Show HN: Hacker News on a train station-style flip board

Score: 95 · Comments: 20 · Posted by PaybackTony on 2026-06-27T09:43:39+09:00 · Discuss on HN

Link: https://popflame.quickish.space/hn-flipboard/

Although the page itself is more just fun to have made and look at (I like the flip sound), the fun part is how I made it to verify the (and I hate to say it) vibe host service I've been working on. The recent flip board back and forth's on Twitter (X) are what inspired me.

The idea here is that people (like me or you) can create something neat like this, and others can remix it, change it and publish their own version. This is that all in action and it worked great. I wrote a blog about it (the blog is dogfooding, it's just an app hosted on quickish that uses the built in db lib).

For the HN version of this flip board I use their firebase api via the built in quickish server functions that make use of the fact that the front-end can get realtime updates (now that you mention firebase) from cloud function db updates. Of course that's over-kill but I wanted to show something fun. You can remix and host your own version for free, just need a google oauth login that's it.

OG flip board I built (Portland Based - Current Weather): https://popflame.quickish.space/flipboard-preview

Blog post that dives a tiny bit deeper: https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-...

Top discussion

gorgoiler · 2026-06-27T12:34:52+09:00

Do I recognize the UI style here as being that cool, hacker, dark-mode, glowing aura text, rounded mono typeface style? Whoever came up with that motif and inadvertently coaxed fhe AI tools into copying it into ubiquity has had an enormous impact on the world!

There are a lot of cells used for rank and vote count. If you used A-Z for rank and dropped the vote count you’d be able to see 50% more title, which is a lot. Vote count could be an optional overlay shown at the end of the title in the last 3 seconds of each frame. Or just drop it altogether.

anonu · 2026-06-27T19:20:20+09:00

With AI coding tools lots of people are having the same idea. Here is another one that uses sampled split flap sounds: https://www.minisplitflap.com

[reply] conartist6 · 2026-06-27T20:25:20+09:00

That's a pretty good one. It's more realistic than the one shared here in that it uses an actual deck of cards so that all the segments don't arrive at their destination at exactly the same moment, but rather the message is revealed as the cards arrive one by one (depending on how far they had to travel to get there). I love that effect!

Anyway, here's one that I made with jQuery 10 years ago (since forked and now maintained by qrion) https://qrion25.github.io/splitflap/

In terms of features I haven't seen other split flap displays offer, it rolls a little better (more than one flap segment can be rolling at a time, letting the rolling animation be slower) it lets you set up a completely custom deck, and can even support muliple letters or numbers on a single flap (like the real displays sometimes do -- they might have the name of a whole train station)

freitasm · 2026-06-27T11:57:08+09:00

Sounds cool. Couldn't see it though. "Rate limited" on my first visit. Using a static IPv4 and IPv6.

Unless your host is limiting number of requests, indiscriminately.

[reply] PaybackTony · 2026-06-27T14:20:52+09:00

Was CloudFlare limiting after a large burst of interest. All better. Only took a leg

kaueg · 2026-06-27T19:00:32+09:00

After clicking "?", the help page mentions there should be a settings icon [1], but it seems its not visible.

[1]: "Up top: opens settings (page timing and a token to drive the board from a script), ♪ toggles the flap clicks, and goes fullscreen. Own this board? Click any row to pin your own text over it."

blue1 · 2026-06-27T20:15:06+09:00

To my ears, the sound is wrong. At least the Solari flip boards had a typical rustling sound, this is too much clicking.

bitwize · 2026-06-27T14:35:34+09:00

I was kinda hoping that you would arduino the Hackernews front page onto an actual train-style flipboard, but this is a pretty cute web trick.

StizzurpXDD · 2026-06-27T13:13:13+09:00

The title of the first post is crealy readable, while the rest of the texts and numbers are glitched.

It's cool though.

[reply] jimmydddd · 2026-06-28T00:53:32+09:00

Are there supposed to be article titles? It just looks like giberish to me?

[reply] PaybackTony · 2026-06-27T14:11:11+09:00

Was not expecting 30k visits in an hour. Patched up the mobile view and got everything running again. Oof. Thank you for checking it out!

Otek · 2026-06-27T17:03:32+09:00

Please vibecode mobile support

blourvim · 2026-06-27T17:15:07+09:00

quite satisfying to hear the clicks