Dory - An E-Ink Door Sign

[hobnail]

Finally got an update from the Dory folks. I can't remember if I sent a deposit or the full price. No firm dates but at least I know they're still alive.

This is a brief update on the Dory progress and expected time of delivery. First of all; a huge «Thank you!» to everyone who have preordered Dory. The sign seems to have a wide appeal and we’re getting great feedback when previewing the prototypes. The digital paper display is truly a subtle piece of everyday magic.

As for deliveries, the target was initially set to late summer (august). Unfortunately because of both the global component situation and some added development time, the first batch will see some delay. We are confident it will be a relatively short one, and are working towards delivering all preorders in Q4 this year. We apologize for the situation and are working as fast as we can to get Dory out to you.

Some quick notes
• Everyone who have preordered Dory will get one year free access to the premium version of the app (with a growing library of fonts and illustrations).
• We are attending «Oslo Innovation Week 2022» in late September for a presentation and display of pre-production Dory signs. The event is free and both physical and online. Information and registration here: https://bit.ly/3HReyN7

Also; if you have any questions, comments or suggestions for future functionality, please drop us a mail. Thanks again and have a wonderful summer!

[hobnail]

Another update.

I hope you are doing well, and thanks again for your pre-order of Dory and a swappable frame.

Unfortunately we have been too optimistic on the timeframe again. During testing we discovered the need to switch battery type which have caused some additional development work. Our goal is to be finished with all of our development changes before Christmas. Our next step is certification and then on to production. This will take some months though, and to avoid sending out another email like this, we have updated the website with a Q2 2023 release date.

As a token of our appreciation for your patience you will receive the swappable frame you have ordered for free. This will be done by a partial refund after the main charge has been processed (there is no further actions required on your part for now).

We’re truly sorry for the delay, and are doing our very best to make the wait worthwhile.

All the best,

Thomas Ramberg
Founder & Designer
dorysign.com

[hobnail]

I got an invoice and just paid for it. I'm curious to see how the software works for making its images.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by hobnail

I got an invoice and just paid for it.

Wow, this saga is sure dragging on.

For software you could use Gimp or Photoshop or whatever.

I like to use something a bit lower tech for simple graphic stuff. I just write SVG by hand and view it in a browser or wherever. You can use InkScape in command line to turn it into a PNG graphic, which I presume that this thing can display. The advantage of this approach is that you can easily change text content without mousing around and possibly moving something.

[Quoth]

I've a nice cheap LED optionally animated badge that works well as a door sign. Runs on battery or via USB power.
Scrolling text on eink would run the battery flat quickly and ghost horribly.

Or you can use the "screen saver"/sleep screen on an old ereader, or use an old tablet (with USB supply).

Alternatively buy supermaket eink labels, which are badge size to A5 and larger.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Renate

Wow, this saga is sure dragging on.

For software you could use Gimp or Photoshop or whatever.

I like to use something a bit lower tech for simple graphic stuff. I just write SVG by hand and view it in a browser or wherever. You can use InkScape in command line to turn it into a PNG graphic, which I presume that this thing can display. The advantage of this approach is that you can easily change text content without mousing around and possibly moving something.

Yes to all of that. For graphics fiddling I use Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. I'm more curious about what sort of features its phone app has. Maybe can I use it as a picture frame and update its picture every N minutes. Or maybe send it the weather. I'm currently working on writing a web app that displays the temperature from zigbee and 433Mhz sensors, running on a Pi with Micronaut, MQTT, and Prometheus. The last several years I kept looking for an epaper picture frame, and even thought of making one but it's too much of a hill that I want to climb.

When I said "I'm curious to see how the software works for making its images." I meant the images that get sent to it, how dynamic they can be; weather, time, etc. I'm assuming that a full screen image is what's sent and it can't update part of the screen, but who knows.

[Renate]

I do a mixed approach because I couldn't make up my mind. Since I run my status display on an Android I use a simple app where I can transmit text fields by IDs. On the other hand I compose the weather panel on the Raspberry Pi using gd and send it over as a PNG twice a day.