TRMNL

A few months ago I bought one of the TRMNL e-ink displays ↗, and I think it’s really cool. TRMNL is a small battery powered e-ink display with several free plugins, as well as a developer platform for you to build your own plugins ↗. The 7.5” e-ink display makes it extremely power efficient and really crisp and clear to see. It connects to wifi to allow you to modify settings or to update / refresh the data for any dashboards that you choose to use.

I’ve been experimenting with several different plugins and information. At the moment, the most useful dashboard I have set up has the weather on the left half, and Google Calendar on the right half, which connects to our shared family calendar. It’s very light weight, which made it easy to hang on the kitchen wall using just a command strip with the picture frame hanger hook on it, making it easy to take down and charge when needed.

I got the bigger battery option, but I have it refresh the page fairly regularly. It still goes months without needing a recharge. When I need to charge it, there is a USB-C plug to plug it in and charge.

For me this is the perfect device for me to play with. You could absolutely make something like this yourself, though I’m not sure it would be any cheaper… And for some people that would be more fun. TRNML is helping that community too with all of their open source options ↗ allowing you to bring your own hardware, or bring your own server, or both! For me though I don’t particularly enjoy working with the hardware, but love tinkering with the software, so the product itself is great. (They even have guides on turning your old Kobo ↗ or Kindle ↗ reader in to a TRMNL device)

If you want to get one for yourself, I have a referral link that gets you a little discount - https://usetrmnl.com?ref=robby10 ↗ or just use the code robby10 at checkout to get it applied.