Hacker News Reader

Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

I almost bought this eink yesterday to test it out, but as I'm seeing here and I thought, it seems a bit small.

I am also considering getting a kindle and just putting a small html page on it so I don't have to get down to the pixel-level. I remember when I tried to use my now-defunct kindle that JS was giving some funny errors, probably should be treated as an old browser. Been holding out to see if a usb-c kindle comes up but people have been complaining for years now.

View on HN

I did something like this on an old rooted kindle paperwhite.

I wrote the script in bash, it uses a cross-compiled imagemagick to render an image, then pushes it to the screen using the 'eips' command.

I still use it every day, it's my only living room clock now.

Inkplate may be what you’re looking for, though it isn’t shipping yet: https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica/inkplate-6

I have my eye on that one. One of the creators just did an AMA on Discord an hour ago: https://discordapp.com/channels/571093131651448852/703384583...

I think I'm going to hold out for the Inkplate 10 (9.7" screen), which he mentioned when someone asked about upcoming plans.

This is the proper link to Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/6EQjqNv

The html browser on e-ink kindles is absurdly terrible (I think intentionally to discourage using the 'free' 3G for surfing). You may be able to get it to work, but godspeed. While not e-ink, I bought a handful of cheap used iPad-minis and mounted them on the wall. Serve them a little HTML UI from a raspberrypi in the closet. I tried a cheapo kindle fire, but it wasn't possible to get the browser to go "full-screen".

I get the appeal of e-ink for a dashboard, but having fast-refresh, color, fast touch-response, a modern browser, and other things make for a much more pleasant UX (at the expense of being bright and having to worry about powering the thing).

To me, the appeal of e-ink is the fact it completely blends in with your room. There is no glow, no distraction when watching television. It's lit by your room. Also it doesn't feel "wasteful" to have it lit up when no one is in the room.

There are some Android-based e-ink readers (including some of the Nook models and various Chinese brands) that have modern-ish browsers, you can make a page and wrap it in a webview or write a normal Android app.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com