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Comments (308)

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  NikxDa
  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 $2000. That's very hard to justify for any "normal" household, and that's without any mounts, backend, services etc.
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  fanatic2pope
  Cool project.I solved a problem (not really the same problem as this, mind you) for my family using a much older technology. I bought a big pane of glass from the hardware store, built a wooden frame for it with a shelf for an eraser and dry markers.I hung it up in the kitchen and now when we need to leave "sticky" notes to each other we just write on it. We keep our shopping list on it, we write small poems and draw funny faces. It has become a fun ephemeral space for communicating.Tons of fun and super cheap to build.
• pathikrit
  Related: My project to display daily newspaper: https://github.com/pathikrit/newswall
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  AuthAuth
  This is awesome but I still find it funny that he said he wants a healthy relationship with technology then goes and fits his entire house out with technology. It doesnt seem like any of this would really be useful as you'd have to enter all the useful data manually(calendar).For example the washing machine. You dont need real time information because you know how long it takes since you've done it 1000s of times and it beeps. All these things are just managed in our heads subconsciously.
• tecoholic
  Really happy to see e-paper home dashboards as a thing. Last month or so I saw a Melbourne public transport one, which showed times of the next tram/bus.We tried something like this using the iPad when we moved to a new country with one year old, because there was so much to figure out and track, it felt impossible. Now after a year, it’s gone and things are more internalised.That’s my main concern with spending time and money building something like this. We thought about everything from commercial displays, Raspberry PI and e-Paper to finally just buying a 10$ wall mount for IPad. After sometime it becomes redundant as routine is formed.If the author happens to read this, do tell us how have you found the motivation to keep using this? Doesn’t it get redundant after a point? I get adding new information and adapting routines around can be a factor, but people don’t really change that much
• hinkley
  Information radiators are basically 80% of the reason I try to keep tabs on wireless power delivery. Then a Kia and Hyundai vendor thought they were going to get their wireless charging added to the EV6 and Ioniq vehicles and that’s the other 20%. Essentially they removed the transformer from the PSU and moved it to the air gap between the charging coil and the vehicle to halve the parasitic losses. You’d have a car you didn’t even need to plug in.I’ve been following Information Radiators since practically the beginning, and wiring has always been one of its problems. First networking and now power. In homes, but also in office spaces. The best locations for radiators are often the worst for wiring.And eInk displays move the needle because you have a device that can go completely to sleep between updates, which means it can trickle charge.
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  bengale
  I’m always surprised how much people seem to want to constantly know the weather.
• jaygreco
  I really like epaper displays for all of the reasons mentioned in the article. Shame the patent locks continue to keep prices high even though the core technology has improved enough for prices to drop.A few years ago I came into a couple of e-ink displays that had been previously used for storefront/product pricing. The hardware to drive them was locked down but I was able to reverse engineer the panel by finding a datasheet that was close enough and hacking up an adafruit thinkink. I had a lot of fun writing my own driver/abstraction layer. I originally intended to support a bunch of different panels but ran out of steam after the first one did exactly what I wanted.https://github.com/jaygreco/MagInkCal
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  ojagodzinski
  ~3000€ to show information in some random places in the house even though the household members have a device with a screen called a smartphone next to them 24/7 ?Well, it's cool, but the usability of it all is below average.Declutter your life and don't install any more screens in your home ;)
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  sockbot
  https://soldered.com/collections/inkplate-e-paper-displays/p...Inkplate devices are a great entry point. They're recycled Kindle displays with an ESP32.
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  jareklupinski
  > It has a powerful function: if the status on the display is blank, the house is in a “healthy” state and does not need any attention. This approach of only showing what information is relevant in a given moment flies right in the face of how most smart homes approach communicating their statusthe best user experience is sometimes no experience
• da_rob
  Wow, this project (and actually the whole thread here) is awesome. Love it! Our (iPad-based) kitchen timetable[1] is nothing compared to the work (and money) Joel sank into this.If someone wants to go the easy route towards something like this: iPad (Air 1, I think) is connected to the charger 24/7 and runs in Kiosk mode. Application is just a React website hosted on Vercel, client credentials are stored in localStorage …[1]: https://roblillack.net/unser-stundenplan-family-timetable-vi...
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  lukebuehler
  Wall-mounted dashboards are a huge life-hack, especially if you have a family. We got a 37-inch touchscreen one, running DAKBoard.We have several kids and have been organizing our daily todos and calendars on it for several years. We used to drop the ball quite a bit due to a hectic schedule and the dashboard has helped us tremendously. Since it is mounted in the kitchen, being able to pull up recipes is a plus.
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  BLKNSLVR
  This is almost the only kind of application that makes a 'fridge with a gigantic screen on it' make sense. But do said fridges have the ability to display useful information like this?Someone I know has one of these fridges and the screen is just a toy. Doesn't really show anything useful for day-to-day life. Although it provides amusement when it detects bald heads as eggs.
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  bpmct
  For those on a budget, I highly recommend checking eBay for old e-ink readers. Many of them can be rooted and are by far the most affordable way to get e-ink (plus compute).The Nook Simple Touch is one of my favorites
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  dddgghhbbfblk
  This is really cool. With a newborn in the home I've been really thinking about projects like this recently. When you have a newborn things are so busy and hectic that it's easy to get overloaded and for things to slip through the cracks so I've been really wishing I had a dashboard like this somewhere to remind me that we need to take the dogs out or show how long it's been since the baby last ate or whatnot.
• pietroppeter
  Related project discussed here 2 years ago FrameOS https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38855337
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  nanobuilds
  Haven't followed e-ink display for a while but $2000 for the display is surprising! Assumed these e-ink displays were much cheaper these days.. and I thought we were closer to color ones as well. Great project though!
• MillionOClock
  This is so elegant, especially with the art lights! To me, the desirable future for connected homes is one where technology is everywhere but mostly hidden and this is such a good example! This feels like an upgraded version of a chalkboard or sticky notes, but quite an optimal upgrade: one that makes it more useful and dynamic while keeping it mostly unintrusive.On the subject of dedicated home control dashboards, I'm not sure I see their value at all given we all have screens in our pockets, so when it comes to enabling interactive controls I feel like using your existing devices or voice controls is the right approach.
• matada_
  For those interested in colour weather dashboards, I built this specifically for colour EPD https://github.com/mt-empty/pi-inky-weather-epd
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  bavaga
  This article makes me want to finally start the dashboard project that's been living in my procrastination backlog for years.One of the main blockers has been the cost of larger, high-resolution e-paper displays. I was considering using an ESP32 to drive one, but the display pricing always felt like the convenient excuse.Reading through the helpful comments here, I'm starting to think there might be more viable options than I assumed, especially in terms of display size trade-offs and keeping the overall cost reasonable.
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  AlotOfReading
  It'd be interesting to downsize this back to the LCD screen from a DC-1 [0]. These large format E-ink screens are cool, but outrageously expensive.[0] https://daylightcomputer.com/product
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  phailhaus
  I love TRMNL for this exact type of usecase! Only ~$150, and you can self-host if you want.
• cdelahousse
  The developer recently had a home tour where you can see this software in usehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkzg8sNkm8Y
• xixixao
  I’ve been dreaming about this for so long. Clearly I’m not the only one. While power delivery could be an issue, I’m surprised no tech company has come up with a real product.It does remind me though of Portals from FB/Meta, which were really nifty, but not profitable enough for otherwise highly profitable company to continue investing in.
• david_shaw
  This is for sure an inspirational project, but I wish the barrier to entry was lower.I've noticed e-ink/paper displays having somewhat of a moment right now (especially very small "phone-like" form factors as portable ereaders), and I hope this trend continues.I'm very far from a meaningful reduction in "screen time," but looking at e-ink displays instead of OLEDs feels like a nice step in that direction.
• wewewedxfgdf
  This device has magnets build in so you can stick it on your fridge:https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-...
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  seanieb
  Why is e-ink still so expensive?
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  anjel
  The cost differential between ePaper displays and the comparatively cheap jumbo tablets will offset higher current consumption for a good long while: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256808694032679.html
• leokennis
  This seems like a very nice project to learn stuff, including hardware design/implementation.Are there similar options on the market for "set and forget" people like me?
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  0xbadcafebee
  Has anyone solved the e-paper ghosting issue? Do you just have to set a complete screen re-render every few seconds or something?Fwiw, there are 13-inch eInk displays for ~$140 (https://www.waveshare.com/13.3inch-e-paper-hat-b.htm?sku=272...) which you can pair with a Raspberry Pi (~$40) or ESP32 (~$15) and battery (~$10). Smaller displays are cheaper if you don't need all that real estate. You can then use AI vibe coding and open source projects to throw together your own apps
• fuckinpuppers
  I’ve had an idea for something like this myself, more about the different things it would do rather than the design. But this looks cool too.
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  connorshinn
  This is really cool, thanks for sharing the journey so far.One potential idea - it might be worth looking at overseas manufacturers to see if they can offer a similar display at a better price point. I did a bit of digging on Alibaba, for example, and found a 25" E-ink display with the same resolution as the Boox for around $1000 (and the price goes down to $500 if you order 100 units or more): https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/25-3-inch-e-paper-dis...Seems like they offer a color E-ink display option as well, which could be worth exploring.Note: I don't have any affiliation with the above company, it was literally just the first one I found when searching. I'm sure there are many other options available as well.
• riston
  That is one interesting experiment, also hoping for cheaper and larger panels.Here is my ~75euros ESP32 eink panel experiment: https://github.com/riston/eink-assist-screen/tree/main
• tb303
  I went down the same path and up until last week had three e-ink surfaces in my house for this running off HA.We got a skylight 27 today. It’s better. I give in.E-ink is fine for display but too slow for interactivity.
• blkhawk
  wow the markup on the larger E-ink displays is crazy and the price curve is well above the bare added area. looking at the smaller displays it seems to me like prices have even gone up especially for the 7.5" ones and that's surprising considering reTerminal and clones being about 75EUR-ish.That said there are some displays for the adventurous with no clear ready made interface boards that would need some effort to connect to. Like the ES120MC1 12" high res ones for 50ish USD with some gnarly zif sockets.
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  qixv
  I would love to get rid of my phone more at home, eg at the dinner table, the couch etc. But I need it around to control our sound (music, tv-sound) as well as calendar, phone (heh) etc. Such a display looks awesome but it wont fix all my needs.
• beratbozkurt0
  Wow, I really love products and solutions like this. It's a great blog too, I'm adding it to my bookmarks.
• ktzar
  I LOVE this, but I am still love the Sunday night family bonding moment of planning the week in the pen and paper weekly planner that also costs us $10 a year.
• knallfrosch
  My solution is based on 12.48 inch Magic Ink Calendar:https://github.com/speedyg0nz/MagInkCalA 12.48 Waveshare eink display costs $175. Sadly haven't gotten it to work with the Raspi Zero and therefore can't use it battery-powered. Got an ugly cord right now. Running power to the right place through the walls is definitely dedication!
• b8
  For a smaller display, have you tried the reMarkable 2? Also, perhaps buying an anti glare oled monitor with high brightness and nits (e.g. LG G4 brightness) would help with the price issue.
• RoadieRoller
  I've this that I bought from costco. https://myskylight.com/products/skylight-calendar/
• the_gipsy
  You can run rust on kindles, so you don't need a separate webserver. You can fetch stuff and render the image directly on the kindle. Second hand kindles can be very cheap.https://github.com/benjajaja/kindle-buenoHowever, I would now go for some ~100€ e-ink that is built for hacking.
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  sailfast
  We do this with a raspberry pi and a decent lcd screen in a picture frame in our kitchen. I like the idea of e-ink but there isn’t a reason to go that route if you want to see everyone’s calendar color-coded while also saving a few bucks.Love the artistry and dedication in this effort - getting something just right for your own tastes and honing it over time can be really fulfilling.
• noelrock
  A project, ZerryBit, are working to do something similar - albeit on a far smaller scale physically than what you’ve done here. Might be of interest to OP or others though - further info at https://zerrybit.com/en-us (I have no link to them bar placing an advance order)
• pmarreck
  The Nerves project would actually be perfect for this:https://nerves-project.org/Elixir’s fault tolerance and ease combined with simple devices to run on
• ctl0v0
  Not to hijack, but if folks are interested, I built a similar project based on a very similar premise, but since I had a old touchscreen monitor laying around and some woodworking experience I used a raspberry pi, LineageOS, along with Nova Launcher to build a similar implementation based on android. I posted about it here if interested.https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/1ik3myy/turni...
• 01100011
  Weird, I was just looking into something like this yesterday. I really want a touchscreen though. It would be 100x more useful if I could put up a daily checklist that didn't require using a separate device to clear the checkmarks.
• stavros
  What a great name!https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-timeframe/Joking aside, great project. I love e-ink displays.
• anon
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• Bishonen88
  anyone got recommendations for a 20' touch screen, auto motion enabled monitor like the skylight but to run custom software on? Most likely just a web page.
• JoshTriplett
  I love the idea of putting this under portrait lighting rather than using a backlight.
• drumttocs8
  Super cool.To be fair on your point about only displaying status when they need attention vs displaying everything at once- this is easily achievable with a bit of IF ELSE logic with most cards in Lovelace.
• Thev00d00
  I wish they would hurry up and ship my TRMNL X please
• notenlish
  Please don't blur sensitive info, blur can be deblurred.
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  saeedesmaili
  A video demo of this e-ink frame is shown in this video: https://youtu.be/Wkzg8sNkm8Y
• bcyn
  This is really awesome! Dream home project for me as well, but can't justify the cost of large e-ink displays so far (was shocked at the nearly ~$2k sticker price of that Boox Mira Pro!)
• fassssst
  We use a family paper calendar and I use my watch to check the weather and reminders. Still allows my phone to live in a box at home.
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  candiddevmike
  I'm actively looking for someone who wants to create B2C devices like this for an app that I built. Email in my profile!
• stared
  Nice!Though, $2000 is a step price.I had some fun with using an Inkplate e-ink display - bough a bare 5" for €74 (a 10" with batteries is there €219). Smaller, but also way more affordable.It connects via WiFi, and make it display random, vide https://github.com/SolderedElectronics/Inkplate-Arduino-libr....
• dave_sid
  This is great. Always wondered why this didn’t already exist.
• a2dam
  The Inkplate10 is an excellent, much lower cost way to get into this
• theodric
  > Visionect started charging a $7/mo per-device fee to run their backend software on premises with Docker, after years of it being free to use.I'd have had these up on Marketplace the same day if I couldn't figure out a way to drive the panel directly
• jason_zig
  I think you're ready to go to market!
• anon
  undefined
• anon
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  ekjhgkejhgk
  Aesthetically, that e-ink screen looks gorgeous. But the idea of having to maintain a bunch of services and hardware so that I can see my calendar, I hate it.
• tamimio
  I have made something very similar, also using HA, but instead of the e-papers I used old tablets I found at the thrift stores, the reason is because I have my CCTV also integrated and e-papers won’t really do a good job that way.
• s0a
  greyscale no longer available for purchase
• tibbydudeza
  Interesting but it assumes the teens will bother to look at it.We use a WhatsApp channel for our family to manage breakfast meetups and who needs what from the shops or the pharmacy (they are on our healthcare plan) and general conversation about events or troubles and parental advice in their lives.One kid live on her own with her bf a few minutes from us but she can't drive so we sometimes have to pick her up from work.It gets muddled but works for us as the rule is no pet photos unless it is very cute (cat with a dustbin cover on his head) or inspirational daily quotes.
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  IshKebab
  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 iCal format. It's then extremely non-trivial to convert that information into "what is happening today".
• rsl1
  Very nice, looks great
• dakolli
  I love having my Calendar staring at me everywhere I look...
• with
  Awesome
• idontwantthis
  This is a cool project and I know hacking is good in and of itself, but I wanted to share that my family and I use a whiteboard on the fridge and a paper calendar to great effect. It brings us closer to each other while keeping us from missing appointments and events, and allows us to leave messages for each other to be viewed in slow time.
• sublinear
  > There are still several data sources I fetch directly outside of Home Assistant. Once HA is the sole source of data, I’ll be able to have Timeframe be a Home Assistant App, making it significantly easier to distribute.Yes, please distribute this as an HA app. I can't wait to see that.
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  preisschild
  Which OLED screen is shown in the "A more reliable approach" paragraph?
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  greatgib
  When you think about it, it is crazy to think that the world is spending thousands of billions on AI stuffs, but still we haven't yet any affordable big size epaper display.It could change a lot of things in the world, especially regarding the power consumption of most commonly used screens for a lot of signage everywhere. But not that much company looks like to be interested in developing the field.I think that a few years a go, a lot of possible innovation were blocked by a few aggressive patents. I don't know if it is still the case.
• dintech
  I'd buy this. Good luck with the project.
• nivcmo
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• wangzhongwang
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  MarcLore
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  wangzhongwang
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• someday-46
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• bongripper
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• asjldkfin
  Why e-paper over a monitor with a presence sensor? Wouldn't it be cheaper and higher fidelity?