On: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

[daredoes]

Give it Home Assistant integration, or at least MQTT control, and I'd buy at least one

[tadfisher → daredoes]

> You can configure this beautiful the e-paper display to poll any HTTP endpoint for an image. Just paste the URL into the iOS or Android app. The image will then be displayed on the screen. And when it changes, the screen updates.

Looks pretty simple to do.

[3np → tadfisher]

I think the idea would be to be support a way to set that HTTP URL via an API, not requiring use of an iOS/Android app?

I imagine this might be a case of documentation and support as supposedly the app is already using the API endpoints we'd like to have.

[konschubert → 3np]

Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean. How would you physically connect to this API without an app and without a backend?

[daredoes → konschubert]

Do you use an ESP32? Could you? You could use ESPHome https://esphome.io/

Ideally the device can create a wifi hotspot when it isn't setup that I can join and setup all the needed config settings. WLED does this as well https://kno.wled.ge/

[3np → konschubert]

I'm not saying necessarily without a backend. Just being able to "self-service" via API (ie if everything I can do via the app, I can do via curl, it could be interesting).

Self-hostable backend (benefits: privacy; less trust required; I know it'll still be usable even if you shut down your backend in 5y) would of course be great but a separate thing to the above.