[HN Gopher] E-Paper Wall Paper
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E-Paper Wall Paper
Author : lxm
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-03-16 00:58 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hackaday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackaday.com)
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Awesome project, however, expensive.
|
| Conceptually e-paper may have been a misnomer. Considering the
| cost and scarcity, it really has nothing in common with
| ubiquitous and cheap paper.
| [deleted]
| basement42 wrote:
| These remind me of that company called nanoleaf, they sold these
| stackable canvas led squares that really was beautiful but
| expensive if I remember correctly. But these seem to be a cheaper
| alternative, cool!
| gambiting wrote:
| They still exist. I'd argue Govee has a superior version of
| that product for less money, but you can still buy the original
| Nanoleaf.
| voytec wrote:
| I have two sets of Nanoleaf Canvas (they have more shapes now).
| The "main node" from the first set of 9 squares stopped working
| after about 2 years. I bought another set of 9 squares to use
| the main node from the new one with 8 squares left from the
| first set and 8 squares from the new one.
|
| Sadly, they didn't fixed issues in years and are selling buggy
| product which can reset itself few times within 2 minutes (only
| in certain color modes but reboots take more time than working
| mode) and leaves (heh) me with just a few options to choose
| from if I don't want the product to constantly reboot itself
| and show pale-white color for 30 seconds.
|
| I was considering buying their newer products but decided not
| to as I don't appreciate company which sells stuff they well
| know is faulty.
|
| For reference, both older and newer Nanoleaf Canvas are the
| model NL29-0002SW-9PK and were bought off their official Amazon
| store.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Interesting how closely your experience mirrors mine. Bought
| 2 sets of Canvas back when they came out. Panels all still
| work and one of the "main nodes," but the other node just up
| and died. I haven't done the autopsy yet.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Here's a build log of a recent e-ink project of mine, using
| ChatGPT and Rust: https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX
| unshavedyak wrote:
| How much did that run you? That looks awesome and i'd buy one
| right now if someone made this or made it easy for me to make
| it
| sho_hn wrote:
| About $550 total. $400+shipping for the panel, $100+shipping
| for the Halbe frame with low reflection glass and a
| passepartout cut to size, $50 for the other bits.
|
| There's a 10.3" panel for half the price. With an IKEA frame
| etc. you can probably do a slightly smaller $250 build.
| hultner wrote:
| That's terrific, quite inspiring!
|
| A couple of questions, if that is okay; How much did all of it
| run you down in the end? How do you recharge the battery? Did
| you consider adding a USB-C charge port somewhere? How much
| does it cost you to use the ChatGPT-API?
| sho_hn wrote:
| (1) See my reply to your sibling re build cost rundown :-)
|
| (2) If you take a close look at the build, the module at the
| bottom is a little BMS board with a USB-C connector for
| charging!
|
| That said, I made the battery detachable with glue-on velcro
| pads and also have a Riden bench PSU with a very convenient
| battery charging mode. Often I don't bother with a USB
| receptacle and charging circuit for DIY projects and just go
| that route.
|
| (3) I currently use the gpt-3.5-turbo model on the OpenAI,
| which at present costs $0.002 for 1000 tokens. 1000 tokens
| are about 750 words. I make between 8 and 16 API calls to the
| OpenAI API for an update, with an in/out total of about
| 6000-8000 tokens on average (mainly because I am submitting
| the original article texts). I update the newspaper once a
| day in the morning. The total monthly cost is very low.
| xvector wrote:
| It sucks that eink is still so ridiculously expensive. I recently
| had to pay around 2k for a 32" eink device. Bonkers pricing.
| muyuu wrote:
| yep, even 13~14in bare e-ink screens are the price of mid-range
| tablets
|
| I guess the market isn't quite there
| throwoutway wrote:
| It's usually explained as being "the patents are owned by a
| company squeezing every cent of licensing rights". I wonder
| when those patents expire
| ra423 wrote:
| Can you share the images of the device?
| andai wrote:
| Woah, that's TV size, I didn't know they made those. What are
| you using it for, what's it like?
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| Yep, there are some Chinese manufacturers making them; I
| occasionally see information popping up on them on e-reader
| devices news websites. As you can see though, still not
| cheap.
| Animats wrote:
| Here are some of the larger e-ink displays.[1] No prices
| given. They're being pitched to cities as bus stop displays,
| because they can be run from a small solar panel. It might
| make sense for that, because having power run to a bus stop
| sign probably costs more than an expensive E-ink panel.
|
| I notice that some Alibaba sellers of similar displays copied
| some of their images from that site.
|
| [1] https://www.smartcity-displays.com/large-format-e-ink-
| displa...
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| Boston's got some of the solar-powered ones, I've seen them
| late 2022: https://blog.eink.com/bostons-ink
|
| Looks like they were also using them for transit at one
| point, but I haven't seen these myself:
| https://www.mbta.com/projects/solar-powered-e-ink-signs
| harvey9 wrote:
| You still need the bus data sign illuminated at night, and
| bus stops have plenty of room on top of the shelter for a
| larger solar panel.
| userbinator wrote:
| The colour is surprising --- the images displayed on them don't
| look like they're grayscale.
|
| _It only has 64kb of flash onboard, so [Aaron] devised a clever
| compression technique that enabled him to store complex images on
| the displays._
|
| Note that an EPD itself is a "write only" memory with no minimum
| clock rate, so images can be streamed directly over the network
| to it.
| jtbarrett wrote:
| The displays can show black, white and red. He picked a good
| image for that palette. Still, the dithering was surprisingly
| effective.
| stavros wrote:
| Dithering is amazing. I built a display to show my calendar:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-timeframe/
|
| When testing it out, I tried to show a grayscale image,
| because the display supports four tones, but it came out
| horrible. Then I displayed a dithered two-tone image (black
| and white) and it was much, much better:
|
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-
| timeframe/dithered.j...
|
| I wonder if there are any arbitrary-palette dithering
| algorithms that I could try, it would be great to be able to
| use the other two tones and still dither.
| TylerE wrote:
| Sounds like the early two color process in Hollywood... they
| got red (for skin tones) and a sort of teal blue green that
| could sorta do plants and sorta do sky, but wasn't real
| convincing at either.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| They should have used orange and blue https://tvtropes.org/
| pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContra...
| lordfrito wrote:
| It's cool but not really "wall paper".
| Sk012 wrote:
| Add comment
| xd1936 wrote:
| I'm a simple man. I upvote any eInk/ePaper project I see on HN.
| Love this.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| taf2 wrote:
| I wonder if E-Paper could be a suitable camouflage in Ukraine to
| hide from drones? Most of the drone clips I've seen are with
| visible light but maybe are the drones using other light sources?
| If not a massive epaper display or even many smaller ones...
| could be feasible camouflage?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Camouflage works better on things that aren't moving. And it
| wouldn't stop infrared, laser designators, or radar.
|
| The best camouflage from the ground is to fly low and have a
| color scheme that is difficult to read against the sky. Gray
| works well.
| [deleted]
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