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Home Assistant is an open source platform that makes it possible to seamlessly integrate and automate a wide range of smart home devices. With a growing and creative community, users are constantly finding new, innovative applications to make their home even smarter. One particularly original example of this is smart name tags for plants, as discussed in a Reddit post.
E-Ink display as a smart tag
E-Ink displays (electronic ink) are a special screen technology that is characterized by its low power consumption and high readability, even in direct sunlight. They work by charging tiny capsules in the screen surface. These capsules contain black and white particles that are moved to the surface by electric fields to display images or text. A major advantage of e-ink displays is that they only consume power when the image is updated, making them ideal for applications such as e-readers or smart name tags.
The price tags in modern supermarkets are now also E-INK displays.
This is how it is done
To get the values such as humidity into Home Assistant, the Xiaomi Flower Care sensors are used here. The data is transferred to Home Assistant via an ESP32 Bluetooth proxy and then via the WLAN.
The data is then displayed on E-INK displays running on OpenEPaperLink.