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MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

(jan.miksovsky.com)
2093 points pabs3 | 3 comments | 14 Nov 24 12:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.767s | source
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angrygoat ◴[14 Nov 24 12:36 UTC] No.42135621[source]▶
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 and so I could use it to let people know what events are on, if a service is cancelled, the current prayer list, ... the applications would be endless. I'd definitely pay a couple of hundred dollars per device for a solid version of such a thing, if it could be mounted and then recharged every month or two.

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steezeburger ◴[14 Nov 24 15:21 UTC] No.42137028[source]▶
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!

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ryanckulp ◴[14 Nov 24 15:54 UTC] No.42137445[source]▶
hackable indeed :) https://docs.usetrmnl.com

no longer a Kickstarter btw, shipping same-day now (see homepage)

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philips ◴[14 Nov 24 18:48 UTC] No.42139688[source]▶
> Most IoT products support SSH-ing directly into peripheral devices. We've heard too many horror stories about how this can go wrong, and decided to invert the paradigm.

> Your TRMNL device pings our server, never the other way around.

> Each request made to our /api/display endpoint includes only the minimum details needed to support customers -- an API key, device mac address, firmware version, battery voltage, and wifi signal strength.

Super hackable but it pings their hosted server and nothing else?! Is there a way to run your own server?

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1. philips ◴[14 Nov 24 18:53 UTC] No.42139750[source]▶
The docs aren't super encouraging either. https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/diy/byod-s

> Purchase a TRMNL from our home page: https://usetrmnl.com

> Then follow the instructions on BYOD/S > Server.

> More TBD.

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2. krinchan ◴[14 Nov 24 20:09 UTC] No.42140631[source]▶
They seem to have the api base url hardcoded in their firmware[1]. The repo seems to have pretty clear instructions for compiling and flashing modified firmware. From there, it's just a matter of writing a decent server to implement the calls documented in BYOD/S[2] and Private API.[3]

[1]: https://github.com/usetrmnl/firmware/blob/e3db8c37990c2333ec...

[2]: https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/diy/byod-s

[3]: https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/private-api/introduction

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3. philips ◴[14 Nov 24 20:17 UTC] No.42140711[source]▶
Nice, thank you for investigating.