I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

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.

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

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.

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.

~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 ;)

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.

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.

I’m always surprised how much people seem to want to constantly know the weather.

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.

I love TRMNL for this exact type of usecase! Only ~$150, and you can self-host if you want.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Why is e-ink still so expensive?

A video demo of this e-ink frame is shown in this video: https://youtu.be/Wkzg8sNkm8Y

My solution is based on 12.48 inch Magic Ink Calendar:

https://github.com/speedyg0nz/MagInkCal

A 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!

The developer recently had a home tour where you can see this software in use

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkzg8sNkm8Y

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

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-bueno

However, I would now go for some ~100€ e-ink that is built for hacking.

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.

Why e-paper over a monitor with a presence sensor? Wouldn't it be cheaper and higher fidelity?

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)

I love the idea of putting this under portrait lighting rather than using a backlight.

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.

The Inkplate10 is an excellent, much lower cost way to get into this

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!)

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.

I'm actively looking for someone who wants to create B2C devices like this for an app that I built. Email in my profile!

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....

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.

Which OLED screen is shown in the "A more reliable approach" paragraph?

Very nice, looks great

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".

I'd buy this. Good luck with the project.