SylviaJul 19, 2025

I would like to urge my followers to strongly avoid #TRMNL.

TRMNL calls itself "unbrickable" and Open Source, telling you you can host your own server and that basically everything is fully supported: https://web.archive.org/web/20250718183453/https://docs.usetrmnl.com/go/diy/byos. This is not true. The only thing a local server can do is send images to the device and *proxy from their proprietary server*: https://web.archive.org/web/20250718062040/https://github.com/usetrmnl/byos_hanami/issues/178.

To add insult to injury, TRMNL is trying to refuse me a refund, in gross violation of EU law.

#UseTRMNL #DoNotUseTRMNL

Show threadWren 🐁Jul 19, 2025

@SylvieLorxu interesting, as I'd been curious about doing the same but evidently I misunderstood the "bring your own server" bit as well

Anyway, I wanted color support for a custom device, so I've been writing my own server software that might be exactly what you're looking for ( and will be writing firmware to go with it), might be what you're looking for if you don't mind a little tinkering

Show threadSylviaJul 19, 2025
@Wren I'm definitely interested to hear more! :)
Show threadWren 🐁
@SylvieLorxu Round 1! web side is mostly functional (still needs to produce actual BMPs, not PNGs), and haven't touched microcontroller-side rendering code but I don't expect that to be awful
https://github.com/BasementCat/fruitstand
GitHub - BasementCat/fruitstand

Contribute to BasementCat/fruitstand development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Jul 24, 2025 at 3:21amWeb
Show threadSylviaJul 24, 2025

@Wren Looks like a good start, I started watching the repo :) I'm interested to see where this goes because I am really into the idea of configuring some easy plugins that generate a nice little dashboard. I may end up contributing some plugins at some point, but I don't want to promise (I'm quite overwhelmed with my own Open Source projects).

Definitely would love to be kept up to date though!

Show threadWren 🐁Jul 24, 2025
@SylvieLorxu always open to suggestions and pull requests! It's not very extensible right now, I laid the groundwork but it's definitely not there yet. Long term I do want to make it possible to pretty easily plug in more screens distributed as python packages but I need to think through what that looks like, trying to get the base functionality I need in place first
Show threadSamantaz FoxJul 25, 2025
@Wren @SylvieLorxu for the mcu side, you could start with Adafruit's CircuitPython. It already has drivers for a ton of displays and can load images (jpeg and bmp, maybe png too?)