Many MindedA $48 Seeed kit turns a paper-like screen into a programmable home display
Seeed Studio, the Shenzhen open hardware company known for its XIAO microcontroller boards, now sells a $48 DIY e-paper display kit developed with TRMNL. The two announced their partnership in July 2025, after a community member asked whether a teased XIAO e-paper panel could run TRMNL firmware. Seeed designs and makes the hardware. TRMNL maintains the firmware, plugins and hosted service.
The box holds an XIAO ESP32-S3 Plus dev board, a 7.5-inch monochrome display at 800 × 480, a ribbon cable and connector, a 2,000 mAh battery and a Wi-Fi antenna. No case is included. Two official 3D-printable designs exist, and the reviewer paid $8 to print a stand at a library.
The software choices are what make this notable. TRMNL's hosted service has a 14-day trial, then a one-time $50 license. Seeed's alternatives, Home Assistant compatibility and its SenseCraft Seeedash platform, need no TRMNL license. Users with their own server can run Terminus, TRMNL's open source container, where the display polls an API and plugins can be written in HTML.
For abundance, this is a small step in goods and information access. A low-power screen that shows calendars, notes, or local information can be built from open parts, without a subscription tied to one vendor. The hardware cost is low, and the software stays swappable.
The caveats are real. This is one author's hands-on account, and the source text cuts off mid-assembly, so there is no full verdict. The ribbon cable is fragile. Self-hosting means keeping a server running. The stock TRMNL route adds the $50 license on top of the $48 kit.
Source: Ars Technica