I made a custom TRMNL plugin to tell me whether it’s worth taking the telescope up!
JeeBaiChow @lemmy.world - 1mon
Nice! Which model of eink display is that?
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TheFunkyMonk @lemmy.world - 1mon
It’s the TRMNL. I plan to share my plugin eventually too, but need to develop a few different layouts for different display options before I can submit it, so it’s just a private plugin for now.
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JeeBaiChow @lemmy.world - 1mon
Ah ok. I wasn't aware it was a product - my bad! Looking for a good eink display for a project lol.
11
jqubed @lemmy.world - 1mon
Never heard of it but poking around their website it looks interesting; how do you like it?
9
TheFunkyMonk @lemmy.world - 1mon
I like it a lot! As a software developer that stares at LCD screens all work day, I’m really into e-ink/single-purpose tech outside of work. I found their UI framework docs for custom plugins a bit lacking, but eventually got everything working.
12
prettybunnys - 1mon
trmnl device looks perfect for my use case ( on the wall output of my greenhouse sensor data ), how do you find the plugin writng?
Is the 20$ developer edition upgrade required?
Would love to know your experience
13
TheFunkyMonk @lemmy.world - 1mon
I'm honestly not sure if the developer edition is required to make custom plugins, I got the Clarity Kit upgrade for the battery upgrade, which apparently also includes the developer edition. Probably worth reaching out to them for clarification.
As for my experience, their web UI for making private plugins basically lets you provide an API endpoint for data and an interface to paste in templates (using Liquid templating). So all of my logic is completely outside of the TRMNL system in a custom API I mostly vibe coded and am hosting on a cheap server, which effectively gave me infinite freedom to build whatever I wanted and just have TRMNL handle the UI. So you could really use whatever language you prefer and just return JSON to the TRMNL. Since the logic was decoupled, I also threw together a web version using the same API.
Did you design the interface? I like it a lot; it's really elegant
4
TheFunkyMonk @lemmy.world - 4w
Thanks! TRMNL has a UI framework, and I wanted it to look like it fit within the ecosystem, so I just looked at a bunch of plugins and imitated what I thought would work with the data I wanted to show. Mine's probably the most similar to the Weather plugin.
TheFunkyMonk in astronomy
I made a custom TRMNL plugin to tell me whether it’s worth taking the telescope up!
Nice! Which model of eink display is that?
It’s the TRMNL. I plan to share my plugin eventually too, but need to develop a few different layouts for different display options before I can submit it, so it’s just a private plugin for now.
Ah ok. I wasn't aware it was a product - my bad! Looking for a good eink display for a project lol.
Never heard of it but poking around their website it looks interesting; how do you like it?
I like it a lot! As a software developer that stares at LCD screens all work day, I’m really into e-ink/single-purpose tech outside of work. I found their UI framework docs for custom plugins a bit lacking, but eventually got everything working.
trmnl device looks perfect for my use case ( on the wall output of my greenhouse sensor data ), how do you find the plugin writng?
Is the 20$ developer edition upgrade required?
Would love to know your experience
I'm honestly not sure if the developer edition is required to make custom plugins, I got the Clarity Kit upgrade for the battery upgrade, which apparently also includes the developer edition. Probably worth reaching out to them for clarification.
As for my experience, their web UI for making private plugins basically lets you provide an API endpoint for data and an interface to paste in templates (using Liquid templating). So all of my logic is completely outside of the TRMNL system in a custom API I mostly vibe coded and am hosting on a cheap server, which effectively gave me infinite freedom to build whatever I wanted and just have TRMNL handle the UI. So you could really use whatever language you prefer and just return JSON to the TRMNL. Since the logic was decoupled, I also threw together a web version using the same API.
Here's the API code if you're curious!
My person, that is amazing ! Well done
Nice
Did you design the interface? I like it a lot; it's really elegant
Thanks! TRMNL has a UI framework, and I wanted it to look like it fit within the ecosystem, so I just looked at a bunch of plugins and imitated what I thought would work with the data I wanted to show. Mine's probably the most similar to the Weather plugin.
What a great idea!
This works something like that: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/
Nice! I used the Astronomy API for planet positions and the 7Timer API for astronomy weather conditions, I wonder if they’re using those as well.
TimeAndDate has a lotta money. Really cool that you rolled your own appliance!
This looks great!