Show HN: Tesserae, self-hosted dashboards for the e-paper panel you own
Tesserae is a self-hosted, open-source dashboard system for driving various e-paper displays (Pimoroni, Waveshare, Seeed, Kindle, TRMNL) without requiring a cloud account. It uses an HTML-based widget system captured via Playwright, with panel-specific dithering and renderers. Dashboards are served to clients via REST or MQTT, with a built-in rotation system, and all components are plugin-based.
Background
- E-paper (electronic paper) displays are low-power screens that retain an image without constant electricity, like a Kindle e-reader — they're desirable for dashboards because they're readable in sunlight and use minimal power, but unlike Kindles, these are "panels" (just the display, no built-in computer or software).
- Pimoroni Inky Impression and Waveshare are brands of e-paper panels popular in the hobbyist / maker community (Raspberry Pi accessories). Seeed reTerminal and TRMNL are Linux-powered industrial or DIY display devices. "Jailbroken Kindles" are hacked Amazon e-readers running custom software.
- Playwright is a browser automation tool (by Microsoft) used here to render HTML dashboards as images without a physical screen attached ("headlessly"). Dithering converts smooth images into the limited color palettes e-paper supports.
- AGPL-3.0 is a strong open-source license requiring that anyone who modifies and hosts the software must also release their changes. Home Assistant is a popular open-source home automation platform.