I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard
Joel Hawksley chronicles a decade-long journey building "Timeframe," a custom e-paper dashboard that integrates family calendars, weather, and smart home data into a screen-free display. This detailed account of iterative development, from janky Kindles to sophisticated Visionect and Boox panels, highlights the persistent pursuit of a low-impact information display. Hacker News loves this blend of DIY ingenuity, practical smart-home application, and deep technical problem-solving, even if the final high-end solution isn't cheap.
The Lowdown
Joel Hawksley's "Timeframe" is a deeply personal and impressively engineered project: a family e-paper dashboard refined over a decade. Driven by a desire for a healthier relationship with technology, Hawksley sought to create a discreet display for essential information like calendars, weather, and smart home status without the distractions of traditional screens. His journey showcases a remarkable blend of hardware hacking, software development, and aesthetic consideration.
- Early Explorations: The project began with a "Magic Mirror" that proved too bright, leading to experiments with jailbroken Kindles for their e-paper properties. This required a custom Ruby on Rails app to generate image updates every half hour.
- Professional E-Paper: A pivot to Visionect displays offered better reliability, longer battery life, and various sizes, integrated via a local Raspberry Pi and a custom Ruby gem.
- Market Realities: A customer pilot revealed the prohibitive cost of Visionect devices ($1000+) and their per-device software fees, making commercialization difficult.
- Catalyst for Change: The destruction of Hawksley's home in the Marshall Fire prompted a redesign, coincidentally aligning with the release of the high-resolution, real-time Boox Mira Pro e-paper display.
- Backend Revolution: The new real-time requirements led to a significant backend overhaul, shifting away from image generation, heavily leveraging Home Assistant as a data source, and simplifying the Rails application by removing databases and Redis.
- Smart Status Indicators: The system now provides real-time house status (e.g., open doors, laundry done) by displaying only
The Gossip
Pricey Panels & Personal Pursuits
The discussion heavily centers on the high cost of large e-paper displays, with the author's primary $2000 Boox Mira Pro being a frequent point of contention. Many commenters question the commercial viability of such solutions for the average household, and some speculate that patents contribute to the inflated prices. Conversely, the thread also highlights a strong DIY spirit, with users sharing how to build smaller, more affordable e-paper dashboards for under $100 using components like Waveshare displays and ESP32 boards, effectively offering budget-friendly alternatives to the author's high-end aspirations.
Dashboard Dilemmas & Daily Data
While the project is broadly admired for its ingenuity, one commenter raises a curious point about the perceived need to constantly know the weather. This sparks an underlying discussion about information density and utility in home dashboards: what data is truly valuable to have on persistent display versus what contributes to unnecessary cognitive load. The author's approach of only showing 'unhealthy' house states is implicitly contrasted with the general tendency to display copious amounts of data.
Commercial Concepts & Creative Collaborations
The project's innovative nature has clearly resonated with those envisioning commercial applications. One commenter explicitly expresses interest in finding partners to develop Business-to-Consumer (B2C) devices based on similar e-paper dashboard concepts. This indicates a perceived market opportunity for such screen-free information displays, suggesting that if the cost barrier could be overcome, there's potential for broader adoption.