MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

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.

  1. install python
  2. make a file named `index.html` somewhere. 
  2a. put this in the "head" tag, so it'll refresh hourly: `<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3600">`.
  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, go buy an e-ink display and point it to http://firstmachine:8000/, make it the default homepage.

Any time you have anything to say, just edit the `index.html` file and the eink display will update.

No need for fancy subscription services or kickstarter projects or crowdfunding... just... batteries included python.

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.

  "I had to reboot my raspberry pi" 

  "whoops rando eInk display doesn't do javascript" 

... 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 him or his parish anything (aside from buying the eink display ofc).

If it turns out that the DIY solution is insufficient, or his parish is wealthy enough to spend money on a thing like this, great, then upgrade to that.