[n8cpdx]

I don’t really understand how it is still trendy to pretend that everyone uses Google for email and calendar.

I get that the SF crowd was all about it, but if the last few years have taught us anything it is that there’s more to the techie world than VC free money startups.

I reckon there are far more people who need this and who might buy this who are using Outlook/Office 365 either alone or in some combination than who use Gmail exclusively.

And yes, Office 365 has an API. Even Alexa works with it.

[GavinMcG]

I’d imagine the creator uses Google calendar, made it for themself, and then decided others might like to have a pre-built version. “Trendy” probably doesn’t have anything to do with it.

[konschubert]

Creator here. That's exactly what happened.

[MPSimmons]

Hi Creator! Nice looking product!

Is it necessary to have the content proxied through your API server? If the company doesn't work out, it would be a shame to have this device stop working, even though it's fully capable of reaching the internal URL I would be hosting my content on.

Could that be changed?

[konschubert]

Yes, that could be changed, but it's a bit of a hassle to implement with the bluetooth and and storing state on an embedded device. So I haven't implemented it yet and I can't promise if and when it's coming.

If I am not hit by a metaphoric truck, I give my best to make sure not to disappoint my customers. My plan is to keep the backend running for 10 years after I sell the last display.

But of course that's just a plan und I understand that you may not like the odds. That's totally reasonable.

[blagie]

Creator: If you decide to move this to a full-fledged startup, it should:

1) Have a touch screen

2) Integrate with Outlook calendar and multiple Google calendars

3) Integrate with smart home features (e.g. lights, temperature, etc)

4) Integrate with other data sources (e.g. news)

At $150, be open-source and open-hardware (at a lower price point, I'd do without).

I'm looking for something like that.

Until then, neat product!

[stavros]

No offense to you, but this comment sounds like one of those customers that are never going to use your thing, even if you implement all that.

Find the people who want to use a product despite all the lacking features, because the one thing it does is exactly what they need, and build on that.

[blagie]

It depends on how it's implemented. Take a look at:

https://www.home-assistant.io/

They have customizable dashboards. What I'm really looking for is something I can use as a sort of command center in a few places in my house. It allows me to control the things I care about, shows my upcoming schedule, and whatever else is relevant. By my work desk, the #1 thing I care about is upcoming meetings. Other places, I care about other things.

Critically, though, I don't want it to glow. I want it either e-ink or purely reflective LCD.

This is probably a few devices. Ideally, there'd be small / cheap ones with mechanical switches and a tiny screen to replace my light switches, and big ones for my living room, work room, etc.

I think the trick would be to start with something, so one doesn't have an infinite engineering task, and so there are ready frameworks for modularity. Either Home Assistant or dash would be decent starting points, depending on which direction this took.

But yeah, now that I mention it, I have a vision in my head for what I want (which I would buy). Retrokludged features without the same vision would probably not get us there.

So I'll cut this back to what everyone else is saying: Calendar flexibility. This needs to sync with home, work, and other calendars, so at the very least, Outlook.

[stavros]

Yes, but, as you say, reimplementing Home Assistant wouldn't really be that valuable. What you might want is a (very dumb) e-ink display with a touch panel, which can maybe display an image and register touches. Then, that can interface with Home Assistant to make touch panels. That would be much more manageable as a project, and very useful. Bonus points for physical buttons.

I might do this myself, hmm.

[konschubert]

Home assistant is still a dream to come true in terms of where I want to go with the product. And home-assistant.io may be a good starting point. I'll save that link ...

Regarding calendar: You can already connect as many google calendars and as many .ics sources as you want. If you can create an .ics link from outlook that's supported. (At least on iOS, the Android update is still being worked on. Did you know about Jetpack Compose? I didn't...)

Of course, Outlook support would be nice. It's on the roadmap. But as always, I don't want to promise things that haven't happened yet.

[azinman2]

Exactly

[hansoolo]

I could tell you a story of a pi and a touchscreen and just some HTML, CSS and Javascript to make it :)

[blagie]

There isn't a single thing I made more than 15 years ago in my house which:

(a) required an operating system

(b) still works

It all bitrots to hell. For comparison, everything I've made on a PIC, Atmel, ESP, etc. continues working.

FPGAs have a more mixed track record; the devices work, but they're unmaintainable (the dev toolchains require e.g. Windows NT and some activation server which no longer exists).

Things I've made out of wood, metal, and similar materials work too, as do PCBs I designed with analog.

My point is I want a piece of hardware and not a computer.

[samdunham]

I'd wager that far more individuals use GMail and Google calendar and a majority of business users use O365/Outlook. This looks more like a home device than a business device.

[konschubert]

Hi, if you're using outlook, maybe you can use the .ics integration? (It can be configured through iOS for now, Android is coming soon.)

Outlook is on the roadmap. But I felt like supporting .ics was more pressing.

[Aerbil313]

iOS Calendar supports generating .ics too.

[konschubert]

But it's a bit of a hack, no?

[Aerbil313]

No. I messed up with some time ago, as far as i remember, calendar subscription gives you a caldav:// URL (maybe webdav or something I don't remember). This is somewhat a industry standard. Replace caldav with https and you can GET the .ics file of the entire calendar.

[xtagon]

I'm pretty sure both Office 365 and Google Calendar have a way to generate an iCal URL. So you could just implement that, I would think.

[avtolik]

Office 365 has an API, but good luck convincing your organization to approve your app that works with this API.

I tried with 2-2 different companies that I worked with, but to no avail. I just wanted a simple app that syncs some events from the work calendar to my personal one...

[hansoolo]

That's true. I had a touch display for a pi laying around and started a personal dashboard project. Thought about Google calendar to synchronize the calendar between different devices... It was too much of a hassle. I ended up serving my own caldav server on the pi and everyone's device could easily synch the calendar, no matter if PC, iPhone or Android phone. No need for Google

[deadbabe]

I use Google for email and calendar still. Never really found a way to transition off of it. :(

[justusthane]

There are plenty of ways! I can personally whole-heartedly recommend Fastmail if you don't mind paying a bit for your email (and I believe that something as important as email is worth paying for).

There are two aspects that make this easier than most people realize:

- You will theoretically retain your existing Gmail address forever, even if you close your Gmail account. This means you can reactivate it at any time.

- You can use your new email address as the sign-in ID for your existing Google account. This means you can continue to use Google Docs, YouTube, etc and stuff without being reliant on Gmail.

I wrote a short guide a while back here: https://www.justus.ws/tech/how-to-ditch-gmail/

[deadbabe]

Thank you!

[ajb]

For email, it's straightforward but a bit tedious. There are a number of ways to break it into smaller steps. Any approach should include getting your own domain name.