Building hardware projects has become immensely simpler thanks to Arduino and Raspberry Pi. But Visionect scratches a far more-intersting itch: e-paper interface design.

At its core the device is a very simple cased or uncased e-ink reader. It consist of a very simple, waterproof device with an e-ink screen and allows programmers to build HTML5-based applications that can be pushed directly to the platform. Built as less of a dev kit than a thin client system, you use the Visionect screen as sort of a dumb terminal for your web projects although the system does allow for complex app development.

It should cost about 240 Euro when it launches. The Slovenian Team added a 120Mhz processor which powers the very basic terminal features of the device. Most of the heavy lifting, then, is done on the Visionect servers and pushed to the devices as needed.

It’s an interesting strategy – cheap hardware and a focus on cloud services – and I suspect it could catch on in situations where an e-ink interface would be ideal due to environmental concerns. In other words, don’t think of this as a denuded Kindle but instead a Star-Trek-esque flat control panel that is weatherproof and won’t be overpowered in sunlight.

via The Digital Reader