I recently decided to buy a TRMNL device because—well—it looks like a cool toy, and I’m always fascinated by e-ink toys.
Now, of course, I wasn’t entirely sure when I would get it; after all, it might take some time to arrive in Switzerland, since the company is based in the US. I also asked them to ship the current device right away. They asked if I could pay 7 bucks for shipping, which I was more than happy to do—after all, 7 bucks for shipping from the US to Switzerland is quite a good deal.
But as I learned, they’re not only based in the US; they also have an office/warehouse in Berlin. I learned this when I received the following email:
Not only was I happy that I received the package faster, but they went out of their way to refund my shipping fees. That was, of course, not necessary, since I would have been happy to help pay for shipping, but it did give me a good feeling about the company. A bit later, they also published a blog post with the new change, but it’s super nice that they’re applying this retroactively.
Overall, I have an excellent impression of them. All of their software is open source; that’s already very cool. And because they’re a startup with potentially uncertain funding, they also pledge to open-source everything in case the company goes bankrupt. This is such a great idea. I think companies should be forced by law that if you abandon a product—through planned obsolescence or by going out of business—you must provide the necessary source code for people to run it themselves (looking at you, Bose).
Device
The device is pretty cool, but I’m not entirely sure what to do with it. I currently run the Parcel plugin, which is great because it gives me an overview, but it’s also not super time-critical.
My TRMNL is waiting to be set up on my desk.
I’ll need to find some time to tinker with it; maybe there are some cool things I can do, like an integration with Switzerland’s meteo service or something similar. Not entirely sure yet, but I’m eager to try it out.
And then I’ll be thrilled to write about it here on my blog.