Seeed Partners with TRMNL's Ryan Kulp for a Low-Cost DIY Smart Desktop ePaper Display Kit
Building on the XIAO 7.5" ePaper Panel, the TRMNL 7.5" (OG) DIY Kit is now available to order — but remember to budget for platform access.
Seeed Studio has announced the fruit of its partnership with TRMNL founder Ryan Kulp: a compact ePaper desktop display kit compatible with Kulp's smart dashboard platform.
"It all started with a Tweet in March when we teased our XIAO 7.5" ePaper Panel," Seed's Lily Li writes of the company's latest partnership and the resulting product launch. "A community member asked about the device’s compatibility with TRMNL firmware. This led to a connection with Ryan [Kulp], TRMNL's founder, and after three months of collaboration, we're thrilled to launch the official TRMNL 7.5" (OG) DIY Kit together with the amazing TRMNL team."
Kulp launched TRMNL — a name derived from "terminal" with, in classic web fashion, the vowels removed — in July 2024, envisioning a smart ePaper display device running a firmware designed to connect to a web service that would provide an easy way to build and customize graphical and textual dashboards using a code-free modular interface. As well as the official TRMNL displays, though, Kulp's vision also included offering support for a more do-it-yourself approach with a "bring your own device" (BYOD) firmware.
It's this firmware that Seeed has adapted for the XIAO 7.5" ePaper Panel to create the TRMNL 7.5" (OG) DIY Kit. Like its predecessor, the smart display is based around the XIAO ESP32S3 Plus compact development board and a XIAO ePaper Display Board driver connected to a 7.5" monochrome electrophoretic display with 800×480 resolution — low by modern standards, admittedly, but with the advantage of being brilliantly readable in even the brightest of direct sunlight and requiring power only when changing states to help get the most from the kit's 2Ah battery.
The hardware's only half of the story, though: while TRMNL provides access to its platform for user's own devices, it comes at a cost. Those picking up Seeed's kit will also need to budget $50 for what was at the time of writing lifetime access to the TRMNL platform — though for the first 200 users to register this can be discounted by 30 per cent to $35 using the code "trmnl-seeed-diy" at checkout.
The TRMNL 7.5" (OG) DIY Kit is now available to order on the Seeed Studio store, priced at $44.90 without enclosure — with a limited-time pre-order discount bringing it down to $35.92.