Home Assistant Integration for Colour E-Ink Displays | Home Assistant | Page 1

frozen owl Mar 13, 2025, 8:24 PM

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Hi guys, BLOOMIN8 team here—the same folks who brought the Arpobot Smart Shade (yep, the Matter-over-Thread one!). We're launching an exciting new project on the 19th this month: a vivid, paper-like, cord-free, smart colour e-ink frame fully integrated with Home Assistant!

Here's a quick peek at our progress: https://youtube.com/shorts/8DXpTnRMyTU?feature=share

Matter certification takes a long time, especially for startups (a lesson learned from the previous project. We just received the new cert last month), so we're kicking off with Home Assistant integration first this time. So we have the full control of everything and not betting on the BIGs.

We're looking for 3 developers to help us finalize and test our custom HA integration. We'll provide you with:

Be the first to experience the world's first SMART colour eink frame (with all the features combined, for sure we are the first)
Open source code for the custom integration
Full documentation of the RESTful API
Fun

If you already own a Spectra 6 eink display with SPI—perfect! We'll send you our board completely free of charge. If you don't have the display but still want to participate, you can chip in a sample price and join the fun! Drop a comment or DM.

For everyone else interested in the product, join our waitlist to secure the secret reward with a 40% discount.
https://bloomin8.com/product/einkcanvas

Cheers,
Francis

YouTube

BLOOMIN8

Home Assistant & HomeKit

▶ Play video

BLOOMIN8

BLOOMIN8 Eink Canvas - World's First Smart COLOUR E-Ink Frame

Display your images like paper - charge once, last for years. Cord-Free | iOS & Android | Local Home Assistant Integration | In-App Image Generation

tranquil nebula Mar 13, 2025, 8:27 PM

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it looks pretty cool, what is the target price point?

jolly niche Mar 13, 2025, 8:46 PM

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@main oyster You want this.

main oyster Mar 13, 2025, 8:48 PM

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I DOOOOOO @turbid compass might be interested, too!

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This is pretty cool to share here. 🙂

jolly niche Mar 13, 2025, 8:49 PM

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-# And so it begins... SWTrap

turbid compass Mar 13, 2025, 9:03 PM

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That is very cool

frozen owl Mar 13, 2025, 10:03 PM

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tranquil nebula it looks pretty cool, what is the target price point?

Thanks!
We are launching three different sizes. The small 7'', medium 13.3'' and a large 28.5''(this is an amazing display from SHARP, best colour ever seen on eink)
For all VIP reservations, we are offering a 40% discount which will be sent out with Kickstarter Secret Reward links.

quiet rover Mar 13, 2025, 10:32 PM

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Do you guys need a tester? Im a full stack tester. Beta/Functional/e2e/pen/accessibility tester.

jolly niche Mar 13, 2025, 10:34 PM

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The displays might start to write a book though.

quiet rover Mar 13, 2025, 10:37 PM

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jolly niche The displays might start to write a book though.

If that happens on mastodon my washing machine will be jealous.

frozen owl Mar 14, 2025, 7:32 AM

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quiet rover Do you guys need a tester? Im a full stack tester. Beta/Functional/e2e/pen/acces...

Great! For sure we need testers! But the custom integration is not finished though. It still needs a couple of weeks to get it done

turbid compass Mar 14, 2025, 9:46 AM

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frozen owl Thanks! We are launching three different sizes. The small 7'', medium 13.3'' an...

Very cool. Wasn't aware there even was a spectra 28" screen out there.

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Depending on how it holds up for color photography that might be what finally gets me to replace my Meural

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Anyway, I'm not one of the devs so can't help with the integration, but am definitely interested in the project

frozen owl Mar 15, 2025, 9:06 AM

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turbid compass Very cool. Wasn't aware there even was a spectra 28" screen out there.

They look amazing! 131 ppi, near-4k resolution

turbid compass Mar 16, 2025, 9:09 AM

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frozen owl They look amazing! 131 ppi, near-4k resolution

Oh yeah that looks amazing.

hollow horizon Mar 17, 2025, 8:04 PM

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Will it display an HA dashboard? Or is the HA integration just for control?

uneven oriole Mar 21, 2025, 1:18 AM

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Very cool, very interested and I'm a dev too, so me pretty please!

simple stirrup Mar 26, 2025, 4:45 PM

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So, what are you offering for pay for your devs?

high roost Mar 30, 2025, 1:05 PM

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@frozen owl if you want it to display Home Assistant dashboards, I made an add-on that can serve any Home Assistant dashboard as a picture

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Allowing people to use our dashboard builder and custom card technology to make what’s on the screen. Including custom card support.

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https://github.com/balloob/home-assistant-addons/tree/main/puppet

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Around 10s if browser has to be started. Little under a second on subsequent loads. Browser auto closes 30s inactivity.

high roost Mar 30, 2025, 1:48 PM

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What battery and chip do you use to achieve multi year battery and keep a constant connection open for Matter/Rest ?

quiet rover Apr 6, 2025, 4:01 PM

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Yeah. A esp grey panel for home assistant can out today. 6 months battery with 6 hours refresh rate.

hollow horizon Apr 6, 2025, 5:40 PM

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Are you referring to a new product? Have a link?

hot shell Apr 6, 2025, 8:30 PM

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high roost <https://github.com/balloob/home-assistant-addons/tree/main/puppet>

I’m using this successfully with TRNNL. Had to create a custom theme to override the colors as my eInk display only supports black and white. And apart from that I also had to use imagemagick to convert it to a .bmp

high roost Apr 7, 2025, 2:00 AM

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Super cool @hot shell

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Why do you need it to be a bmp. Is that a limitation of TRMNL ?

lilac pumice Apr 7, 2025, 6:23 AM

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high roost Why do you need it to be a bmp. Is that a limitation of TRMNL ?

Trmnl supports only BMP in the firmware.
It also uses a esp32-c3, and there is not enough ram for PNG decoding (at least in ESPHome)

hot shell Apr 7, 2025, 7:03 AM

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They’re working on a PR to also support PNGs I’ve seen (don’t ask me how they’re planning to do it if there is a limitation). Perhaps for their DIY option

high roost Apr 7, 2025, 11:02 AM

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They went for a c3 🤦‍♂️

quiet rover Apr 7, 2025, 2:59 PM

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hollow horizon Are you referring to a new product? Have a link?

https://www.hackster.io/news/seeed-studio-launches-an-espressif-esp32-c3-powered-epaper-smart-display-for-home-assistant-and-more-9be5163ccab6