Hi HN!
I am trying to develop an e-paper smart display as a consumer product. The first available layout will be a calendar.
I'd love to have HN's input on this: Do you think it's viable? Does it look okay?
What would be a good selling price?
I am trying to develop an e-paper smart display as a consumer product. The first available layout will be a calendar.
I'd love to have HN's input on this: Do you think it's viable? Does it look okay?
What would be a good selling price?
Here's my quick summary:
* They were using the tech for low power conference room calendars, which was a good use case pre-COVID.
* They said consumers really liked Joan, and that it was a popular product internally for employees.
* It renders pretty much any web view, which I think is the right idea
Overall, my assessment is that generally the market is small, and building a 'good' version, e.g. something that feels as good as a remarkable 2, is going to be really expensive.
Joan as a product is very thick, and also has terrible connectivity - no wifi-based configuration, needs out of date USB drivers downloaded in order to talk to it, etc. etc.
So, in answer to your question, as a hobby, yes. As an actual product for sale, I do not think it is a large market. If you find a large market you will be fighting companies like visionect that have deep supply chain roots to Eink directly.
If it were larger and lighter, I think putting one up on the fridge showing the family calendar, or other use cases like the conference room where it's nice to have updating information without running power are good ideas. But this is a very small market. And you are fighting the fact that people usually prefer bright colorful displays except in niche applications.
In summary, I would urge you to look at a different hardware niche.
I agree that the market for this particular product is very small.
I wouldn’t be interested in spending that much since I can’t really do much other than look at my calendar.
I’m either on the move, or in front of a computer, so I don’t see if there’s a good fit for this device in my life
> I’m either on the move, or in front of a computer, so I don’t see if there’s a good fit for this device in my life
It's possible that the device isn't for you then, I agree.
IMO if it doesn't have more than one UI menu, the UI ought to be built into the hardware - because AIUI e-ink screen costs scale geometrically with size. In other words, if you can e.g. break the five/seven days of the week into five/seven separate e-ink screens of the same surface area (not counting bezels), they'll be cheaper than a single e-ink screen of the same surface area.
As a bonus, giving each day its own screen means you can put a nice clean margin between them that's not made of expensive e-ink despite being left empty the entire time.
IMO that's the only way the price would drop to less than half the price of an e-reader of the same size.
- Add an indication of the current time and date.
- Add a hidden button/switch to change between weekly/monthly calendar layout.
- Show a small popup with the pertinent information of the next appointment. (Location &c.)
- Where do you show entries that are scheduled for the entire day? It would be nice to display them in an area that is separate from the regular entries.
- Add a button/switch to flip through the next few weeks.
Good luck with your project, I can surely see a market for the e-paper calendar.
The price seems high, but it might work as a christmas/birthday present, and probably wouldn't ultimately stop it from being purchased in this case.
It would be replacing a paper calendar that shows 3 months ahead. A nice feature would be to be able to move between views of today, this week, 3 months. Much bigger would be nice too. Again not having these would not stop a purchase.
The wood bezel is pretty big.
Most likely to stop a purchase is the ugly wire hanging from it. If it didn't need charging often, then having it have a powerbank (swappable?) in it would be better from my point of view, although how often it needs to charge would be a factor.
There was a beautiful concept epaper calendar I saw a while back, https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/22/15028600/m... but I don't think it ever made it to sale, and if it had, it would have been frighteningly expensive, but that is what I would really like...
> It would be replacing a paper calendar that shows 3 months ahead. A nice feature would be to be able to move between views of today, this week, 3 months.
I agree.
> Much bigger would be nice too.
Totally.
To me, a physical calendar is useful to get an idea of the schedule at a glance - but this seems like it will be too small to get a clear idea at a glance.
I'm guessing 6"-7" ? TBH 13-15" would be ideal to hang up on the wall (with a better contrast ratio as well) - but I'm guessing that would be way too expensive?
You're right in guessing that anything bigger is very expensive - let's hope the cost comes down!
If you have a library for easily building these screens this could be really interesting.
I have seen this idea at the joan board, but they are really expensive (attaching an ipad to the wall is cheaper) and i cant find this feature anymore. I guess it was hidden at some screenshot and small text somewhere.
I love the idea and the design, and I hope it works for you, but I think it’s going to be a hard sell ahead for you at that price point.