Hacker News: buibuibui

New comment by buibuibui in "Solid 2.0 RC: The Big "

buibuibui — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:37:21 +0000

I am a big fan of Signals. It’s the best state-management concept I've come across (also my team-mates). We even use it outside of the frontend space, e.g. in long running instances / services or complicated numpy calculations. One of the core characteristics why it's so easy to reason about, is that the reactivity is indeed synchronous. We know most of the time, what every signal set() does when we constraint ourselves Effects not allowing to set other Signals.

Integrating async as first class citizen into the core is indeed interesting. I wonder how it impacts the ergonomics and state reasoning in the end.

Need to test it out.

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:17:56 +0000

ScreenWall builder here. Thank you so much for the wonderful feedbacks! Please keep an eye open on the website! I will publish a self-hosted version soon and open source! Keeping old-devices from beeing thrown away is my number one priority here! They deserve a second life.

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:16:17 +0000

Hey, owner here. I think it‘s wonderful that you find it useful! Your questions has been answered in the comments already, because some people asked the same. But I think what you probably want is a way to use this without a cloud and run this locally in your network. Please keep an eye open on the website! I will publish a self-hosted version soon! Keeping old-devices from beeing thrown away is my number one priority here!

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:49:18 +0000

Please keep an eye open on the website! I will publish a self-hosted version soon.

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:54:35 +0000

I am interested to hear what features you guys want in the next iterations! While building ScreenWall, I actually had art installations, home dashboards and train depature info screens in mind. Interacting with the screens and triggering events across other screens is also in the pipeline. Would be cool, if you can give me some crazy ideas, so I can prepare the client runtime better.

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:49:33 +0000

This is work in progress project of mine! I have so many ideas how I can make it better, but before I overengineer it just for myself (I think this is typicial engineer mentality), I wanted to submit it to HN before I lose my interest over time, like my other projects…

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:31:55 +0000

The account mechanism is just used to scope the devices to „walls“. Otherwise I don‘t mine anything. But I share your sentiment, that this should maybe a self-hostable tool.

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:44:34 +0000

I see you. I am thinking about providing a self-hosted version.

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:13:41 +0000

An account is necessary to couple your devices to your wall. And auth is implemented via Better-Auth. I stopped Codex immediately when he tried to implement the login stuff from scratch. :)

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:13:53 +0000

You can also vibe-code your widget if you want! You are not restricted to use the built-in ones. Just copy the "Canvas Widget Guide" you find under "Left Sidebar > Create > Smart Widget > Tutorial" and copy that article in ChatGPT or Claude while describing what your widget should display.

Then paste the code to "Create > Smart Widget > Edit the Code" in the Widget Details. (this flow should be more intuitive...)

You are able to send JSON data to your widget via an API.

It's all just canvas and old Javascript code!

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:57:02 +0000

I like the wall position detection feature via markers! :)

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:47:03 +0000

Oh wow, although I submitted it some days ago, I somehow got on the front page! Thanks for that! Also as a note: this platform is nowhere near finished! I had this idea in my mind for a long time that I wanted to reuse my old phones and tablets as displays in my home. I also know that finding the right apps for these old platforms is a challenge in itself, that's why I went the route of creating an ES5 (that nobody writes anymore!) web app that most of these devices still support. The client's whole purpose is to display canvas and media files that the server dictates on-demand via websocket, while keeping a synchronized clock. On Instagram I always saw these very cool widgets like retro clocks, split-flip boards, YouTube subscriber counters that I felt urged to buy. But I thought to myself that the old phones I already have could also do the same. I am a long-time software engineer myself, but could never take the time to validate whether my ideas work. So I thought, why not try it out with Codex. After long prompting, supervising and correcting, I got a very usable solution that I now pleasantly use myself at home.

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 20:07:52 +0000

The oldest device I found that works with ScreenWall as a widget display, is an iPad 3 (2012)!

New comment by buibuibui in "ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space"

buibuibui — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:11:39 +0000

Working on ScreenWall (https://www.screenwall.app) because I had old phones sitting in a drawer doing nothing, and now I use them as passive widgets on my desk and wall. I use the browsers of the devices to join a shared "wall". From there I can push images, video, gifs, or a synced canvas to it (and any other old screens I add) without installing anything. Started as a one-device hack for my desk clock, but it scales to syncing multiple screens at once if you've got more than one old device lying around.

ScreenWall – Turn old phones into synced widgets for your space

buibuibui — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:00:04 +0000

Article URL: https://screenwall.app/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48945804

Points: 146

# Comments: 53

New comment by buibuibui in "How to build a circular LCD clock"

buibuibui — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:11:08 +0000

Can you check if it‘s still the case? :o

New comment by buibuibui in "How to build a circular LCD clock"

buibuibui — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:03:01 +0000

I am currently building a project (http://www.screenwall.app) that tries to reuse old phones and tablets (that some people have in the drawer unused) as widget displays. Seeing such cool widgets always tempt me to buy it, although I know that my old Samsung A6 is perfectly capable for such things as well. :D

ScreenWall, turn old phones and tablets into a shared display wall

buibuibui — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 13:10:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.screenwall.app

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880924

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

New comment by buibuibui in "Defeat air-gapped systems by exfiltrating data using Apple Find My network"

buibuibui — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:16:39 +0000

Very interesting. What's the max payload size we can transfer with this setup?

New comment by buibuibui in "Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway"

buibuibui — Thu, 28 May 2026 10:20:41 +0000

This solves an issue that I really do have. Will try it out!