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Tidbyt stopped shipping: what to do with your desk now

Tidbyt joined Modal in 2024, paused manufacturing and is sold out; its cloud still runs. What owners and buyers can do now, and where Perchi Matrix fits.

By The MyPerchi team · Published · 9 min read

Tidbyt has stopped shipping devices. The company joined Modal on 7 November 2024, said it was taking a break from manufacturing, and on 18 September 2026 every product on tidbyt.com, including the USD 189 Gen 2, showed sold out. The cloud that renders its apps is still running for existing owners, and the status page reported no incidents on 17 September 2026. If you own one, keep it and read the Tronbyt section. If you were about to buy one, the useful question is not "which display looks most like a Tidbyt" but "which display cannot do the same thing to me". This post answers both, and says where Perchi Matrix, the LED desk display we make, fits.

What happened to Tidbyt?

DateWhat happened (source at the end)
7 November 2024"Tidbyt is joining Modal": the team is "taking a break from manufacturing new Tidbyt devices for now" and "everyone's existing Tidbyt will continue to operate as usual".
November 2024 onwardThe "RIP Tidbyt" forum thread: owners felt "blindsided", app pull requests "went untouched for weeks", and people feared "paperweights" and "e-waste".
29 March 2025Hackaday covers Tronbyt, a community server and firmware for Tidbyt devices, as "the only thing keeping some of these devices up and running" once the hosted service ends.
17 September 2026status.tidbyt.com shows no incidents.
18 September 2026Every SKU sold out: the original Tidbyt (USD 199), Gen 2 (USD 189, USD 179 open box), the desk stand, the wall mount and the refurbished units.
September 2026Two conversions offered on r/TIDBYT: TickrCast's "Tidbyt Revive" flash, free until 1 October 2026, and Niblet's, described there as free for good.

Two things are worth saying plainly. Tidbyt was good: a 64x32 matrix with 2,048 pixels, hundreds of community apps written in Pixlet, touch and audio notifications on Gen 2, and no subscription for the core. And Tidbyt was built in a way that made this outcome painful: every app was rendered on Tidbyt's servers and pushed to the device as frames, setup needed a phone app and a cloud account, and offline the device could only show what the cloud had last sent. A Hackaday commenter noted used units changing hands for USD 250 to 500 despite "USD 15 of AliExpress components".

If you own a Tidbyt: keep it alive with Tronbyt

Keep it. The cloud was still running when we checked, and no end-of-life date had been published; the community has asked for one. The insurance policy is Tronbyt, a Go server plus replacement firmware under the Apache-2.0 licence that runs Tidbyt Gen 1 and Gen 2 devices from a machine on your own network.

  1. Install the server. Tronbyt installs with Docker Compose on any Linux box at home; the repository had 216 GitHub stars on 18 September 2026.
  2. Flash the replacement firmware. Keep a copy of the original if you want the option to go back; the conversion points the panel at your server instead of Tidbyt's.
  3. Run your apps locally. Tronbyt renders the same Pixlet apps and enables some APIs Tidbyt's servers blocked. It also drives Tronbyt S3, MatrixPortal S3 and Raspberry Pi matrices, so the apps can outlive the panel too.

The caveats: you run, update and back up that server yourself, and it is a community project with no company behind it. The two other conversions, TickrCast's Revive flash and Niblet's, move your panel onto a different company's cloud, the arrangement that just failed you.

If you were going to buy one: what to look for

The Tidbyt forum's own wish list for a "more complete Tidbyt alternative" reads like a checklist: easy app switching, a battery, "remote connect and choice to connect to your own server", Home Assistant support and an HTTP API. Ours meets most of it: everything except the battery and the own-server option.

  1. Renders on the device. If a server you do not control draws the pixels, the display is a window onto that server, and it goes blank when the window closes.
  2. The basics survive without the internet. Clock, timers, text and the last value of every app keep showing, and a stale value is marked as stale, never faked.
  3. A local API or MQTT you can drive from Home Assistant without the vendor in the loop, with authentication on it.
  4. Signed firmware updates from a company that is still shipping, with a rollback if an update fails.
  5. A price and a warranty in your own country.
  6. An honest pixel count for the price. A 64x32 panel and a 24x8 panel are different objects.

The candidates, one paragraph each

The table with every price, checked on 18 September 2026, is on the Tidbyt alternatives guide; this is the short version.

Perchi Matrix (ours). A 24x8 RGB LED desk display, 192 pixels at launch, driven by an ESP32-S3 running Perchi OS. It renders every app on the device, so the clock, timers and cached values keep working offline; it has an authenticated local API (an AWTRIX-3-compatible subset, off by default) and MQTT with Home Assistant discovery; firmware updates are signed and roll back by themselves; and it is sold in India with a GST invoice and a warranty serviced here. 70+ apps from 60+ integrations, including Razorpay, Stripe, Shopify, GitHub Actions and YouTube. What it is not: a Pixlet machine; whether Perchi Matrix can run Tidbyt apps is answered on the comparison page. It has far fewer pixels than a Tidbyt until the 32x8, 64x16 and 64x32 sizes open on the waitlist.

Ulanzi TC001 with AWTRIX. USD 45.99 direct and INR 7,790 on Amazon.in: a 32x8 pixel clock with a 4,400 mAh battery and a buzzer, whose value is the free AWTRIX firmware you flash onto it. Fully local once flashed, with Home Assistant over MQTT. The catch in 2026: AWTRIX 3 is archived upstream, and AWTRIX NG changed the API, ships with authentication off and updates by manual unsigned upload. The pick for a tinkerer who wants a battery and the lowest price for new hardware.

LaMetric TIME. USD 199.99 direct, about INR 30,000 as an Amazon.in import. A fixed 37x8 white text area with an 8x8 colour icon, two 2 W speakers, a phone app and a cloud account, plus a local API with a per-device key and a Home Assistant core integration that polls locally. The most polished product here and the only one with real audio.

Divoom Pixoo-64. USD 149.99 direct, INR 18,999 to 22,914 in India. 64x64, 4,096 pixels, dual-band Wi-Fi and the best pixel-art community there is. The app is required for everything, and Divoom describes the local API as community reverse-engineered and unsupported. Buy it for art, not for data.

TRMNL. USD 139 for the TRMNL OG, a 7.5-inch 1-bit e-paper board with 1,000 or more plugins and a bring-your-own-server option. Calm and battery-friendly; no colour, no animation, and no Indian channel we could find. A status board rather than a live ticker.

BUSY Bar, GLANCE and TickrCast. BUSY Bar (USD 219) is a 72x16 status bar with a battery, an open HTTP API, MQTT and Matter. GLANCE (USD 149.99) is a 64x32 sports, stocks and crypto ticker with a 90-day warranty; Reddit's complaint is that it is "mostly sports and stocks". TickrCast is a HUB75 wall ticker on Kickstarter until 1 October 2026, tiers reported from USD 99, deliveries from February 2027, rendered on its cloud with no local API. None of the three had an Indian channel when we checked.

What "designed so a shutdown cannot brick it" means

We use that phrase on the Perchi Matrix page instead of a guarantee, and this is the list behind it.

Rendering happens on the device. The server sends values, icons, layouts and effects; Perchi OS draws the pixels. When the internet drops, the clock, timers, countdowns, text and the last cached value of every app keep showing; a value past its freshness window is dimmed, marked or hidden, then drawn as "--" when it expires. Nothing is ever faked.

The local API and MQTT keep working on your LAN without our servers. The local API is an authenticated subset of the AWTRIX 3 HTTP API, off by default until you turn it on and generate its token; MQTT with Home Assistant discovery creates a light, a text entity, an app selector and sensors. It is plain HTTP on your network, which is why it is authenticated and LAN-only.

Firmware updates are signed with a key that never touches our servers. The device trial-boots each new image and reverts by itself if the update cannot confirm a working connection, rollouts halt themselves at 10 percent failures, and a display that crashes three boots in a row falls into a safe mode that keeps the clock and can still be updated.

What we do not claim: a year count for how long updates continue (that commitment is not signed off, so it is not printed), a third-party audit, or hardware-level boot verification and flash encryption in the shipped images, which have neither. The full list is on the security page; the local API and MQTT topics are on the developers page.

Where Perchi Matrix fits

Perchi Matrix is the right Tidbyt replacement for someone who valued the numbers more than the pixels: sales, subscribers, builds, meetings, Home Assistant, on a desk, with a display that keeps its basics when a server does not answer. It is the wrong one for someone who wants a 64x32 pixel-art canvas today, Pixlet apps, a speaker or a battery. The current price, batch state and estimated wait are on the pricing page, and you can reserve a Perchi Matrix without paying anything today. The same dashboard also runs Perchi, the desk companion that starts a focus block when your phone rests on it, explained on how Phone Nap works.

Questions

Is Tidbyt still in business in 2026?

As a hardware company, no: Tidbyt joined Modal on 7 November 2024, said it was taking a break from manufacturing, and every SKU on tidbyt.com showed sold out on 18 September 2026. As a service, yes: the cloud that renders apps for existing devices was running with no incidents on 17 September 2026.

Does Tidbyt still work, and will the servers stay up?

It works today. Tidbyt's announcement said every existing Tidbyt "will continue to operate as usual", and the status page showed no incidents on 17 September 2026. No end-of-life date had been published when we checked, and the community has asked for one, which is why Tronbyt exists: a community server that keeps a Tidbyt rendering from your own network if the hosted service ends.

Why is Tidbyt always sold out?

Because manufacturing was paused in November 2024 and never resumed. What you see on tidbyt.com is the last of the stock: the original Tidbyt, the Gen 2, the stands and the refurbished units all showed sold out on 18 September 2026, and used units have been reported at USD 250 to 500. New buyers need a different device.

Will Perchi Matrix do the same thing to me?

We cannot promise you a company; nobody honestly can. What we can show you is what was built so that a shutdown cannot brick the display: apps render on the device, the clock, timers and cached values keep working offline, the authenticated local API and MQTT keep working on your LAN without our servers, and firmware updates are signed with automatic rollback. Commitments that are not yet code are listed on the security page as exactly that.

Sources

Prices and store pages were read on 18 September 2026 unless a date is given.

  • Perchi Matrix
  • displays
  • Tidbyt

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