#17 Using e-ink (epaper) Price Tags (Shelf Labels) for everyday needs

Recently I realized my local grocery store replaced traditional price tags with electronic e-ink (epaper) price tags / shelf labels. I found out that you can easily buy the same ones from e-bay, and I was able to re-program / hack them.
These devices can be used as cheap Arduino E-Ink Displays, and you can easily program these with usb-TTL adapter, or any Arduino board.

In this video, I will show you how you can use them for everyday needs.

The brand of the e-paper display I re-program is Hanshow, and the model is Stellar.

Here are the links which is mentioned in the video:

The Github page for the project:

Other projects you might think interesting:

PS. I made the doom part of the video with the tool that I explained. I only the modified code to take a picture at the end of one loop. I made a time-lapse video to remove the screen refresh artifacts.

▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 - Intro & summary
0:50 - Tips to get them for free
1:38 - Doom!
4:42 - Start of the projects
4:42 - Subscriber counter
6:09 - Weather forecast
7:09 - Home assistant
9:37 - Internet modem monitor
10:36 - Bitcoin - Stock tracker
12:00 - Post it notes viewer (Google keep)
13:22 - Morning routine viewer (Google Calendar)
14:13 - Garbage collection dates viewer
14:48 - Troubleshooting

[ThreeMafia]

I remember working retail as merchandiser at a pharmacy in 2005, and we spent so much time printing, sorting, cutting, and putting up those sticker labels ... only to just take them down a few days later. It was a matter of time.

[rjdipcord]

So glad someone is looking into this! When I first saw these in stores I knew they would have a great use within the smart-home community. I just didn't know how to implement my own solution.

[willemkossen]

This sparks a lot of ideas. Indeed, the top op my todo list always insight at my desk, the date for the next garbage collection day in the hallway, the current temperature in the attic from homeassistant, weather forcast, tv schedules, trending topic on social media, etc. I need some of this in my life.

[jonasniesner]

Your video was one of the reasons I wrote a home assistant plugin for OpenEpaperLink.

[AdamIannazzone]

I'm genuinely surprised that Doom looked that good!

[davidgermain]

I am in the process of building and setting up stores for these. So this is a great video.

[MikeHarris]

When the battery goes, they are soldered into the module and non replaceable. It's wasteful, but they cost something like 10 cents each at the price they buy in bulk when they purchase millions at a time for a chain. And each shelf and line item is likely close to 100k-200k per store easily. So it costs more to replace a battery, other then just scan a new module ID onto a shelf to replace an old one. And the batteries in eink last years since they only use power to refresh the screen, and that's at setup of price. So only when prices change it uses power

[martenbakker]

Wow finally it’s time to play doom, but on price tags. 🎉Can you share a separate video for it?

[WinchesterxNL]

This was fun to see.
En altijd leuk om een Nederlander te zien ;)

Might give this a shot some day!

[opalpersonal]

this would be absolutely amazing for checking the weather. i need to know a lot about the weather for my commute and just having a couple of these around the house to look at at a glance would be great.

[AntonioDellaRovere]

Great use case! Actually Homeassistant could do the whole updating for you and free up your PC

[dousiastailfeather]

Just visited an Aldi and spotted a tag that was an e-ink tag! Pretty cool, I thought... Now I see vids of uses!

[smartduck]

As a duck I like this video
What's funny enough is I was working on designing digital price tags for stores quite a few years ago didn't know someone came to market with them really cool the idea wasn't just a failure idea looks like it really hit off with some other people

[WisdomBreezes-yeti]

I belive they can work nice for say, meeting rooms, classrooms etc.

They should make these devices more common. Imagine lockers etc getting those. Like school lockers, etc

Its a genious idea.

The idea of having a reuaable paper device is just genius.

[gaymer]

Just notice the same. I had to really look closely to even notice it was eink. Mainly the thick border was the thing that caught my eye at first.

[chuckray]

They look very neat but they’re quite pricey. I don’t see anything less than 15$ a pop on eBay or aliexpress. How much did you get yours for?

[Banjo_Tails]

The new major chain supermarket near me has these tags and it’s so much nicer to walk the isles. It’s give it all a cleaner look without all the tags hanging about.

[klingoncowboy]

Doom turned out better than I would have thought

[lily_skye]

This browser-based approach is super smart! So flexible!!

[DerSolinski]

Well the e-tags used here are completely controlled via NFC.
Meaning they don't even have a battery, you need a tool to program them.
Pro: super thin, stylish, almost indistinguishable from paper labels.
Neg: no remote updates, since you need the tool to deliver the energy, also requires a human.