HACKER Q&A
📣 andrewstuart

Fast/cheap epaper badge for real time speech to text with deaf friends?


I'd like an epaper badge I can clip on my lapel so deaf friends can read what I'm saying without having to look away too much.

This does the same thing: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Nordic-news/2022/05/Satellite-Displays-Badger-smart-badge but I'd like to make my own for cost reasons but also I'd like it to be as close to real time as possible. Latency matters when you are trying to have a conversation - if its close to real time then the conversation can start to flow.

Cost matters. I don't mind if I have to home cook it with a bit of programming.

I'm guessing maybe an esp32 epaper device that transmits via network to a local server running a fast implementation of OpenAI whisper.

Has anyone done or seen anything like this? Care to share experiences?

  👤 mharig Accepted Answer ✓
Maybe epaper price tags are suitable.

Not a badge, but maybe a start:

https://hackaday.com/2022/08/05/e-paper-price-tags-combined-...

Edit: more resources

https://hackaday.com/2022/08/04/liberated-e-ink-shelf-labels...

https://hackaday.com/2019/02/25/e-ink-price-tags-fall-off-st...

👤 jsheard
If latency is critical then you might want to consider a memory-in-pixel display instead of e-ink. They don't go down to zero-power on static content like e-ink does, but they are very efficient, very quick to update and don't suffer from ghosting like e-ink does.

If you've seen the Pebble smartwatches, Garmins non-OLED watches or the Playdate console, those are all using MIP displays.

👤 riehwvfbk
It's cool to build something, but for practicality how's this going to beat texting each other on the phones you already have in your pockets?

Second, unless you have speech recognition, you will still have to look away to type a new message.

Third, this won't be real eye contact (because your friend will be looking at the badge, not at your face), but rather the fake eye contact us neurodivergent people have to use to mask and make neurotypicals feel comfortable. Not everyone actually likes constant eye contact even among neurotypical people, it's quite intense.

But building something is still cool ;)

👤 prezjordan
No experience building exactly what you're describing, but the Adafruit MagTag may work for you https://www.adafruit.com/product/4800.

I've only done so much as display text on it (json response from a server). Unsure how difficult it would be to connect a microphone input to it.

👤 exe34
Something like this refreshes quite quickly:

https://www.waveshare.com/2.9inch-e-paper-module.htm

You could definitely scroll text fast enough to read, even though it won't look very nice.

👤 Cerium
Having done some work with epaper, my advice here would be to prototype with an LCD display first. You can waste a lot of time on epaper and it won't get you meaningful data around how the device works.
👤 willcipriano
I don't think you can do this for a low cost.

If you figure out how, sell it. People will pay $50 just beacuse its fun.