check a piece of information or complete a simple task, I am presented with some other distraction that threatens to sidetrack me. Feels like a very good use of ML on the part of the mobile OS makers would be to decide, based on place and time and activity history, which of your active widgets should appear above the fold on the lockscreen of your phone. (E.g., when near a bus stop,…
Basically every kind of ML of this kind has pissed me off. It never knows exactly what I want and every time it gets it wrong it leads to a very negative experience. I much prefer dumb and predictable UI vs black box ML UI that doesn't know exactly what I want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I pick up my phone to check a piece of information or complete a simple task, I am presented with some other distraction that threatens to sidetrack me. When I don't want to be distracted, I often leave my phone in another room, turn it off, put it in a bag or even leave home without it. I've often thought of creating my own eink devices with focused purposes to help me get the information I need, while av…
I liked Star Trek, where pads were commodity hardware and you'd have one for each task or report. Seems crazy at first, but it would really help with focus.
All of this could theoretically work better with our current technology - Internet, digital documents, file exchange systems; no need to pass around physical devices. Except somehow, it doesn't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Phones are multi purpose. You do a lot with it and having every piece of information crammed into layers of applications is not the best design. Some pieces of information, specially those regarding productivity like calendar or a kanban board are better delegated to solutions designed just for that. A whiteboard, a dedicated LCD screen, an eink dashboard controlled by a raspberry pi... Take your pick, as long as it…
I have the hope that AR fixes this with new glasses and arranging virtual dashboards around the house. The AR technology is already there, only the glasses are missing.
Rendering things is a solved problem. SLAM, arguably, too. But the whole idea of AR is to render synthetic images on top of the view of the real world, and sadly, that still feels very far away.
That said, maybe the AR-in-VR will be a good enough stopgap? Turns out, looking at the world through cameras isn't all that bad. I bought Oculus Quest the other day, which uses an array of cameras for SLAM (it's an untethered headset, meaning you can walk around the house with it), and can feed that camera data to you. Originally envisioned as a safety measure (if you leave your defined play area, the VR view transitions to camera pass-through), it's surprisingly good as a way to look at the world in general. Despite being monochrome and low resolution. If somebody can make a Quest-like headset with higher resolution screens and higher resolution, full-color cameras, this would be already halfway-usable AR.