I've been buying (2 so far) Seeed Studio reTerminal e-ink screens, flashing them with ESPHome, then using Claude Code to write backends to render out whatever I want to put on the screens (a la TRMNL, I also have a TRMNL). Being able to "speak" into existence what I want is pretty freaking awesome.

Note: Yes, I know what I'm about to say could be done using TRMNL (as part of it)

I was able to set it up so that it rotates book quotes every day with a picture of the book cover next to the quote. That, on its own, is far from impressive. What made me giddy was that it shows book quotes that I've highlighted in KOReader on my jailbroken Kindle. KOReader syncs up to BookOrbit (open source ebook manager/reading tracking tool). The whole thing happens 100% local to my network.

BookOrbit is running in a docker, my little server to render the book/quote runs in a docker, my Kindle talks to BookOrbit, my ReTerminal talks to HomeAssistant (ESPHome). It's 100% local and it's silly but it's mine and I love it. As I'm reading I highlight something and a day, a week, a month later I see it on the display on my dresser or in my office.

I want to put these all over the place in my house and I already modified it once so each screen will get a different random quote so I don't have to worry about duplicates. I'm considering getting 1 display per book shelf where I have a full series and configuring it so that it just shows quotes I've highlighted from that series. The sky's the limit.

I fully understand no one cares, I get it, this is super-duper-custom, "just for me", and that's what I love.

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gerogerke 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

Have you looked at OpenDisplay? I have recently been playing with 4 color shelf displays from supermarkets. I have one showing max UV in my bathroom and whether I should wear sunscreen. Any Bluetooth proxy can write ODL/OEPL data to the device. There is a designer (https://schlomo.github.io/odl-drawcustom-designer/).

	▲	joshstrange 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I have not, I'll have to check this out. While I like my smart home stuff off my network (Z-Wave/Zigbee) I do have a soft spot for ESP32 (and it's own SSID/Vlan). I currently don't "manage" any bluetooth devices but I'll have to take a look! > 4 color I guess I should just get over myself but color e-ink (I have one) drives me nuts with its refreshing. At least the one I have can't partial refresh so it's a ~20-30 second flashing-hell every time you want to draw anything different. To be fair, I have these updating once a day and when I'm asleep so "who cares" but doing any active development/testing with one is maddening. EDIT: Holy crap, the ESP32 vs BT comparison is crazy! I would never have guessed it was that stark. Though it makes sense, I have mine deep sleep for all but <1min every day to wake and update and with config they should last months, but _years_ with regular updates throughout the day? So freaking cool! I'll probably be looking into some BT screens. It looks a little more DIY than the reTerminals I have but maybe this is the final push to get me, back, into 3D printing (enclosures for the board/screen/battery).