The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

Products like these make me realize that a standard e-reader has the perfect general purpose e-ink display. The Kindle for example is about the same size as this but much sleeker, is backlit, multi-tone, has a battery, wifi, bluetooth, all for less than half the price. I wish there were more mainstream jailbreaking projects and alternative operating systems to really unlock their potential.

I bought one of these for my house recently and it’s been great. We wrote custom software for our own info display, straightforward since you just serve images over an HTTP endpoint. I’m sure there are cheaper ways to achieve this result but it’s nice to have a prebuilt package like this. My only complaint is that the custom software requires using a proxy server managed by the device creator which is bad for longevity, hope that changes eventually.

I can’t believe the price on e-Ink displays still. Unbelievable that they’re more expensive than IPS OLED screens of similar size.

I love e-ink displays, and I wish there would be more options out there for creartive use, like this one by Invisible Screen (hello Konschubert, thanks for creating this!)<p>What I&#x27;d love is a large, high-res, perhaps color, e-ink display that I can use either as a second screen, or as an indipendent computer. I read hours every day on an LCD screen, and most of that reading would be much better on an e-ink.

What I&#x27;m wondering is how open the device is for being operated entirely locally. I want to make sure I can still operate it myself so that I don&#x27;t have to generate e-waste when it becomes &quot;obsolete&quot; by the maker.<p>Otherwise the form factor is really good-looking and I&#x27;d put this in my kitchen.

Invisible? Looks very visible in the pictures.<p>E-Ink prices for large displays are still too far high. Not much improvement in the last year. Little watch-sized ones are only a few dollars, though. Ought to be good for something. Auto gauges? Status displays on low-power devices?

From the creator:<p>&quot;It’s not open source and you need the backend for it to work.&quot;<p>They alluded to open sourcing the software&#x2F;API if the business ever goes under, but obviously that&#x27;d not guaranteed.<p>Such a shame, I&#x27;d be willing to pay more for a product that was actually open.

I love eink. It’s so underused, especially in the home setting, where it can be a real asset as a calm technology. I think it could be a good passive screen for young kids as it’s not a traditional “screen” yet can still communicate information.

Have done the same with a rooted kindle... and you can get them for 20$ on the bay. The price really seems a bit high for a novelty item.

Nice job, creator. I was working on starting up something similar, went through 3 prototypes but never finished it :(<p>A few ideas for your consideration:<p>- 7 inch is waaaay too small, should be at least 10&#x2F;11 inch.<p>- Touchscreen is a must. To switch between views, scroll to next&#x2F;previous day&#x2F;week, and even insert&#x2F;update events.<p>- Voice control is really nice to have, eg to read back events for today&#x2F;this week etc. Maybe to wake up so that the screen does not stay on all the time.<p>- Would be cool to have it running off internal power source. I used LCDs which are power-hungry, but with e-paper you are constrained only by the controller which I think is much less draining (voice control would not be an option in this case I think).<p>- Consider offline mode. Yes it does introduce difficulties but allows people to own the data instead of renting it and sharing with others.<p>Again, great job!

The lack of a battery kills this for me. Minimal power usage is one of the benefits of these kinds of displays, so it seems a very strange omission. We have too many cords running along walls as it is, and it makes the placement a lot harder.<p>Neat idea though.

I really want to do this with a pi zero w, but with a larger screen. 7.5” is barely larger than a door placard.

Pictures are deceitful, screen is only 7.5&quot;, fair price I&#x27;m not sure, no details on SDK.

This seems like a fair price. I couldn&#x27;t an Eink display to work with a Pi Zero. It&#x27;s seriously difficult to get working.<p>I don&#x27;t have an exact need for it now, but once I have a project worthwhile I might pick it up.

I&#x27;d buy it if it would display the front page of today&#x27;s paper.<p>Oh, I wish the Kindle would use, as it&#x27;s &quot;off&quot; screen, the last page I was reading.

So only usable with their own app that may disappear with the company in a year? That sound like potential e-waste in a short amount of time.

I bought one of these the last time it was on HN and I’m happy with it.<p>I have been trying to eliminate reasons to use my phone when at home, and have totally stopped picking it up in the morning.<p>The problem then is I can get blindsided not knowing what my schedule is or if I have an early call.<p>So now I have one of these things by my sink and it shows me just the calendar for the current day.

I would pay good money for a tabloid eink reader, so 17x11 inches. Ideally it would fold. A folding pair of 8.5x11 screens designed to work together would fit my use case too. So far as I know, nobody makes such a thing. Ideally it would be color but I’d settle for monochrome.

I bought one of these a few months back. Excellent product, can definitely recommend.<p>Very simple, but very effective.

I purchased one of these after seeing it posted to hn a few weeks ago. Very happy with it. Super easy to setup and just works. Maker has clearly put loads of work into refining the experience.

I was looking for something like this. But the API looks not so good. I always dreamed of something like this that has an API where I can send html to render and completely locally.

&quot;Invisible&quot;? The sickly blue-gray background of the display makes it look like a giant reflective LCD like a cheap clock.

A lot of little projects like this that end up going bust because of the cost of running the business.<p>Still cool that projects like this are launched.

&quot;Screen Size: 7.5 Screen Resolution: 800 x 480&quot;<p>Fine for displaying a day but not a week

I don’t really understand how it is still trendy to pretend that everyone uses Google for email and calendar.<p>I get that the SF crowd was all about it, but if the last few years have taught us anything it is that there’s more to the techie world than VC free money startups.<p>I reckon there are far more people who need this and who might buy this who are using Outlook&#x2F;Office 365 either alone or in some combination than who use Gmail exclusively.<p>And yes, Office 365 has an API. Even Alexa works with it.