I m Obsessed With This Open Source Desk Accessory

I've been obsessed with this simple plain looking device that basically came out of nowhere. It's a product that's allergic to vowels called the Terminal. T-R-M-N-L. It launched on Kickstarter last year and made $157,000. I had no idea it even existed, but I have to say it surprised me. I've been testing e-paper devices over the past few months, from the Remarkable Tablet to the Boox Palma. The Boox Palma? And they always come up a little short. So when someone from Terminal reached out to me and wanted me to test out their device, I was pumped. Could this be the e-paper device that changes everything? So I figured I would give it a shot and see what the hubbub is about. So what is the Terminal? It's an open source e-paper display that lets you use a variety of plugins and display whatever you want, wherever you want. No USB cable. See that? And because it's e-paper, it should have an ultra long battery life. So you almost never have to charge it. You measure time between charges in not days, nor weeks, but months. And the display should look phenomenal no matter what your lighting situation is like. You can view it from basically any angle without any issue, which is the benefit of an e-paper display. And the refresh speed, like other e-ink devices, is dreadfully slow. But what separates this device from others is that you don't need a fast refresh rate. It's just a static display 99% of the time. So it doesn't matter that it takes forever, and I mean forever, to refresh. Unlike the remarkable tablet where my biggest complaint, minus the UI, was how long it took to refresh. Because every millisecond you wait for the screen to load is another millisecond wasted. And at 7.5 inches, the Terminal is a little wider than an iPhone and a little shorter too. I mean, I have a mini, so it doesn't count. The resolution is 800 by 480, which is on the lower end, but more than enough to view text, pictures, and whatever else you need. Don't get me wrong, the hardware is super simple. But that simplicity is what makes this device so unique. So on the back, you have a simple kickstand, an on-off switch, and a button for toggling between your screens, and a USB-C port for charging. And this is where the magic is. The fact that it's super simple, yet has such a high ceiling for usefulness and practicality, which you'll see soon. So it's why I've been obsessed with e-ink devices, even though I feel like they're not quite there yet. But this one, this one could change all that. But bare bones hardware aside, what really makes this fun is software, which doesn't require a download or app of any sort. Everything, and I mean everything, can be done from a web browser. Ah, yes, finally. I love it. Can everyone do this? This is so refreshing in a world where everything from your toaster to your mattress cover requires an app of some sort. All you need to do is just open the Terminal website, connect your device, and you can tweak basically everything. You can browse through all the different plugins that can be installed. There are literally hundreds of options to choose from. Plus, you can even design your own. That one's a little outside my skill set, but maybe someday. In the plugin tab, you have plugin options like silly quotes from The Office, which I love. Personalized Apple photo albums you can display. To even productivity stuff like Notion, Todoist, Google Calendar, and more. The options are literally endless. Well, if you're willing to put in the work, they are. Because while it sounds amazing, getting this device to the point where it's actually useful took more time than I expected. But that process of personalizing the device is also where most of the fun is, in my opinion. It's this level of jankiness, this scrappiness, where it doesn't always work perfectly, but with enough tinkering, you can get it to look exactly how you want. Kind of like Linux, actually. Plus, Terminal does have a lot of documentation to help you along the way. Kind of like Linux. But let's rewind a bit, because getting it set up the first time was a little interesting. It arrived in a pretty plain box with nothing but the device and USB-C cable. Definitely the opposite of an Apple-like unboxing like the Remarkable 2. But hey, maybe that's a good thing. I don't want Apple. I want open source. I want control. I want freedom and fun. And after powering it on for the first time, it took me a little bit of poking around to figure out how to set it up with the browser and actually get the plugins and playlists to work. The interface definitely feels a little clunky, but once you get through that roadblock, you really start to see the raw potential that the Terminal has. Although the Terminal has been changing my life, there's another thing that has taken my setup to the next level. If you're tired of juggling around dongles and adapters to make your setup work for you, then meet the Anker Prime 14-in-1 docking station, the DL7400, the sponsor of today's video. It's perfect for anyone who finds themselves charging their devices all the time. And yes, that is a screen on the front and a knob on the side. It lets you go through all of its menus. The dock supports up to 14 connections, including Ethernet, three USB-A ports, DisplayPort, and two HDMI ports, as well as card readers on the front with three USB-C ports that can handle charging and data transfer. It even shows you the exact wattage coming out right on the dock itself on the built-in 2.26 HD LCD screen. That screen also shows you the charging and data transfer status and even the temperature of the dock. Now let's talk power, because Anker is a power expert. The dock delivers a total of 160 watts of output, so it can charge your laptop up to 140 watts, as well as a ton of accessories and devices. Even with every port connected to something, the dock stays cool, and if you ever exert it to its limit, it has in-house fan cooling to keep it even cooler. Plus, it works seamlessly with Mac and Windows. You'll need DisplayLink drivers, but after that, you can support a bunch of monitors, including an 8K 60-frame output or a dual or even triple monitor setup without having weird adapters or dongles coming out of your laptop. So if you want a dock that truly does it all, power delivery and docking, check out the Anker Prime 14-in-1 DL7400. Great solution for power, displays, connectivity, and productivity. Check it out in the links in the description below. So when I first got this device, the first thing I thought was, wow, I hope I can set it up with Notion, because Notion has my entire life on it, basically. This could be a huge help to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. We don't forget an upload, a film session. So I searched for Notion in the plugin terminal, and sure enough, it was there. And after linking my account, I was ready to harness the power. That was Arnold, just so you know. So inside the plugin, you can choose which items you want displayed and in what order. So it took me some trial and error to get certain items to display. It seems easy enough, right? You just click display. Well, not exactly, because all of that information is useless unless it's sorted and filtered in a useful way. Right now, it's only showing me videos from years ago, because within the terminal app, you can only sort it based on one item, and filtering isn't even an option. So how do you do all these more advanced sorting options? Well, within Notion, I created a new item, one that I called the terminal sort key. And with this, I could program exactly how I wanted the information to display. Stuff such as only displaying videos after today's date, and if the status is uploaded, don't display it. But once I got the programming right, with ChatGPT's help, it was actually super useful. At a glance, I can now see every upcoming video, who's editing it, and the current status. I liked it so much, I went through the entire process again to make a similar one for our video sponsors right here. It takes a while to nail down, but once you do, it's a great way to help you manage your tasks. I see, this company hasn't paid us yet. Next up is something that I absolutely love about this terminal. Now, I've already figured out how to use it for stressful work-related things, but what if I could set up something more fun? A personal screen. Something that relieves stress and just randomly makes me happier throughout the day. Well, that's where this one comes in. I decided to try and set up the Apple Photos integration. Now, this one turned out to be trickier than expected, mainly because Apple isn't exactly a company that likes it when third-party apps integrate with their devices. They like to keep it closed. But luckily, there's a workaround to display photos on the terminal. First, you need a shared album, which we already happen to have. We made one when she was born, so we could share photos of her with close family members instead of posting them on social media or Facebook or wherever people do that nowadays. With this shared album, I just had to turn it into a shareable link or webpage, which I did from my laptop. And with that link, I pasted it into the Apple Photos plugin, and now I can view photos of my daughter on the terminal device. So cute. Now, the photos are in black and white, and they aren't super high resolution, but they look good enough to brighten my day randomly and remind me of what's important. And honestly, I think the black and white and low resolution actually makes it cuter. Just look at this. Next up is another thing that should help with getting the important stuff done every day, and that's my to-do list. Looking at all the plugins, there's a few options here. I opted for Google Tasks since I don't have to sign up anywhere. I can just use an email that I currently have. Then I installed the Google Tasks plugin on the device, and just like that, it was working. Okay, that was a little too easy, right? And it turns out, it was. It's that easy. I'm just skeptical now because of Linux. I did notice the device didn't update quite enough for the task integration to be useful. After a little bit of poking around, I realized it's because the refresh rate was set to every 24 hours. While this is nice because you can save a ton of battery for something like a to-do list, you want it to update regularly throughout the day. So I changed it to every five minutes instead. So now, whenever my task list is displayed, it's update. Start cheap versus expensive Thunderbolt dock video. Nice. Also realized that having the to-do list on the whole screen was a waste of space. So to fix this, I went back to the browser and found a setting where you can do a split screen setup. You can actually do up to four plugins on the same screen, but in this case, two will do. So I opted to set up the weather on one side and Google Tasks on the other. The weather plugin was actually pretty funny since it let me pinpoint our exact coordinates. So now I'm getting the weather report within 100 feet of the office. It says thunderstorms possible tomorrow, partly cloudy. Nice. It's pretty cool how you can mix and match plugins like this. The last plugin I wanted to set up is just one that I found while browsing the various plugins available. There's a lot of interesting things here, such as if you're into day trading, you can display stocks. If you like running or biking, you can display your stats on screen. I don't know how useful that could be. I even messed around with displaying our YouTube analytics, but that just stressed me out more than anything else. But ultimately, I ended up going for this days left plugin because I like that small little reminder that time is moving and somehow we're already two thirds of the way through the year. What? In my mind, it's still April, but September, actually today's the first day of September and wasn't COVID just last year? No, wait, it was five years ago. Clearly, I need some help with days of the year. So I installed the days left plugin and paired it with this other plugin that shows me today's date in a tearaway calendar sort of way. And I like the design. I think the font changes every day. I really do think the font changes every day. One time it was like a, I don't know, Nordic font. But there's a lot you can do with this. There's over 470 plugins available with more coming all the time from New York City train schedules, shopping lists, package tracking. The options are, as they say, endless, nearly endless. Now, I know a device like this is sort of silly and simple, but it turned out to be a lot more fun and useful than I initially imagined. I enjoy seeing photos of my family every day and I like seeing the weather and date and my to-do list and production schedules. It just feels like a minimal device that reminds you of what's important. It's not distracting. It removes all the extra stuff that's blasted at your face every time you open up your phone or your PC. So while it's not the e-ink device that changes everything, it did find a place on my desk. And while it's definitely not for everyone, I can see how someone who loves to tinker or who loves to display data could enjoy it. If you like this video, check out this one right here. Adieu! I don't know why I say that.