homeassistant@lemmy.worldbyAA5B@lemmy.world
25 days

Trmnl experiences?

English

Did anyone here get one of those Trmnl dashboards? I’ve been wanting to build an e-ink dashboard for years but it keeps not happening, so I ordered a Trmnl X as soon as I read about it.

There’s a bit of a delay on shipping, and early adopters on Reddit were negative, but I’m excited!

— apparently one of the issues was magnets not sufficient to hold it to a fridge. THE CASE HAS MAGNETS! AND THEY’RE UPDATING THEM!

There is a big list of plugins, including apple calendar and HA dashboard, which I’m most interested in

Anyhow, if you got one, please share your experience

15
    • MrPozor@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      24 days

      I was tempted until I learned a bit more about the guy behind TRMNL.

      Now I transformed a 4" supermarket price tag into a dashboard using the OpenEPaperLink project. It works fine but took some time to set up. And the ESP C6 that is talking to the tags crashes every few days. Still need to figure out how to fix that.

      • richie510@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15 days

        I read some vague language like this on Reddit as well. When I did my own digging, it came up empty. How does one indipendently verify these claims about the guy behind TRMNL. Also, I’m assuming the guy in question is Ryan Kulp, who is listed as the founder.

      • ccunning@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19 days

        Do you have more info on this? I thought I’d read some questionable stuff about the guy but when I was looking into TRMNL again more recently I couldn’t find any of the dirty laundry and thought maybe I’d imagined it.

    • mbirth 🇬🇧@lemmy.mlEnglish
      24 days

      I’ve converted an old Kindle into a TRMNL and connected it to their Laravel server running in a Docker container.

      It’s okay-ish, but the use is limited. Either it switches between different screens every few minutes and you never see the thing you’d like to see in the moment. Or, you can put 4 different things onto one screen but they’ll be tiny.

      I seem to be more of a push-based kind of person who prefers information to come in the right moment via an alarm or notification.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24 days

        I definitely like seeing the data as well.

        But …… I’ve got a bunch of Inovelli switches where the status led is controllable, and am hoping to turn that into an alerting system. It’s fairly low key but if every light switch is blinking yellow, for example, it should be quickly noticeable from everywhere. I have to get back to setting that up

    • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24 days

      It’s not quite the same because it has a lot less screen estate, but I can 100% recommend Home Buttons. You can either build it yourself (3D printed enclosure, custom PCB) or buy one already built for you. They each fancy an e-ink display you can configure with Material Design Icons (or even custom text in case of the bigger one). They integrate into Home Assistant via MQTT and can be fully used for any automation you would like. You can even change the 4 or 6 button labels using Home Assistant.

      https://docs.home-buttons.com/

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24 days

        While I’m not a fan of them using WiFi, cool idea!

    • Saucepain@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24 days

      I’ve got one of the original models. I just have it set up with the TRMNL cloud version at the moment and it’s pretty cool, but there is a setup where you can run a HA add-on to mirror a dashboard to the screen. I would miss my imprecise literature clock though…

    • Dennis@social.lol
      24 days

      @AA5B It’s good for displaying information that you don’t expect instant updates on. Today’s calendar, tracking deliveries, news feeds perhaps. I haven’t really looked into any of the alternative use cases so I’m just using the cloud-based functionality.

      I had one of the earlier original models and at one point a firmware update completely cooked it. I’m not thrilled about the e-waste, but the company handled it well and I got a replacement without any fuss.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24 days

        That lines up with what I’m expecting - I do want to see data - I’ll have to explore beyond my first couple ideas to see what works for me.

        While I also want a doorbell display in case I’m not carrying my phone, I understand this is the wrong technology. I almost got one of those echo shows for that but I know someone who has one and it was horrible with ads

    • fixmycode@feddit.clEnglish
      24 days

      I have one and it’s great, although I don’t have any HA information on it, as I don’t have a lot of information worth having on a screen that’s not live data.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24 days

        Could you share what you do find useful? I see a big catalog of plugins.

        For me in HA, I have

        • 6 temperature sensors. I like seeing the trends, relationships, and trying to optimize, trying to make my house more consistent and comfortable
        • 3 humidity sensors and likely to increase. Humidity control s a battle I’ve been fighting and want more info and more ways to respond. Notably this past year my addition got a heat pump with a dehumidify setting
        • Airthings Radon sensor - 7 different measures of air quality I can work on. Seeing trends can identify events with harmful results
        • EV charger and status
        • I do want to work on measuring energy usage, but haven’t gotten very far yet

        But I’m really looking for the family calendar on the fridge

        • fixmycode@feddit.clEnglish
          23 days

          my current list of plugins:

          • peanuts and xkcd strips
          • moon phase
          • weather forecast
          • Strava activity summary
          • GitHub activity grid
          • a custom plugin I wrote that shows a different kanji each day
    • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
      24 days

      I had a couple in my cart until I realized þey weren’t touchscreens. It’s still a nice product; I just don’t have a use case for a read-only dashboard myself. It’d be nice if you posted back wiþ your experience, þough.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24 days

        I personally am not interested in touch screen. Interactive use isn’t really compatible with e-ink. I’m interested in sharing data

        Edit: or I understand the limits of this technology so the uses I have in mind are not interactive.