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My smart home definitely doesn’t need a dedicated dashboard. Still, eventually I’ll probably create something cheap, just because I can. But if I had a few grand to spend on something fancy, I’d buy a much less useful but ultimately more beautiful relic of the past.
Vestaboard is an inverted dot display
Flip-Dot (or Flip-Disc) displays are mechanical devices that use physically moving parts to display information. If you’re my age, you’ve probably seen them at train stations and airports, while driving on the highway, on the front of buses and trams, and even on television in shows like family fight.
These devices first appeared in the early 1960s and eventually made their way to most major stock exchanges in the mid-1970s. Unlike the cathode ray tube (CRT) display and projection technology that was popular at the time, flip-board displays were easy to view in any light. As an electronic ink screenFlip-points only need power to change the position of what is being flipped.
There are many different types of inverted dot displays. High-resolution versions use many dots to form letters or numbers, while simpler designs, such as clocks and exit panels, switch between elements such as numbers or destinations. They all work more or less the same way, cycling through the “deck” to find the correct item to display.
If you’re wondering what this has to do with a smart home, let me introduce you. Vestaboard. This is a modern Flip-Dot display for home and work, built on the same principle as the original Flip-Dot displays that were so popular 50 years ago.
Vestaboard can display messages, art and information that are sent wirelessly from a smartphone app or desktop browser. But it should not be surprising that the home assistant community has also produced the Vestaboard Home Assistant Integrationwhich allows you to use the foldable puck screen to send notifications, sensor readings, and anything else you want from your Home Assistant server.
Best of all, Vestaboard has a local and cloud-based API, so you can set it up locally and it will keep working even when the internet or remote servers go down.
Two sizes, both expensive.
The Vestaboard feels more like a home centerpiece than a useful display. It can’t show you feeds from its cameras, you can’t touch it like you would a tablet, and there’s very limited space to display information. It’s like an interactive piece of art and is priced accordingly.
There are two sizes available, with the original Vestaboard being the larger of the two. It measures 41.2″ wide by 22.0″ high (1046 x 561 mm) and is 3.5″ (89 mm) deep. It has five lines with 22 characters per line, for a total of 132 “bits” (each bit has 64 different characters). For this, you’ll pay $3,499.
Then there’s the little Vestaboard Note, which is much smaller at 28.4″ wide and 12.2″ tall (723 × 309 mm) with a depth of 4.3″ (109 mm). It has room for three lines of text with 15 characters on each. It’ll set you back $999.
There are a few more things to consider with Vestaboard. Due to the mechanical nature of the necessary elements colliding with each other, these things are quite noisy. You’ll either love it or hate it, so make sure you know what to expect before you commit.
The other problem is that these things are surprisingly popular and it’s not uncommon for there to be a waiting list. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s more like ordering an appliance with a delivery time than an iPad that shows up in a few days. Good things come to those who wait, and all that.
Do you have the skills? Reuse an old flip-dot screen
The Vestaboard is expensive and hard to find because it is incredibly unique equipment. If you want one, there really are no alternatives. Well, not unless you have the skills to reuse an older working model.
That’s exactly what Reddit user u/GenerallyOkayTimes did. Using ESP8285 and STMD32uino system-on-chip microcontrollers with the Flippity210 library, they were able to bring a BUS 210 Flip the screen to bring it back to life. there is a whole wiki available with instructions on how to use this library and the hardware needed to build your own.
Getting these screens is more difficult, although I found some to about $100 in Czech markets. They differ slightly from the Vestaboard in that they use dots instead of printed elements, are designed to be visible on the front of buses and trams, and are much smaller.
Still, it could be a fun project if you dare.
Don’t look at the Vestaboard as a practical object; Think of it as a kind of modern work of art. If you’re like me, your thoughts of “maybe I can justify a small one?” quickly turns into “but the big one is so tempting!”
