ryanckulp

jumping in to defend myself (thanks f5bot). you are not a serious person.

1. i'm very proud of Fomo. for 6 years we fought against fake data. i said "no" to many lucrative opportunities that were not ethical. our vision was "to given entrepreneurs the credit they deserve," and our mission was "to help consumers make better buying decisions online." your comment is libelous. [1, 2]

2. as of yesterday, all 11 of my courses are free. i've helped over 10,000 people learn to code and learn to sell. [3]

3. on the side i do a bit of pen-testing. i help stop* scammers, and i help non technical folks protect their brand. that's why Bubble added me to their home pages and dozens of cash bounties have been sent my way. [4, 5, 6]

[1] https://blog.fomo.com/having-a-vision-works/ [2] https://blog.fomo.com/introducing-honest-marketer/ [3] https://x.com/ryanckulp/status/1907099032616378815 [4] https://www.ryanckulp.com/hustlewing-is-a-scam-so-i-hacked-i... [5] https://bubble.io/security_acknowledgements [6] https://bubblesecurity.gumroad.com/l/unhackable-101

a few of our users open sourced their own public transport (e-ink) plugins here, for major cities like NYC, Chicago, London, Zurich, etc: https://usetrmnl.com/recipes

working on TRMNL[1], a hardware startup with a web app companion (Ruby / Rails 8).

this weekend specifically, setting up an in-house assembly area. decided to renovate my barn and be our own fulfillment center.

[1]: https://trmnl.ink

i hear you. only the black case is soft touch, other cases are not. white is currently most popular, ~60% of sales. black 35%, translucent 5%.

modding endpoint in FW is no longer required. now built into the wifi captive portal UI: https://github.com/usetrmnl/firmware/pull/66

open to it. perhaps granting an escrow service readonly permission to web server box (not DB) would suffice, as then it could all be pulled down, versus closed source on GH?

i'm new to this but we do want to demonstrate sincerity and put our $ where our mouth is.

handling image generation on-board the PCB is a pretty heavy task, so we think the server-side delegation is clever + easier to extend.

you don't need to host per se, however. you can deploy one of our BYOS options on a local network and let your device(s) ping 192.168/api/display. just about zero config required, just docker up and input your local network domain into the FW > captive portal UI during setup.

thanks for sharing. i made a video where we mod this FW, set up a device, spin up an open source web client, then build + render a custom plugin in < 10 mins.

https://usetrmnl.com/blog/introducing-byos

so glad to hear this.

1/2. hardware is the same, just a permissions switch. you can upgrade any time in-app.

3. one account can manage them all, there is a device switcher in top corner that makes it easy to jump between playlists, content orderings, preferences etc. you can also “mirror” a device like child<>parent but they are independent by default. dev edition currently device specific but if you say “hey not cool” we can bump both your devices on the same account. ;)

4. yes and yes and yes. you can choose from several layouts (full screen, split, 3-way split etc) and you configure refresh intervals per device, per plugin, per time of day. so maybe you want calendar only from 8-9a, or reddit / hn only in the evening. there is a skip btn on the device which can also be double-clicked to do other stuff (go backwards, email me this, etc).

5. res is 800x480. not amazing but we make it work. built our own design system with special fonts. preview: https://usetrmnl.com/framework. yes we have calendar in Month view and it looks fine IMO. you can fit in /read a lot of text. for overflow we have some JS magic that auto truncates and you can control these params as well. see “Overflow” section in Framework docs above.

6. connects via wifi, yes supports multiple SSID, and receives OTA updates automatically (which you can disable). firmware is open source as well.

hope to see you on the inside!

Ryan

thanks for the feedback, will add more detail to our website specs + docs.

we included magnets for VIP backers on our crowdfunding campaign and may start selling them again. device has a mounting hole on the back for nails / hooks, we’ll probably release mechanical specs so people can 3D print or otherwise fabricate their own mounts. for example some people want to mash up an array of them. but until then, adhesive magnets work great for the fridge use case.

i never heard of you, and you had 77 backers. no offense but that accusation doesn’t make sense. let’s focus on making great products and the market will decide.

respectfully - TRMNL is licensed to sell all over the EU, is less expensive, does a lot more than just calendar, and looks better too. if it didn’t meet these criterion (at minimum) i wouldn’t have built it.

hardware is the same, Developer edition vs Regular is a permission-only change that lets you build custom plugins and a few other things.

brief post here outlining more of the benefits: https://usetrmnl.com/blog/developer-edition

need to update docs too, thanks for the call out. we were writing docs before this piece was ironed out.

i imagine we aren't at your cohort yet but email team@usetrmnl.com and we'll get yours out today, regardless. tiny thank you for the shout here!

appreciate your support!

we're adding more docs on running your own server soon, which will include 1-click deploy starter projects that Just Work.

if you think about it, we are incentivized to do this. no subscription fees means the more you ping our server, the lower our margin. but for now we're wrapping up fulfilling all pre-orders, scaling, etc typical new product issues.

even without BYOS (bring your own server) docs however, it's already possible to point TRMNL to your own stack if you 1) fork our OSS firmware + b) have some experience with e-ink.

ah really?? feel free to email us (team@usetrmnl.com). we've been granted a bunch of EC licenses lately but maybe missed a few country check boxes on our store.

we crowdfunded one this summer and now we ship same-day. :) https://usetrmnl.com

curious what your use case is without a battery. currently you could keep it plugged in, are you wnting NFC-powered etc?

great catch, thank you! will do

too cool, thanks so much. assembling + shipping your device myself in a few minutes.

this is not for reading ebooks, because the screen refreshes based on a time-based interval (configurable by you).

our intent is to help you stay informed on stuff without needing a bunch of open browser tabs, push notifications, etc.

for your family cal, check out TRMNL. can go on a fridge w/ magnets: https://usetrmnl.com

(disclaimer, i'm the founder)

hackable indeed :) https://docs.usetrmnl.com

no longer a Kickstarter btw, shipping same-day now (see homepage)

thanks dude! i’m also a fan of Guzey.

i should have just written this in the post.

thanks for sharing, i just got an alert (F5Bot) for my name.

i still stand by what i wrote here 5 years ago, however i’ll add that the Renaissance Man maker can mitigate their analysis paralysis by, say, picking different days of the week for each aspect of their job. so writing code M/W, marketing Tu, support Th/Fr, and so on.

hi folks. this app is actually a few years old, but i recently bought it and made a bunch of improvements.

for open source projects it's 100% free forever, with all features included.

FWIW we're an official app on the GitHub marketplace, and we have NO access to your code if you wanna try it.

they obviously didn’t use MergeFreeze.com, shame

great post title, didn't deliver.