The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display(shop.invisible-computers.com) |
The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display(shop.invisible-computers.com) |
I get that the SF crowd was all about it, but if the last few years have taught us anything it is that there’s more to the techie world than VC free money startups.
I reckon there are far more people who need this and who might buy this who are using Outlook/Office 365 either alone or in some combination than who use Gmail exclusively.
And yes, Office 365 has an API. Even Alexa works with it.
Outlook is on the roadmap. But I felt like supporting .ics was more pressing.
I tried with 2-2 different companies that I worked with, but to no avail. I just wanted a simple app that syncs some events from the work calendar to my personal one...
There are two aspects that make this easier than most people realize:
- You will theoretically retain your existing Gmail address forever, even if you close your Gmail account. This means you can reactivate it at any time.
- You can use your new email address as the sign-in ID for your existing Google account. This means you can continue to use Google Docs, YouTube, etc and stuff without being reliant on Gmail.
I wrote a short guide a while back here: https://www.justus.ws/tech/how-to-ditch-gmail/
Is it necessary to have the content proxied through your API server? If the company doesn't work out, it would be a shame to have this device stop working, even though it's fully capable of reaching the internal URL I would be hosting my content on.
Could that be changed?
If I am not hit by a metaphoric truck, I give my best to make sure not to disappoint my customers. My plan is to keep the backend running for 10 years after I sell the last display.
But of course that's just a plan und I understand that you may not like the odds. That's totally reasonable.
1) Have a touch screen
2) Integrate with Outlook calendar and multiple Google calendars
3) Integrate with smart home features (e.g. lights, temperature, etc)
4) Integrate with other data sources (e.g. news)
At $150, be open-source and open-hardware (at a lower price point, I'd do without).
I'm looking for something like that.
Until then, neat product!
Find the people who want to use a product despite all the lacking features, because the one thing it does is exactly what they need, and build on that.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
They have customizable dashboards. What I'm really looking for is something I can use as a sort of command center in a few places in my house. It allows me to control the things I care about, shows my upcoming schedule, and whatever else is relevant. By my work desk, the #1 thing I care about is upcoming meetings. Other places, I care about other things.
Critically, though, I don't want it to glow. I want it either e-ink or purely reflective LCD.
This is probably a few devices. Ideally, there'd be small / cheap ones with mechanical switches and a tiny screen to replace my light switches, and big ones for my living room, work room, etc.
I think the trick would be to start with something, so one doesn't have an infinite engineering task, and so there are ready frameworks for modularity. Either Home Assistant or dash would be decent starting points, depending on which direction this took.
But yeah, now that I mention it, I have a vision in my head for what I want (which I would buy). Retrokludged features without the same vision would probably not get us there.
So I'll cut this back to what everyone else is saying: Calendar flexibility. This needs to sync with home, work, and other calendars, so at the very least, Outlook.
(a) required an operating system
(b) still works
It all bitrots to hell. For comparison, everything I've made on a PIC, Atmel, ESP, etc. continues working.
FPGAs have a more mixed track record; the devices work, but they're unmaintainable (the dev toolchains require e.g. Windows NT and some activation server which no longer exists).
Things I've made out of wood, metal, and similar materials work too, as do PCBs I designed with analog.
My point is I want a piece of hardware and not a computer.
I might do this myself, hmm.
Regarding calendar: You can already connect as many google calendars and as many .ics sources as you want. If you can create an .ics link from outlook that's supported. (At least on iOS, the Android update is still being worked on. Did you know about Jetpack Compose? I didn't...)
Of course, Outlook support would be nice. It's on the roadmap. But as always, I don't want to promise things that haven't happened yet.
Without that, I suspect I'll never get around to making one work, and I'm not buying another half-started project.
As a footnote, 50% of the remaining work is on the stupid stuff like cases and power supplies. I'm glad you did that. But if you ever sell this as a device, consider provide a variety of cases for different use-cases (desk stand, wall mount, metal box with room for other stuff, etc.) and your sales will double.
As a footnote, I like when devices are compatible with something standard, like a Micro:bit or a Circuit Playground. That guarantees a basic working toolchain for at least getting code on, as well as a support ecosystem.
This is the power of making a product at huge scale.
The amount of technology I can buy in a $90 Android phone is mind boggling.
The kindle is a gateway drug into the rest of the Amazon ecosystem, and you probably need some form of subscription to get full use out of it, or at the least you need to buy ebooks on Amazon for it.
The $90 phone probably comes with facebook and other social apps + bloatware pre-installed, that no doubt ended up there because of some commercial deal.
https://soldered.com/product/soldered-inkplate-6plus-with-en...
> What is especially interesting is that Inkplate uses recycled screens taken from old e-book readers (...)
The real reason e-ink hasn't seen much innovation is that it's a tiny niche market, because e-ink is useful for e-readers and not much else. In contrast, LCDs are produced at a rate of billions per quarter, which gives room for lots of companies to compete furiously.
When? Where? How? Is this based on your direct experience? Please share some evidence so that your claims can be verified.
https://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/2167906 (in Dutch)
If there's enough interest I can release a new video.
Ugh, otherwise sounded attractive.
What I'd love is a large, high-res, perhaps color, e-ink display that I can use either as a second screen, or as an indipendent computer. I read hours every day on an LCD screen, and most of that reading would be much better on an e-ink.
Otherwise the form factor is really good-looking and I'd put this in my kitchen.
Disclaimer: I work for Visionect
E-Ink prices for large displays are still too far high. Not much improvement in the last year. Little watch-sized ones are only a few dollars, though. Ought to be good for something. Auto gauges? Status displays on low-power devices?
For an instrument dashboard, you're better with an active display whose failure mode is to not display any information (or some nominal low/nil response) rather than continue to show the last updated value through all eternity.
That last would be particularly bad for speed, fuel, or battery-status displays, say.
"It’s not open source and you need the backend for it to work."
They alluded to open sourcing the software/API if the business ever goes under, but obviously that'd not guaranteed.
Such a shame, I'd be willing to pay more for a product that was actually open.
If it would be a nicely built frame with a display and a microcontroller (flashable with a custom firmware, or with a simple and sane local API where I can upload a full bitmap via USB and/or WiFi, with no cloud requirements) I'd buy this in an instant.
I have a Waveshare 7.5" display for some Grafana dashboards, but I'm all thumbs when it comes to building a physical case for it, so the circuit board just dangles on a wire in an ugly cardboard box.
A shame, indeed. I have no use for a display that can't even show what I want (or needs a third-party service and Internet connectivity for this). I guess, it's most likely hackable if the case can be opened, but I'm not exactly willing to fight it for $150.
[0] https://github.com/Underknowledge/underknowledge.puppeteer-h...
A few ideas for your consideration:
- 7 inch is waaaay too small, should be at least 10/11 inch.
- Touchscreen is a must. To switch between views, scroll to next/previous day/week, and even insert/update events.
- Voice control is really nice to have, eg to read back events for today/this week etc. Maybe to wake up so that the screen does not stay on all the time.
- Would be cool to have it running off internal power source. I used LCDs which are power-hungry, but with e-paper you are constrained only by the controller which I think is much less draining (voice control would not be an option in this case I think).
- Consider offline mode. Yes it does introduce difficulties but allows people to own the data instead of renting it and sharing with others.
Again, great job!
Neat idea though.
The desktop model really stands out here. The foot needs to be heavy, and there’s plenty of space for batteries in there.
You may be able to get a larger panel for the same sort of price[2], but there's something to be said for having a finished product that's fundamentally plug-and-play... which is arguably a different market to a "buy the components and make one yourself" crowd.
[1] https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/7.5inch-e...
[2] https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/13.3inch-...
The "develop your own content" link on the top page links to:
https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-calendar/image...
I guess being able to display custom images is a plus, but I am not sure I would call that a SDK.
I am going to have new pictures taken anyways, I will try to make sure to add some size references.
There are a bunch of photos here. Which ones would you say are the most suggestive of a bigger screen size? I can maybe re-sort the images to prevent confusion.
Last thing I want is a customer ordering something, them being unhappy and me having to process a return. That's always a loss for me.
I don't have an exact need for it now, but once I have a project worthwhile I might pick it up.
Oh, I wish the Kindle would use, as it's "off" screen, the last page I was reading.
Front page of a paper: any e-ink tablet with a PDF viewer or web browser will get you there.
I have been trying to eliminate reasons to use my phone when at home, and have totally stopped picking it up in the morning.
The problem then is I can get blindsided not knowing what my schedule is or if I have an early call.
So now I have one of these things by my sink and it shows me just the calendar for the current day.
Very simple, but very effective.
You can already point it to an image url with an image in the right resolution on the internet, and it will render that.
But for pointing it to an HTML page, you need a headless browser and that comes with a bunch of practical issues.
I don’t see any obvious answer for this, but how often does it query / refresh the image URL?
I’m thinking of writing some script to just push an updated image to something like https://example.com/dashboard.png every 15 minutes or so.
Still cool that projects like this are launched.
I try to keep things lean. Reduce fixed costs, especially server costs, since I want to keep this running 10 years AFTER I sell the last display.
I outsource some stuff but I make sure everything can be scaled down when I the business is slow.
Fine for displaying a day but not a week
Inside is a micro SD card so if I ever need more storage I can just clone the original SD and extend the partition to upgrade the storage.
The Kobo are so much better than the kindle imho: more open, not locked down, and the typesetting engine is Mike’s ahead: no ragged edges or page long rivers unlike I was getting on the kindle.
(But seriously, showing something like car keys hanging next to the currently-isolated shots would help a lot.)
Wait, this doesn't work offline or just in a local network? Why does this has to phone home?
Anyway yes the Kindle has better spec but as you mentionned in your first post the fact that it's locked is the whole point. Amazon is not making money on the device ...
You can look at pricing for, e.g., Onyx's product line to get a good sense of what the cost of a given mass-market device at a given e-ink size (and capabilities, e.g., Wacom, frontlight, touch interface) are.
Smaller e-ink devices are quite affordable. At 10" and above, you start seeing a pretty significant price premium, though IMO the benefits are worth it.
(I own a 13" Onyx device, for three years now.)
