A kitchen display that asks for nothing

Nick Indge bought a forty-eight dollar DIY e-paper display kit from Seeed Studio, developed with TRMNL, that shows whatever information he wants without subscriptions or slow interfaces.

Why he ditched his old smart display

Indge previously modded a Lenovo ThinkSmart View he bought for around thirty dollars on eBay, but its limited RAM made it sluggish. The e-paper display offered always-on information with no wrestling required.

Not trying to compete with Apple

The Seeed Studio kit and TRMNL ecosystem are the antithesis of Apple's recently announced HomeView, a two hundred ninety-nine dollar home hub designed to get families interacting with it.

Designed to be entirely passive

The e-paper display stays on, cycling through potentially useful information on your desk or in your kitchen, from calendars and weather to news and ideas thought up by community members.

How the partnership came together

TRMNL was founded by indie hardware enthusiast Ryan Kulp in twenty twenty-three.In March twenty twenty-five, Seeed teased an XIAO e-paper panel; a community member asked if it could run TRMNL firmware, bringing the teams together.

Official partnership announced

In July twenty twenty-five, Seeed Studio and TRMNL announced an official partnership to develop a DIY e-paper kit combining Seeed's hardware designs with TRMNL's firmware packages.

Three ways to set it up

The kit offers three paths: TRMNL's cloud service with a fourteen-day free trial then fifty dollar license fee, Seeed's free SenseCraft platform, or running your own server with Terminus.

The TRMNL cloud option

TRMNL's BYOD ecosystem lets you use trmnl.com as your information server. The fourteen-day trial requires one dollar upfront, then a one-time fifty dollar license fee to keep your device connected.

TRMNL's plugin marketplace

The marketplace contains standard fare like Google Calendar, weather, and stock quotes, alongside niche offerings like rotating factoids about the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition in Star Trek.

Seeed's free SenseCraft platform

Seeed offers SenseCraft, a similar marketplace without license fees. The browser-based flashing tool promises to flash official firmware with no coding or terminal, just clicks.

The privacy trade-off with Seeed

SenseCraft is free but Seeed is based in China and operates under its own privacy policy. The tradeoff for free access is accepting Seeed's terms rather than TRMNL's.

Running your own server

If you have a server running, you can point the device at it using Terminus, TRMNL's open source container. The BYOS setup provides privacy-first functionality by letting you own the stack and the data.

What comes in the box

The kit includes an XIAO ePaper Display Dev Board with XIAO ESP32-S3 Plus, a seven point five-inch monochrome ePaper display at eight hundred by four hundred eighty pixels, FPC cable, connector, two thousand mAh battery…

Assembly challenges with the case

Two official case designs are available for three D printing: a triangular prism and an L-shaped case. Indge chose the L-shape but found assembly more involved than expected, requiring cable routing work.

The ribbon cable proved most stressful

The FPC ribbon cable is extremely fragile and can break if forced to bend the wrong way.

Self-hosting requires technical comfort

Getting Terminus running on your server isn't as simple as downloading a host service.TRMNL provides a guide, but if you're not comfortable with docker compose files, the fifty dollar license fee may be worth it.

Battery life depends on refresh rate

Seeed Studio says the display can run for three months on battery power, assuming updates once every six hours. Indge prefers refreshes closer to once an hour, which cuts battery life significantly.

The kit shines showing useful information

Once deployed in his kitchen, Indge found the seven point five-inch display large enough to read from across the room.His son loved the lunar cycles display, saying now he'll always know what moon they have.

“now I'll always know what moon we have”

Not meant to compete with smart assistants

The TRMNL and Seeed collaboration produced a true DIY device that will never compete with Amazon or Apple home assistants. Not everyone wants a digital butler; sometimes you just want relevant information displayed centrally.