Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I have a couple of these and they are great. I'm transitioning to BTLE e-ink screens (hand-assembled, I wish there were nice off-the-shelf versions) because of their much lower power draw.

Currently I have a handful of the all-in-on seeed studio reTerminal E1001's that rotate book quotes I've highlighted on my kindle (jailbroken, KOReader+BookOrbit) once a day so they can last months on a battery charge. But with BTLE you can go years on a single charge, update more often, and push to the device to force an update (all things not possible when deep-sleeping wifi for 23.99 hours out of the day).

e-ink displays are so nice and once I get the BTLE+OpenDisplay setup perfected I'll probably grab ~10 more boards/displays for other places around the house.

Could you say a little more about how you plan to use BTLE and which units you’re using? I set one of these up last month and it’s generally great, but yeah wifi is a hog. It never occurred to me that something with BTLE would make such a difference.

It’s a great form factor though, isn’t it? Kicked off a bit of an e-ink / esp32 boom for me. I just bought 4 integrated 4-inch displays to complement this 7.5.

OpenDisplay's calculator is what I'm basing it off: https://opendisplay.org/firmware/battery/index.html

My first EN05 board had a problem with the battery and I just got the replacement a few days ago and haven't had time set it up or do long-term tests. I also was blown away by the WiFi vs BTLE power usage. I love ESP32 but for battery powered I'm looking closer at BTLE. I actually have 3 ESP32's around the house to act as BTLE proxies for Home Assistant which I can use with OpenDisplay as well.

And yes, it's a great form factor, it looks great, and just makes me smile when I walk by one. Once I can solve the "more updates, less recharging" I plan to frame a number of these to hang on the wall.

Thank you, much appreciated :) Just picked up a couple from AliExpress.

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