Building a Real-Time HN Display for $15

(medium.com)

26 points | by kylegalbraith 3 days ago

6 comments

  • hyperbolablabla 25 minutes ago
    This is awesome. I've been meaning to check out WireGuard for some time, and this project has been inspiring for me. Thanks!
    • lormayna 36 minutes 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.
      • augusteo 2 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 2 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.

        • cyode 2 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 1 hour ago
            The zero is just a magic number to indicate grab the newest. So it’s just showing the most recent comments.
          • szundi 23 minutes ago
            [dead]