This kind of "tinkering stuff" makes me want to buy it just because. Of course, once I have it, it will end up inside the drawer collecting dust along with my RPi, ESP32, etc...
I'm trying to channel my tinkering drive into software projects. Somehow these usually to get at least to the "hello world" level. Also, when left unfinished, they don't occupy the precious 3D space around me.
Also I need to sell an oscilloscope and a bench power supply :)
Well, if you don't buy it, then you won't build anything for sure. If you have a drawer full of little components, the time may come to actually use it.
My Raspberry Pis have also gathered quite a lot of dust during the years but they're pretty nice to have around. I needed to start hosting a web service and instead of buying a VPS to run it on, I just dusted off the old Raspberry Pi 2 and set up my service there.
In a neat package/form factor and software. And for 2$. I don’t see a reason why you’d buy the components separate, it’ll probably cost you way more time and money. Or am I missing the point of your comment?
I recently researched USB connected information displays but I am interested in e-Ink. I want
- USB power + data
- Open interface so I can drive it from my own software on the host (but not like a traditional monitor, I imagine more uploading pre-rendered bitmaps)
- Image retention when powered off
- High resolution paper like appearance
- Between A5 and A4 in size
- At least black, red and yellow as colors
- Buttons or a way to connect buttons would be a bonus
Why is that expensive ? I’m genuinely asking. Considering the time / labor / troubleshooting etc to put something like this together yourself , plus cost of materials ?
In my mind , the labor rate for a professional is a minimum of 1.00 per minute. This package would be essentially one hour of billable time at the (lowest) rate a professional would bill themselves out at.
Presuming it’s FLO or at least some kind of simple AT command set and meets all the other requirements, I’m really struggling to understand how it’s expensive ?
I mean , sure if you need 10k of them or something.
Color is the hardest thing on your list. I think something that meets most other requirements is the Inkplate 10, which I’ve been using as an apartment status display for a few years now. It’s ESP32 based and I have it grabbing an image from Home Assistant every minute, which it works great for. Black and white only though.
So a few years ago I hacked up this sort of thing.
I bought a generic epaper display from aliexpress, a 5.8 inch 648x480 one that could do white/black/red with an SPI interface, then I wired that to an RP2040 board, then wrote a bit of circuitpython firmware for that which could receive commands over USB and draw stuff on the display.
I got as far as being able to send images to it, and writing a little host program on my PC that would do a partial screen update on a clock display and CPU/GPU temperatures once a minute, and draw a Mandelbrot set in the remaining space, with a full screen refresh every 15 minutes because it needed it, and a several minute “exercise” routine that would take every pixel from white to black to red and back to white at midnight, to improve screen appearance longer term.
And then I got bored/annoyed with it as the refresh was so slow (~30s for a red update) and the rp2040 needed me to manually press its reset button after every windows boot or the usb device wasn’t recognised. I thought about rewriting the firmware in C in case it was circuitpython that was flakey … but lost the impetus.
For some reason, nothing says "future" to me more than having tiny screens embedded where they're not absolutely needed.
When I grew up in the 90s and 00s, screens were definitely the most expensive part of any system they belonged to. And any gadget that came with its own screen attached to it was regarded as a delicacy only for the elite.
Living long enough to see "disposable" screens cheaper than literal candy getting attached everywhere makes me happy.
Can't wait to see Gemini-2.5 Pro-level LLMs embedded inside single post-it notes and thrown away like it's no big deal.
... I don't get why folks would want to use such ram sticks...
That said, I am very appreciative of my 'inline USB-C power draw monitor' from a standpoint of understanding what kind of draw a given device has (up to it's limit ofc)
At some point your thumbs wouldn't activate the pads so you had to use your thumbnails and then it was just a matter of time before the tester strip quit working.
Yeah, I hope they put displays on more things. The trends are weird though, since some things that used to have displays no longer have them; you have to use the app on your phone instead...
I wonder if the previous generation felt that way about the little unlit LCDs that used to be in everything (although, I bet they were more than $2 adjusted for inflation).
My first "job" between school and university was to assemble a bunch of keyboards for banking terminals. They used configurable key caps in that a printed sheet was snapped under a transparent keycap cover. I suppose I must have been working on a short production run for a small bank or a trial project, that didn't merit screen printing the keys.
As I worked through countless of those keyboards I mused that what it needed was a little screen on each keycap, so I could just do my job using software.
I want them in arcade buttons to show the mapping for the currently playing emulator / game. You can get circular 0.71 inch LCD screens for under $1.50 (160x160) - which will fit all sizes of arcade buttons, but for some reason no one built this yet... :)
There is a similar device from lilygo which has an ESP32S3 plus also a SDCard slot all in one USB stick. It is available all over Aliexpress for around $10.
You do have to code it yourself if you want to display information on it. However it has all the goodies of the ESP32S3 which is a very powerful MCU with wifi and bluetooth.
For fun I ported my railway station display [2] firmware which also runs on a ESP32S3 to it [3]. Cool little gadget.
Crypto hardware wallets have had little screens on them for ages now, for this same reason. Rather than trusting the app to tell you the truth about the tx it's presenting your key to sign, your key shows you the tx hash / amount to be transferred / etc, and asks you to make sure the details match before approving.
I think the paranoia stems from the HID inserting winflag+r, powershell curl https... which installs keylogging software. It can do that after a 10 minute or so countdown timer so it might not seem immediately obvious, or might seem like part of a auto-update with powershell postinstall.
> As for inserting keystrokes, that will be obvious if it enumerates as a keyboard.
This is true, but this also doesn't need to happen at insertion time. An HID keyboard can show up, say, 3 hours after you plug it in.
I miss grsecurity's patch set so much. It had an option to defeat this (deny all USB device enumeration post-boot, i.e. after the kernel executes init).
One thing I would like is a small portable hdmi display to use with my headless servers when they fail to boot. Even better would show screen over network.
I used one of these to make a teleprompter-style videoconference setup at home during the pandemic, so I could make eye contact with other meeting participants.
I scavenged an LCD screen from an old laptop and put it in a cheap case from AliExpress. It has a small driver board and a steel case. I use it as a small/portable TV. But it has USB-C for input and power, and HDMI input. It’s just about the size of an iPad and very nice.
I think that would work very well in a headless/data center scenario.
At a hacker conference in the early 2000s, I saw a maybe 5" cash register CRT screen on a tower server case. That was cool.
It inspired me much later to buy a 7" LCD for the same purpose. You can find them as Raspberry Pi accessories. Some of them have HDMI input, most use USB for power, and they are cheap - about 50€. The downside is that they tend to be almost bare circuit boards with a bit of plexiglass framing + stand.
There are also "DVD watching screens" for car headrests, which are more sturdy with a thick case. The downside there is that power supply (12, 1A or so) is more of a hassle, and good luck finding one without overscan. It's not in the specs if they have it or if it can be disabled.
Oh this reminds me, in 2008 I built a PC case where the (normally clear acrylic) side of the computer was a backlit LCD monitor, and it could remain working and pivot outward to access inside the PC.
Its for my closet so I wanted smaller - like < 10 inch. You inspired me to look again and you're right they're available in this size. thanks. Still would like a network solution as well btw. :)
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It’s a strange thing but there’s a direct line from creative desire to buying then not doing.
This is why I have so much electronics junk it’s all projects that I “completed” when I hit the buy button on Aliexpress.
Also I need to sell an oscilloscope and a bench power supply :)
- USB power + data
- Open interface so I can drive it from my own software on the host (but not like a traditional monitor, I imagine more uploading pre-rendered bitmaps)
- Image retention when powered off
- High resolution paper like appearance
- Between A5 and A4 in size
- At least black, red and yellow as colors
- Buttons or a way to connect buttons would be a bonus
If anyone has a tip, I'd be grateful.
Very expensive.
For $59 you can get M5PaperS3 ESP32S3 Development Kit (960x540, 4.7" eInk Display, 235 ppi)
https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5papers3-esp32s3-developm...
Or you can get:
https://lilygo.cc/products/t5-e-paper-s3-pro
But these have 4.7 inch display.
You can probably hack and repurpose old e-readers if you can be bothered with the technical pain.
In my mind , the labor rate for a professional is a minimum of 1.00 per minute. This package would be essentially one hour of billable time at the (lowest) rate a professional would bill themselves out at.
Presuming it’s FLO or at least some kind of simple AT command set and meets all the other requirements, I’m really struggling to understand how it’s expensive ?
I mean , sure if you need 10k of them or something.
Are people really this price sensitive ?
Deleted Comment
https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/09/06/reterminal-e1001-e10...
I bought a generic epaper display from aliexpress, a 5.8 inch 648x480 one that could do white/black/red with an SPI interface, then I wired that to an RP2040 board, then wrote a bit of circuitpython firmware for that which could receive commands over USB and draw stuff on the display.
I got as far as being able to send images to it, and writing a little host program on my PC that would do a partial screen update on a clock display and CPU/GPU temperatures once a minute, and draw a Mandelbrot set in the remaining space, with a full screen refresh every 15 minutes because it needed it, and a several minute “exercise” routine that would take every pixel from white to black to red and back to white at midnight, to improve screen appearance longer term.
And then I got bored/annoyed with it as the refresh was so slow (~30s for a red update) and the rp2040 needed me to manually press its reset button after every windows boot or the usb device wasn’t recognised. I thought about rewriting the firmware in C in case it was circuitpython that was flakey … but lost the impetus.
Spectra color so high res and beautiful with built in esp32.
And yet it still seems out of reach beyond going with a full hdmi eink display.
The closest I have found is the M5Stack 4.7” eink display with built in esp32 and lipo battery.
Deleted Comment
When I grew up in the 90s and 00s, screens were definitely the most expensive part of any system they belonged to. And any gadget that came with its own screen attached to it was regarded as a delicacy only for the elite.
Living long enough to see "disposable" screens cheaper than literal candy getting attached everywhere makes me happy.
Can't wait to see Gemini-2.5 Pro-level LLMs embedded inside single post-it notes and thrown away like it's no big deal.
Like this?
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/new-ddr5-modu...
Maybe also show the drive label and something about the partition table, although that requires inspecting the storage contents.
I wouldn't pay much more for that, though, and I don't know how many people would pay any premium at all.
That said, I am very appreciative of my 'inline USB-C power draw monitor' from a standpoint of understanding what kind of draw a given device has (up to it's limit ofc)
Imagine AA batteries with little LCD screens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsA3X40nz9w
https://youtu.be/6wBrOV2FJM8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SideShow
I remember working on the host software for a thing similar to the display we're discussing around ... 2012.
It never went into manufacturing though. Some combination of Win 7 dropping sideshow and ... some widget feature we also mirrored.
As I worked through countless of those keyboards I mused that what it needed was a little screen on each keycap, so I could just do my job using software.
This was in 1982. Seems like we're nearly there.
The most impressive was the Optimus Maximus someone else mentioned in a comment.
Think this was $1200. Honestly don’t think I would spend any extra money on dynamic keys- I never look at my keyboard.
Yo, dawg:
https://epomaker.com/products/epomaker-rt82
Its menu is impossible to navigate.
Same for my office phone.
You do have to code it yourself if you want to display information on it. However it has all the goodies of the ESP32S3 which is a very powerful MCU with wifi and bluetooth.
For fun I ported my railway station display [2] firmware which also runs on a ESP32S3 to it [3]. Cool little gadget.
[1] https://lilygo.cc/products/t-dongle-s3
[2] https://www.stationdisplay.com/
[2] https://imgur.com/a/yXjK3Ge
Dead Comment
Malicious USB devices are fairly common, and this certainly has the 'right' form factor.
There's a reason 'do not plug in a USB drive you have found in the parking lot' is reiterated in every corp security training.
As for inserting keystrokes, that will be obvious if it enumerates as a keyboard.
You should turn down your paranoia a little more.
This is true, but this also doesn't need to happen at insertion time. An HID keyboard can show up, say, 3 hours after you plug it in.
I miss grsecurity's patch set so much. It had an option to defeat this (deny all USB device enumeration post-boot, i.e. after the kernel executes init).
While I can try and conjecture how those might work, that's not really in my lane.
https://youtu.be/LC3INaZVqFA?si=2BV5N3_7TtWPRlUj
It even has USB power and speakers.
I used one of these to make a teleprompter-style videoconference setup at home during the pandemic, so I could make eye contact with other meeting participants.
I think that would work very well in a headless/data center scenario.
https://www.peakdo.com/PeakDo-Ultra-thin-light-7-inch-Multip...
I actually used it again recently while setting up a new home server, got me as far as SSH access.
It wasn't super cheap, but not that expensive either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41138701#41140193
It inspired me much later to buy a 7" LCD for the same purpose. You can find them as Raspberry Pi accessories. Some of them have HDMI input, most use USB for power, and they are cheap - about 50€. The downside is that they tend to be almost bare circuit boards with a bit of plexiglass framing + stand.
There are also "DVD watching screens" for car headrests, which are more sturdy with a thick case. The downside there is that power supply (12, 1A or so) is more of a hassle, and good luck finding one without overscan. It's not in the specs if they have it or if it can be disabled.