Having a passive, energy-efficient display on a desk seems like a good idea, until you have one in your hands and realise that they often take some skill to program and design dashboards! It was very much the case with Seeed Studio e-paper, where I spent about a week designing a custom dashboard. What if I told you you can awesome dashboards without writing a single line of code?
Unless you really want to code it yourself, as TRMNL offers that flexibility too!
Review Summary
TRMNL offers dashboards without coding experience. Easy to set up, plugin-based ecosystem of dashboards available for TRMNL OG and your own (compatible) devices! From calendars and organisers to most whacky community-made plugins – right just for you!
Pros:
- Great plugin ecosystem
- Easy-to-use dashboard
- great battery
Cons:
- BOYD license is pricey
5/5
You can get 10% off yours now (notenoughtech10) at: TRMNL from $109.
TRMNL
The first time I heard of TRMNL was during the review of the Seeed Studio e-paper display. While trying to figure out how to code it and browsing documentation, I stumbled upon release notes stating that it will also support TRMNL firmware. A couple of weeks later, I got an email from the TRMNL team asking me to take a look at their hardware and rich ecosystem of plug-ins that enable building a dashboard without the “know-how”. The idea of having a beautiful frame to display the information I want without a week of coding appealed to me. It will likely appeal to others.
A couple of days later, TRMNL (OG) in black arrived! Starting from £105.00 TRMNL (OG) offers a 7.5″ e-paper display with (800×480), but if you are patient and able to spend more (from £165), a bigger, 10.3″ version with a high-density (1872×1404) resolution is coming soon!
My order got bumped up with the Clarity Kit (OG) that includes a better battery, developer account and cleaning accessories. While you don’t need one to enjoy the display, especially if you are planning to run it plugged in, the kit comes in handy if you have bigger plans for your TRMNL device.
Plugins, plugins, and more plugins
It feels fantastic in my hands thanks to a silky ABS case (that’s a finish available only on black frames), a convenient back stand and a small but clean interface at the back. It’s a perfect desk companion, and while you can hang it on a wall, I think you should hold off for a 10.3″ version for that!
TRMNL is managed from a cloud account. A handy web interface (dashboard) that makes it easy to manage all your TRMNL devices. I quickly added mine to see what plugins I could deploy to my device.
The first plugin I configured was the Google Calendar, which I rely on a lot. It took about 3 minutes to find relevant information and configure my calendar to display the info I needed. It’s that simple. TRMNL (OG) lives on my work desk, displaying the calendar and other screens. After all, who doesn’t need an overview of their Strava activities or regular updates on the planes passing above their heads! All in the name of microdistractions to boost productivity at work!
Over the next few days, I discovered that screens can be split into multiple areas, each one displaying information from a selected plugin. That’s handy if the plugin in question only displays a small amount of information (like the number of days until Christmas) without using up the whole screen estate.
Another clever feature of the terminal is to manage the update times separately from page displays. Pages (cached) can be rotated without using power-hungry WiFi, and the information updates at different intervals. This allows frequent page changes (every 5 min) without draining the battery as much.
If you own more than one TRMNL panel (or you made your own: BYOD), you can also mirror the configuration from one panel to another! This saves you a lot of time configuring separate devices, and I can see this being very useful!
BYOD/BYOS/BYO…
I already hinted that you can take advantage of the TRMNL firmware on non-native terminal devices. The firmware support extends to recently released Seeed Studio Xiao 7.5″ e-paper display, as well as the reTerminal E1001 (I believe the E1002 will be supported eventually). If these devices don’t meet your requirements, TRMNL offers guidelines to build your own hardware, to develop plugins, and even to host your own server! Depending on the level of integration with their cloud, that pleasure comes for free (if you choose to host your server) and around £50 if you want TRMNL dashboard support.
That’s awesome, as it makes you 100% in charge of your device and the framework that it uses to operate in. This is an excellent approach to one of the biggest downsides of TRMNL:
Downsides
The no-coding approach using plugins is great from a casual consumer standpoint, but not without flaws. Plugins will never be as flexible as doing something completely custom from scratch, which is ok, but they require constant support. If support fades (especially among community projects) or API changes, plugins become unusable.
It’s not a massive concern for anyone with programming know-how, but if you are just interested in having a functional display on your desk, the information from your favourite plugin will be there as long as TRMNL/community spends time to support it. While I can see the TRMNL incentive in doing so, betting the community made add-ons is riskier.
Final thoughts
TRMNL is both: a device that you can quickly configure and display data on without programming, but also a development playground where designing your own plugins is encouraged, if not welcomed. Turns out, I didn’t need another project, but a simple dashboard for my work desk to distract myself now and then with the information about planes above or my Strava apps. For that, TRMNL is perfect! Let me know your thoughts in this Reddit thread.
🆓📈💵 – See the transparency note for details.
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