8,100 of You Bought This Because of Me. I Owed You a Follow-Up.
Snazzy Labs • 193.1K views • 23h ago
Description
Last year I took a look at an open-source e-ink dashboard. This year, TRMNL has an improved version. Have they held up their end of the bargain?
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The TRMNL X is a 10.3-inch e-ink dashboard with 16-level grayscale, 227 PPI, IP65 water resistance, dual ESP32 microcontrollers, 5 GHz Wi-Fi, and up to 12,000 mAh of battery for six months between charges—all for $219 with no subscription fees. One year after the original TRMNL review, every promise has shipped: open-source firmware, bring-your-own-device support for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Kobo, Raspberry Pi, and Seeed Studio DIY kits, plus fully self-hosted servers in PHP, Node, Python, Ruby, and Elixir through the Terminus project. The community has exploded to over 850 free plugins and recipes funded by a Creator Fund that pays developers real money based on installs and API impressions. TRMNL also hacked 2-bit grayscale out of 1-bit e-paper hardware, shipped zero-flicker refresh, removed front branding with Tailor, and published an Unbrickable Pledge promising to open-source everything if the company folds. The TRMNL X features a 4:3 aspect ratio, magnetic pogo pin charging, modular puck connector for future PoE and sensor accessories, gesture touch controls, and OTG power bank mode—making it the e-ink display the original should have been.