Building a Real-Time HN Display for $15

(medium.com)

34 points | by kylegalbraith 3 days ago

9 comments

  • rcarmo 1 hour ago
    I love this because it uses UDP _and_ a CYD (Cheap Yellow Display, which is what we hardware nerds have taken to calling these). I have two or three of these around, one as a 3D printer remote, another as a pseudo logic analyzer, and a caseless one that I use as a Micro Python sandbox.

    I've been using UDP to send CPU stats for my machines for ages (https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-cluster/blob/master/tools/se... is a good example), and in modern networks it has become very much reliable (99.99% so on a LAN). Keeping an eye out for UDP on an ESP32 and running Wireguard might be a little power intensive to ever get this running on battery even if it had an e-paper display, though.

  • nottorp 33 minutes ago
    It's a great fun project but...

    There isn't much of a difference between this and having all notifications enabled.

    Yes it's a separate screen but you'll put it where you can see it while working or there is no point in it. And then it will distract you.

  • augusteo 3 hours ago
    Nice project. The $15 price point is genuinely impressive for something like this.

    I've been curious about e-ink displays for a while but haven't taken the plunge. What's the refresh rate like in practice? And does it actually help you notice interesting posts you'd otherwise miss, or is it more of a fun desk decoration?

    • mlhpdx 3 hours ago
      The refresh rate must be something like 20fps when scrolling the text of long posts. I’m not sure and haven’t measured.

      While I’m working I glance at it from time to time and get a sense of the wide breadth of conversations going on at any moment.

  • MrBuddyCasino 10 minutes ago
    Great project!

    There is another neat board that I like, smaller but looks nicer, the "ESP32-C6 1.47Inch LCD Screen" for just ten bucks: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005008465501661.html

  • cyode 3 hours ago
    Satisfying to see all the payload request and response sizes in bytes not kb.

    Q: the display just starts at 0 and increments comment id by 1 every 10 seconds. Has the device caught up to latest? If you power cycle it, do you have to run through all historical comments?

    • mlhpdx 3 hours ago
      The zero is just a magic number to indicate grab the newest. So it’s just showing the most recent comments.
  • lormayna 2 hours ago
    Why not using MQTT? A Lambda that fetch new comments from HN, parse them into Markdown and push into MQTT; the ESP only needs to subscribes a topic on MQTT and render the messages.
  • hyperbolablabla 1 hour ago
    This is awesome. I've been meaning to check out WireGuard for some time, and this project has been inspiring for me. Thanks!
  • szundi 1 hour ago
    [dead]