[HN Gopher] Show HN: Building a 42-inch E-Ink frame for generati...
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Show HN: Building a 42-inch E-Ink frame for generative art
Author : ea016
Score : 492 points
Date : 2023-10-10 18:56 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eliot.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (eliot.blog)
| landgenoot wrote:
| Love it. But way too expensive, especially because we don't know
| what the quality / price will do in the future when the patents
| expire.
|
| For that price, you can buy a 42" color printer.
| tonoto wrote:
| Fantastic project, thanks for sharing! Prohibitive pricing for
| home use, but I would really love to have that as a picture frame
| on the wall. One can dream for the future..
| xnx wrote:
| I thought I'd heard of all the dithering options from
| https://tannerhelland.com/2012/12/28/dithering-eleven-algori...,
| but surprised to read there's another one
| (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/3288) that was used in this
| project.
| cubefox wrote:
| Blue noise dithering seems to be a form of ordered dithering
| which is better than other forms of ordered dithering, but in
| terms of quality it is not as good as error diffusion dithering
| (look up the Wikipedia comparison on the statue of David). But
| blue noise dithering has the advantage that it can be
| implemented as a pixel shader, unlike error diffusion. So it
| can e.g. be used for video games. So I think for the picture
| frame error diffusion would have been a bit better.
| datene wrote:
| This excellent article on dithering also explains blue noise in
| a simple way
|
| https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/
| lionkor wrote:
| That's a very neat project. The only issue I have with it is that
| it's basically a passive energy waster. It produces images by
| burning GPU power, when it could instead curate art from an
| existing amount of art (of which there is more to ever go
| through, almost in any category). Some projects that use AI could
| be replaced with other tech and be much more efficient.
| 93po wrote:
| How is this any different than using a GPU to play games?
| They're both something people enjoy. Should I go play with
| sticks in the yard instead?
| bee_rider wrote:
| They should render these images when there's excess renewable
| energy, then store them for later.
| lawlessone wrote:
| This is just a little too close to NFT art for me lol.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| My home computer batch processing prompts thru Stable Diffusion
| can generate and then nicely upscale images at at rate of about
| 1 every 5 seconds. Or 360 per half-hour. Which means a newly
| image on the display every day to look at for a year in just an
| half hour of computation.
|
| At about 300W of GPU + 120W of PC, that is 420W * 0.5hrs =
| 0.210kWhr. This is a rounding error on my monthly electric
| bill. About six cents.
|
| I've spent more energy than that likely just sitting and
| reading HackerNews this week.
| whoibrar wrote:
| I would like all my future electricity bills to be calculated
| in terms of "HackerNews Read time"
| GaggiX wrote:
| I think it simply uses some API to generate the images.
| evrimoztamur wrote:
| How does the API generate the images then?
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe it can use multiple data centers, so there's always
| one running on renewable energy.
| GaggiX wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if it's really cheap.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Magic?
| dheera wrote:
| It doesn't take a lot of GPU to produce one image, and you
| could always just keep a single image on the wall for a longer
| time if you want to reduce that impact.
|
| You can also have it not produce images at night or when you
| are not around the house.
|
| Lots of ways to save energy. The impact of an image every few
| hours or whatever is nanoscule compared to your transportation
| and heating needs.
|
| (Also if your apartment uses electric resistive heating, fire
| away with your GPU, you're just producing images in the process
| of producing heat instead of passing it through a resistor.
| It's no less efficient.)
| xnx wrote:
| The cost (and environmental impact) of generated images is a
| rounding error compared to the $7,500+ project cost. As an
| aside, I wonder how much smaller and faster a diffusion model
| could be if trained (quantized?) to 4-bit grayscale images.
| 1-6 wrote:
| $2,500 for a display isn't too bad considering that real art
| can cost much more.
| archontes wrote:
| Casey Muratori has a decent blog post on the topic of blue noise
| dithering.
|
| https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0010
| levi0214 wrote:
| This is cool!
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Tablet manufacturers would do well to consider that the picture
| frame is the desirable form factor for E-ink tablets, perhaps
| more so than the iPad style hand held tablet.
|
| Look to what hobbyists are hacking to find commercial
| opportunity.
| 1-6 wrote:
| E-Ink is a classic example of an artificially constrained supply
| chain designed to compete with far more advanced technologies.
| Aeolun wrote:
| You can hardly manufacture 1000 if only 20 will ever be sold.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Posh frames e-ink friends! Here's my generative newspaper:
| https://i.imgur.com/tD1t9u3.jpeg
|
| My wallet stopped at 13.3" though :)
|
| Update for those who saw me post it before: I recently charged
| the battery for the first time since hanging it in March, which
| met my expectations.
|
| Shout-out also to the people at Halbe Rahmen, the best picture
| frames in the world.
| dheera wrote:
| Wondering if you have by any chance shared code and plans for
| the long battery life setup?
|
| Mine is still wired but I'm thinking of using ESP32 + deep
| sleep.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I _still_ haven't set the GitHub repo to public :( Real-life
| intruded in a major way (first baby).
|
| esp32 + deep sleep + external RTC is what this is using. I
| posted some of my experiences with getting it as low as I
| could here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37663913
|
| Here's a few more pics: https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX
|
| I found the mention of Blue Noise Dithering in this project
| quite interesting! I've not put a lot of effort into picking
| the nicest possible dithering method (just a basic Floyd-
| Steinberg) for the embedded article photos, partly because
| the whole newspaper look didn't seem to warrant it, but it
| might be worth taking stock of what the latest on dithering
| is.
| yohannparis wrote:
| Where is the information on how you built it?
| sho_hn wrote:
| There's some info on my Hackaday project listing:
| https://hackaday.io/project/190478-hyepaper
|
| Also the album link in the other comment.
| lawlessone wrote:
| You could really gaslight house guests with this. Just deny
| it's changed.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Do you think people are fooled by any tech these days?
|
| I suspect people expect everything to be magic now.
| sho_hn wrote:
| So far my guests are mostly puzzled by "Why'd you frame
| that?" until I tell them it will in fact change and isn't
| my most prized selection of news articles :-)
| ancorevard wrote:
| What was the total costs of the components?
| sho_hn wrote:
| If I recall right, about $500 for the electronics and
| $150-ish for the picture frame (it's a nice one with
| anti-reflective UV filter glass, because at the time I
| wasn't sure where I'd hang it and e-ink can be
| susceptible to UV light).
| yohannparis wrote:
| This is quite an achievement. I really like the curation
| and the process to make it a front-page. You automated your
| own editorial news. Love it!
| sho_hn wrote:
| Thank you!
| jnjnnksjnxjjsj wrote:
| [flagged]
| worldmerge wrote:
| Your company seems really cool! I love the maker spirit! Sick
| flip dot display, I have some from AlfaZeta, would love to get a
| bus one but they seem rare in the US. Photoroom seems like a fun
| place to work.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Cool thing would be to listen to the speech in the room and use
| it as a prompt
| bazeblackwood wrote:
| Got excited, but then you qualified it was AI.
|
| AI art is not generative art, it is reductive "art". It requires
| samples of the art style you wish to cop, and it always produces
| something artificial and less than the sum of its parts.
|
| On the other hand, generative art is procedural, and represents
| the thought process of a human being.
|
| Better luck making meaning.
| chefandy wrote:
| You'll get downvoted into the earth's core here expressing the
| philosophical stance that asking a computer to make art from
| other people's art isn't actually making art. I wonder if
| they'd commission a painting with a 50 word description, and
| after a few rounds of alterations when it was finally
| delivered, cross out the painter's signature and add their own.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I despise how some companies opted to scrape artists works
| without their permission.
|
| But aren't the prompts used also representative of a thought
| process? The chosen network architecture and the choices of
| images used to train also represent thought.
| dsp_person wrote:
| I remember seeing those Thinkpad X230 mods with an eink display
| and how a challenge was availability of the specific discontinued
| e-ink screen of the right size.
|
| The mfg from the article has a 13.3" screen that would be fun to
| try a mod with:
| https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/13.3''ePaperDisp...
|
| and impressive 1600 x 1200 pixels
| nealeratzlaff wrote:
| This is really cool! I've wanted to buy something similar for a
| long time, but in RGB. I know Samsung makes the Frame, but its
| not hackable, and its a waste of power. I don't ever want the
| thing to function as a TV, just a way to display generative art.
|
| At one time there apparently was this:
| https://mono.frm.fm/en/shop/ But the price was crazy. There's not
| much out there in terms of appropriately priced digital picture
| frames.
| chromakode wrote:
| Awesome project! I'd strongly recommend swapping in some
| antireflective glass. There's a couple affordable options with
| less than 1% reflection [1][2]. Made a huge difference vs. stock
| acrylic on my frames that get lots of environmental light.
|
| [1] https://www.groglass.com/product/artglass-ar-70/
|
| [2] https://www.framedestination.com/prod/sh/ultravue-
| uv70-pictu...
| sho_hn wrote:
| I second this recommendation! Frame manufacturers sometimes
| call these products "museum glass", which combines anti-
| reflective properties with UV filters, usually with price
| points at 70% and 92% filters.
|
| Some E-ink panels can be somewhat susceptible to UV light and
| perform better under a filter. You will sometimes find warnings
| in data sheets about refresh performance in direct sunlight,
| and danger of long-term permanent damage. Some of E-ink's
| signage products have, I think, filter layers built-in.
|
| But also if you're using a passepartout like in this project,
| and the frame will hang in sunlight and you're not sure how the
| paper will perform, it's worth springing for the UV protection
| to avoid yellowing over time.
| imnotdang wrote:
| [flagged]
| kevinpiac wrote:
| Well done!
| robszumski wrote:
| This is great! I would love to see a sample of the color input
| images and the resulting image on the display.
| itishappy wrote:
| It's monochrome.
| robszumski wrote:
| The video has a lot of glare and the dithering seems like an
| important part. I wanted to contrast that process with the
| original.
| ea016 wrote:
| OP here. Here's a comparison with an input image vs gray
| levels vs dithered: https://imgur.com/a/osE57eh
|
| When displayed on the frame you can barely see the
| dithering. Interestingly you see the jpeg compression
| artifacts a lot more
| adolph wrote:
| In terms of battery powering it, I wonder how many amps it takes
| to power a refresh. The Salt driver is 12v, which I guess can be
| shut down between refreshes.
| sho_hn wrote:
| In my e-ink newspaper, I have the driver board behind a relay
| (because it had an annoying idle current draw even when you
| tell the driver chip to go to standby, and they even added an
| annoying power LED ...) and do just fully shut it off between
| refreshes.
|
| There's some projects that forego a driver ASIC entirely and
| drive the waveforms directly from a MCU, although I guess this
| large panel has a different voltage domain.
| xnx wrote:
| Well done. There would be so many more cool applications of e-ink
| if it wasn't $2,500 for a 42" display:
| https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/42''MonochromeeP...
| (minimum order 3)
|
| For comparison a 42" full-color 60fps TV with remote, speakers,
| wifi, etc. etc. is $140.
|
| It seems like the patent holder could be making a lot more money
| if they dropped the price.
| slg wrote:
| Who is going to do the math and figure out how long you need to
| hypothetically have these screens on before the power costs of
| the TV actually make up the $2360 difference in price?
| graypegg wrote:
| Hmm. I wonder what the whole-sale price is? A TV with wifi is
| partly subsidized by the ads you see when you turn it on. This
| 2500$ display seems like it's for small run signage, so they
| know it's being sold for government/business use. Probably a
| bit inflated.
|
| Does Rakutan/Amazon/Pocketbook really pay a similar cost/size
| ratio for the panels on their ereaders? I hope not!
| lawlessone wrote:
| >so they know it's being sold for government/business use.
| Probably a bit inflated.
|
| You just reminded me, a few years ago i wanted to buy a
| transparent screen for a DIY project. The company said they
| couldn't sell it to me because they're b2b.
|
| I think it was both a volume thing and a tax thing.. and
| possibly a liability thing.
| tomcam wrote:
| Or they may have no procedure for selling one-offs to end
| users. It's not uncommon.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| The E-ink patent holder is one of the most egregious cases of
| patent trolls. They won't lower the prices.
| bmitc wrote:
| When do the patents end? They've been around for a while now.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> For comparison a 42" full-color 60fps TV with remote,
| speakers, wifi, etc. etc. is $140._
|
| Because it's a lot easier and cheaper to manufacture large LCD
| panels at scale than E-ink film.
|
| _> It seems like the patent holder could be making a lot more
| money if they dropped the price._
|
| I don't know any company or shareholders that would say no to
| making more money so if this would actually be true then it
| would, but that's not the reality.
|
| The FUD that large e-ink displays are expensive because of some
| patent conspiracy needs to stop.
|
| Large e-ink screens are expensive because manufacturing yields
| are very low and so are sales volumes.
|
| Source: worked with e-ink on products with big and small
| displays
|
| Edit: So I'm saying the truth and getting down voted for it?
| Fine, then feel free to keep believing whatever you think is
| the truth. No point in discussing it further.
| xnx wrote:
| I didn't realize e-ink manufacturing was such a tricky
| process. I would think there would be a lot of applications
| for larger e-ink panels even if they had a number of stuck
| pixels.
| bigfudge wrote:
| I think it would be interesting to hear from an insider (with
| examples/evidence etc) what the mechanism is for eink to be
| more expensive. I/e/ the fundamentals for why this is the
| case beyond economies of scale. Given this history of the
| patent it looks to the outsider like this probably isn't the
| case and short sighted rent seeking is the problem. Would
| love to be wrong though, so if you do have a good explanation
| then here would be a great place to air it. I've not seen
| anything elsewhere...
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| I'm sure the ad-driven subsidy on TVs plays a huge part. TV
| prices have declined as "dumb" TVs have been phased out of
| the market. A more niche tool like a large e-ink display
| might not make as much sense from to price this way since
| ad systems need large networks of users to be relevant.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| people underestimate how long e-ink stagnated: it seems
| hard to imagine an alternate timeline where e-ink had
| taken the place of current LED outdoor billboards for
| example... until you realize we were decades away from
| LEDs being cheap and robust enough for outdoor signage
| when eInk was already fundamentally similar enough the
| tech we have now
|
| The company that owned the e-ink patents couldn't scale
| properly until they were acquired around 2010: in an
| alternate timeline where development open enough in the
| early 2000s, we might have ended up with eInk display
| modules large enough to be assembled into incrementally
| larger and more profit driving devices
|
| Even now you see that with eInk store tags for example:
| imagine if the profit they're driving now had arrived 20
| years ago and gotten re-invested
| callalex wrote:
| I remember seeing e-ink price tags at Kohls (American
| department store) as early as 2004-2005.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You probably saw the LCD based price tags which have been
| around for ages:
| https://www.fixturescloseup.com/2020/10/29/kohls-sloped-
| digi...
|
| That said e-ink price tags aren't new, them being
| stupidly cheap
| (https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804488587338.html)
| and increasingly wide spread in availability is the
| relatively new part.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Those outdoor LED billboards can burn in hell. They are
| distracting when driving and are awful when a pedestrian.
|
| If I knew an easy way to disable them, I'd be doing it.
| mikewarot wrote:
| As a check against this, I looked for 42" computer
| monitors, which don't display ads. There are $600 4k 42"
| monitors in stock at CDW, for example. The same size 4k
| SmartTVs are about $300. So, yes... there appears to be
| about a 50% discount for TVs vs Computer Displays, part
| of which could be a subsidy, most of which I suspect is
| volume driving down the cost of production.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| TVs also spy on you. That data offsets some of the cost.
| They also often have lots of other compromises, from
| chroma subsampling to overscanning, that make them
| unsuitable as computer monitors.
| komali2 wrote:
| Double check the refresh rate, input latency, and color
| gamut for your comparisons. Computer monitor user
| concerns are quite different than tv screen users.
| solardev wrote:
| I didn't vote either way, but this is news to me. As long as
| e-ink has been around, all I've ever heard were the patent
| issues. If you're saying it's actually manufacturing
| difficulties, can you provide any links or additional info? I
| believe you, but as someone not familiar with the field, I'd
| love to learn more both to counteract the patent narrative
| and just for my own curiosity. What is hard about e-ink at
| scale that other products don't share?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Low market interest
| maushu wrote:
| With those prices I'm not surprised.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >As long as e-ink has been around, all I've ever heard were
| the patent issues. If you're saying it's actually
| manufacturing difficulties, can you provide any links or
| additional info?
|
| For the record, the "patents" think has no links to back it
| up either.
|
| But to answer your question: E-ink screens are less than
| $100 (depending on the size), that's already pretty cheap.
| They're only expensive _when compared to_ LCDs _. LCDs are
| produced at a rate of_ billions per quarter*, with ~6
| billion smartphone owners, and lots of them having multiple
| LCD devices e.g. laptop/desktop screen, work computer's
| screen, supermarket kiosk, tablet, smartwatch, car screen,
| etc.
|
| In contrast, e-ink screens have basically three
| applications: e-readers, e-notes (which is basically just
| an e-reader with a stylus), and supermarket pricetags.
| E-readers/e-notes are a luxury item that you don't need if
| you already have a smartphone/iPad. There's just no economy
| of scale for e-ink; not compared to LCDs.
|
| Because there's no economy scale or obvious new markets to
| expand into, there's not much budget for R&D, so the entire
| field moves slowly.
| tough wrote:
| Sounds kinda like a problem looking for a solution, you
| could emagine e-ink taking off for a lot of thing sthat
| currently are not digital, but it would need to be also
| cheaper.
|
| If e-ink was x100 cheaper, we could use it in x1000 more
| use-cases
| adql wrote:
| even just x10 cheaper would put it at double the price of
| LCD and that already has uses
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| One thing I don't understand - why are the iPhone screens
| that can run in display mode run at 1hz a feature - what's
| hard about driving a display typically driven at 120hz(?) at
| 1hz to save on power difficult? Or it's not and the it's a
| differentiating feature price.
| solardev wrote:
| Is the refresh really a big power draw vs the backlight or
| even the pixels themselves? I think the thing about e-ink
| is that it's a chemical producing/retaining the pigment,
| rather than a light source. So even when it's off, it
| retains its current colors. When a LED is off, it's just...
| nothing.
|
| But you still have a point. Even if a LED display has
| "only" a 2 or 3 day battery life, that's still pretty huge
| to mere hours.
|
| How do smart watches (like the Garmins with 1-week
| batteries) do it?
| adql wrote:
| > How do smart watches (like the Garmins with 1-week
| batteries) do it?
|
| https://sharpdevices.com/memory-lcd/
| pxeboot wrote:
| The Garmin watches with 1+ week battery life have memory-
| in-pixel displays. Like E-Ink, this seems like another
| technology that could be amazing if they were available
| in larger sizes with lower prices.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I didn't downvote... but if you're being downvoted it's
| probably for ignoring the flywheel effect needed to scale
| novel tech in the market.
|
| Yes e-ink has high wastage, and yes demand is low, but having
| had a strong arming expensive patent holder didn't help the
| situation. The patents are actually expiring/expired but at
| some point the damage is already done.
|
| A great corollarly to e-ink is 3d printers: they were very
| expensive, very low volume products that needed to recoup
| expensive development costs... but when the 200 lbs gorilla
| sitting on the market in the form of patents started to die
| down, a lot more players start to iterate, which unlocked
| advancements, which made things cheaper and more accessible,
| which improved demand, which then incentivized more
| advancements... and now we have $400 printers that outperform
| $10,000 printers from not that long ago.
|
| Most display tech starts high wastage, low demand. Patents
| aren't a guaranteed death, but e-ink was just a bit too far
| off the path for absolutely required innovations to overcome
| the added resistance. In the mean time other technologies got
| better: sunlight performance of non-eink displays has
| improved dramatically for example.
|
| Now the moment has probably passed and e-ink is doomed to
| stay a niche sideline product as a result.
| solardev wrote:
| > sunlight performance of non-eink displays has improved
| dramatically for example.
|
| Can you talk more about this? My phones and laptops are
| still as bad as ever in direct sun. Did I miss some major
| development...?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You should upgrade your phones and laptops then: Apple
| just released a phone that does 2000 nits outdoors, and
| similarly the MBP can dip into its 1000 nit sustained HDR
| brightness rating for SDR content if in direct sunlight
|
| In reality this is one of those slow burn deals where the
| improvements in anti-glare coatings, bonding between
| digitizer and displays, and brightness come slowly enough
| that it's easy to take for granted just how awful old
| displays used to be.
|
| We've come a long way from the days of hazy plastic
| suspended millimeters above the actual display, which in
| turn had its own coating with a different refractive
| index leaving two layers of reflections to deal with
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It's better than it used to be, but I don't think it's
| because of higher brightness. No amount of it can make
| blacks visible in direct sunlight.
| solardev wrote:
| Oh, I thought there was some revolutionary coating I
| missed out on...
|
| I actually have a M2 MacBook Pro and a Pixel 7, both of
| which get decently bright, but neither of which is really
| usable under direct glare. And in XDR mode, the SDR
| colors get super washed out. HDR is a gimmick as far as I
| can tell.
|
| I'd trade either for a usable transflective display or a
| regular matte screen from early 2000s Dell. I don't think
| the answer to glare is to just make the display brighter.
| That's liking shining a flashlight into your eyes so the
| sun doesn't seem as bright...
|
| I tried a 3m anti glare coating, and that worked well for
| keeping out direct light, but it darkened the screen so
| much it was barely visible at max brightness.
|
| The Steam Deck had some etched glass thing that seemed a
| little better (maybe the iMac too?) but I still wasn't
| able to use it in direct sun.
|
| The only display I've used so far that was actually
| comfortable outside in the sun are e-ink ones, with matte
| screens also somewhat usable in shade on a sunny day. My
| M2 MacBook? Useless outside and barely usable under
| office florescent light. I hate the Apple glare. Makes
| movies look nice in the dark but useless for day to day
| office work, IMO.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| What you described is EDR: where non HDR content is
| artificially limited to allow HDR content to contrast
| better. In sunlight the screen will stay in SDR and use
| HDR brightness levels without any tweaks, which doesn't
| result in washing anything out
|
| > That's liking shining a flashlight into your eyes so
| the sun doesn't seem as bright...
|
| ... that's exactly the point of e-Ink: with minimal power
| you get brightness that rivals the sunlight you're
| holding the device in.
|
| With infinitely efficient OLEDs, we'd just crank the
| brightness on the lit pixels high enough to match the
| brightness of a white piece of paper in sunlight and have
| a better e-ink: unfortunately in the real world that'd
| generate more heat and take more power than mobile
| devices can afford right now.
|
| At the end of the day we have both matte _and glossy_
| displays with reflective characteristics that rival old
| school matte displays because of improvements made across
| the stack... but nostalgia makes us assume things were
| very different than they were.
| solardev wrote:
| > What you described is EDR: where non HDR content is
| artificially limited to allow HDR content to contrast
| better. In sunlight the screen will stay in SDR and use
| HDR brightness levels without any tweaks, which doesn't
| result in washing anything out
|
| What do you mean by this? Are you saying the Macbook has
| a special display mode that only activates when it
| detects sunlight (as in lumens? or?)?
|
| > With infinitely efficient OLEDs, we'd just crank the
| brightness on the lit pixels high enough to match the
| brightness of a white piece of paper in sunlight and have
| a better e-ink: unfortunately in the real world that'd
| generate more heat and take more power than mobile
| devices can afford right now.
|
| Are you talking about the contrast ratio? I meant more
| that high brightness with a direct light source into the
| eyes can be pretty uncomfortable compared to reflected
| diffuse sunlight. If there's a way to get the contrast of
| LEDs to a similar readability of paper & e-ink without
| needing to blast my eyes, that'd be great. The few OLED
| displays I've used seem to have that more of that effect
| (still not as nice as e-ink), but I don't have a monitor
| that size either.
|
| > At the end of the day we have both matte and glossy
| displays with reflective characteristics that rival old
| school matte displays because of improvements made across
| the stack... but nostalgia makes us assume things were
| very different than they were.
|
| Like what? Are you saying my current Macbook is actually
| more readable in sunlight than old matte displays, I just
| don't realize it...? If so, hmm, I'm dubious but I will
| take it out again and try to compare it again without
| nostalgia, as much as I can. Or is there an objective
| measure of sunlight readability I can refer to?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| > What do you mean by this? Are you saying the Macbook
| has a special display mode that only activates when it
| detects sunlight (as in lumens? or?)?
|
| Yes, if automatic brightness is on, the screen will
| exceed its standard SDR range in daylight, just like the
| iPhone. Otherwise you need special software to manually
| increase the SDR brightness into that higher range,
| maxing out at 1600 nits.
|
| > I meant more that high brightness with a direct light
| source into the eyes can be pretty uncomfortable compared
| to reflected diffuse sunlight
|
| The discomfort would come from a mismatch in brightness:
| a 2000 nit screen sounds incredibly painful to look at
| because in normal conditions your pupils are adjusted to
| an indoor room and you're looking at a 2,000 nit screen,
| which is terrible.
|
| But ambient light on a clear day is something like
| _30,000 nits_ , so your pupils are already significantly
| narrowed: a "mere" 2000 nit screen will still look kind
| of dim if anything.
|
| e-Ink sits around 40%-50% reflectivity and still looks
| fine in those conditions.
|
| (Blue light, contrast, and the nature of the reflections
| themselves also play a role so it's not as simple as
| "more nits is better", but you need to be in a certain
| ballpark of brightness to even play, which is why I'm
| saying old devices aren't in the running here.)
|
| _
|
| > Like what? Are you saying my current Macbook is
| actually more readable in sunlight than old matte
| displays, I just don't realize it...? If so, hmm, I'm
| dubious but I will take it out again and try to compare
| it again without nostalgia, as much as I can. Or is there
| an objective measure of sunlight readability I can refer
| to?
|
| It's hard to capture in a single measure because there's
| two parts to the equation:
|
| - reflections from the surface
|
| - being bright enough for your eyes to make out details
| at all
|
| Back in the day the brightness would be roughly equal for
| both a glossy and a matte option, so matte would be
| strictly better.
|
| Now brightness has advanced enough that a newer glossy
| panel + modern anti-glare coating + modern bonding
| techniques are. enough to overcome the difference in
| reflections vs the old screens.
|
| You should look at even the glossy non-Retina (which was
| almost universally hated) vs the glossy Retina to see how
| dramatic the changes in anti-glare tech were at some
| points in the last decade:
| https://cdtobie.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/reduced-
| reflectance...
|
| A modern matte screen would have the advantage if it had
| the same brightness, but afaik no one actually makes a
| matte screen that gets as bright as the new XDR Macbooks
| do: the closest are all glossy displays too.
| rnk wrote:
| Great points. Plus almost everyone always gets downvoted
| for everything, then it comes back. I always wonder why
| many of my "brilliant" comments get downvoted, but often
| come back by the next day.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Downvotes are emotionally driven, and limited to -4 (I
| think)... upvotes on the other hand, have no apparent
| limit.
| simple10 wrote:
| Sometimes patent holder enter into initial deals with
| manufacturers and then can't lower the royalty price for
| other manufacturers. Even if they'd make more from higher
| volume, the initial manufacture might be serving high-end
| customers and doesn't want other manufactures entering the
| market at a lower price. So they refuse to agree to a lower
| patent royalty even though it would save them money. It's
| counterintuitive, but rationale under certain circumstances.
| This is pure conjecture for the e-ink patent on my part, but
| I've seen it first hand for other products.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > So I'm saying the truth and getting down voted for it?
|
| Don't worry about that. Posts that go against the general
| opinion always get downvoted at first. But if it is
| insightful and not demonstrably wrong, the upvotes will win.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Question for you. I always saw the problem as: only one
| company or limited companies can manufacture them. Those
| companies are having issues manufacturing them so the price
| is high. But if more companies were allowed to manufacture
| them, wouldn't we see more people solving production problems
| and lowering prices? If there is one company with low yields
| and high prices, if everyone is allowed to make them then
| there is a monetary gain for new entrants willing to solve
| yield problems. But if things are heavily patent encumbered
| then the whole world is at the whim of one organization to
| succeed or fail - there is no competition.
|
| That is to say, it's not that they're charging high prices
| out of greed, but that there's no competition forcing prices
| down.
| wayfinder wrote:
| Not OP but what you're saying is absolutely true.
|
| But first someone has to invent it. Nobody's gonna spend a
| few thousand or million dollars to invent something unless
| they get their money and more back, so that's the point of
| patents.
|
| And if they patent something and don't capitalize on it
| enough, that's their loss, because they had to detail their
| invention in their patent application and that's public
| information. Patents last only 20 years and for most
| industries, that's not very long.
|
| (That said, I think software patents are a different beast.
| Because 20 years in software engineering is like 100 years
| in civil engineering, for example, since software
| engineering is like a few thousand years younger discipline
| than civil.)
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Actually I think patents do far more harm than good in
| our economy. In aggregate they slow down innovation
| significantly by carving a huge moat around every new
| advancement. Without patents, there's still loads of
| natural incentives to innovate. The difference is that
| instead of fewer larger leaps, there would be many more
| smaller leaps. You can always make money if you develop a
| new technology in secret and then start selling it before
| your competitors have any chance of going in to
| production. And then there's always reason to support
| public investment in research. But patents take new
| innovations and then legally prevent the hundreds of
| potential innovators who would have built on that idea
| and improved it from going anywhere near it. Most
| innovation is incremental and with patents, that
| innovation is blocked from the market. This is a huge
| loss for our economy. The only singular function of a
| patent is to prevent innovation. (Legally, that is all
| they do.) The idea that the follow on effect of this
| restriction is a net gain in innovation is always taken
| on faith. It's a story told over and over again. But when
| you look at things like open source, you can see how many
| of the arguments for patents simply aren't true.
| [deleted]
| squigz wrote:
| > I don't know any company or shareholders that would say no
| to making more money so if this would actually be true then
| it would, but that's not the reality.
|
| I've never quite understood this sort of thinking. Companies
| aren't perfect omniscient systems - the people in charge of
| various companies make poor decisions all the time, based on
| the same human biases we all have. So yes, it's entirely
| possible they could make more money that way, but executives
| simply hear "Lower the price" and run away. I'm not saying
| that's certainly what's happening, but this implication that
| a company could possibly _only_ do the thing that 's most
| beneficial to it is... strange, and very common thinking.
| pseg134 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dantheman wrote:
| You say that, but patents traditionally hold back progress.
| If you look at the amount of horse power generated by steam
| engines - it spiked after the patents expired.
|
| There are probably many techniques and processes that would
| be tried and developed if it wasn't locked up by patents.
| kakwa_ wrote:
| Devil's advocate, but one might argue patents actually
| incentivize progress.
|
| Without patents, there is far less incentive to seek
| progress. What's the point for a for-profit organization to
| spend resources on Research, just to see your innovation
| immediately copied?
|
| And if said for-profit organization still innovate, it has
| a strong incentive to keep its innovation as secret as
| possible. Patents by contrast, incentivize sharing, on one
| hand it makes the innovation public knowledge, and on the
| other licensing agreements usually exist.
|
| And in the end, 20 years is really short compared to human
| history.
|
| Are patents an ideal solution? Hell no, this system is too
| easily abused (patent trolling, patent thickets, etc), and
| feels really wrong at times (patents on life-saving drugs
| for example). But so far, that's the best compromise we
| manage to mostly agree on in terms of worldwide IP
| recognition.
| adql wrote:
| The time period is asinine; 20 years is forever in most
| industries
| kakwa_ wrote:
| Not really. In a lot of industries, +20 years old tech
| and even +20 years old equipment are normal and
| competitive.
|
| In tech, yes, 20 years is a lot, but that's more of an
| exception.
|
| And imho, it's slowing down: A 20 years old computer,
| like an Athlon 64, today, could probably run most of the
| usual basic workloads (mail, text, word processing,
| browsing) with up to date software. It would be slow, but
| it would work. An 1983 years old computer in 2003 was
| just obsolete and completely unfit to run any of the
| usual 2003 software.
| mahdi7d1 wrote:
| I guess people only care and notice theire own prefrences. I
| never thought about 42" eink display but I'm constantly wishing
| for the price of 10" and 13" modules to drop cause that's the
| usecase I'm interested in. I think their demand would be much
| much more compared to a 42" panel (what even is the use of such
| thing) so they can benefit from scale.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I've read (probably on prior HN discussions about this?) that
| the manufacturing process still has major yield issues-- when
| you're making small displays, you can slice around the bad
| pixels and not have to waste as much, but making a large
| display requires a huge sheet to all be perfect.
|
| Then again, if that was really it, surely there'd be a market
| for people who want a 42" e-ink display and are willing to
| accept some proportion of bad pixels in exchange for a deep
| discount. Which really shouldn't matter much, particularly for
| applications where distance-viewing is the expectation.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| The first flat panel tvs started in the $x000 price range. I'm
| amazed an eink display this big is actually affordable (minimum
| quantities aside).
| qingcharles wrote:
| My first 40" flat panel TV ran something around $6000 IIRC.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| E-ink has been around for a long time. It's not one of the
| first panels.
| herpderperator wrote:
| Where does it show the minimum order is 3?
| xnx wrote:
| The article. "Some advanced Google-fu was used to find a
| supplier shipping to Europe. Minimum order quantity: 3
| pieces."
| diggan wrote:
| > if it wasn't $2,500 for a 42" display
|
| Try $3000 :)
|
| > Driving boards are not included in the display module
| package. E Ink Salt kit is designed to support this module
|
| > Salt Driving Board - $500.00 -
| https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/SaltDrivingBoard
| adql wrote:
| Yeah I'd love to have big display/dashboard on a wall that
| isn't acting as extra light in the room but not at those
| prices.
|
| Transflective LCD is other option bit also pretty
| hard/expensive to get a big screen...
| red_hare wrote:
| My dream is, when these finally come down in price, to build a
| dynamic DnD map.
| spullara wrote:
| Why not just put any other kind of display flat and put glass
| over it to protect it?
|
| Edit: Someone has your dream display already :)
| https://www.etsy.com/listing/1463146123/43-4k-dnd-tv-table
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| [flagged]
| jamestanderson wrote:
| I'm sad to see this comment, scoffing at an independent
| creator just selling something cool online. I wonder why
| this reaction? Is it the imagined profit margin? Or just
| the choice of words in the listing?
|
| The listing says it's a 43" 4K Samsung display, which a
| quick look on Amazon shows goes for at least around $270.
| They also offer free shipping, so shipping is effectively
| included in the price. I don't know how much walnut or
| acrylic costs, or desktop CNC's.
|
| The price doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a turnkey
| complete package, since I don't have the skills or tools
| to make this myself.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > The price doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a turnkey
| complete package, since I don't have the skills or tools
| to make this myself.
|
| I have the skills and tools to build this myself. Based
| on some napkin math, materials and labor comes out to
| around $500 give or take. If GP knew anything at all
| about developing and selling physical goods, they'd know
| that the price is about right. Etsy charges non-trivial
| fees, payment processors charge fees, marketing costs
| money, wear and tear on tools, taxes, insurance,
| warranty, customer support, fraud, etc etc etc
| layer8 wrote:
| Well, Apple's 32" Pro Display XDR is $5000, there's always
| something.
| prewett wrote:
| If it's a 4k TV it also has more pixels and better refresh
| rate. And color. But for that extra $2360 you get the feature
| that your image is still there when the power is off. I expect
| that feature would be substantially more costly regardless of
| the patent holder's extra.
| nomel wrote:
| > you get the feature that your image is still there when the
| power is off
|
| How is that a realistic feature? Who is losing power and
| being happy that they spent a few thousand more, nearly 40x,
| than a 36" photo quality print, just so the image can remain
| while their lights are off?
| diogenes4 wrote:
| Rotating the art while not actively producing light is a
| pretty big draw. The power seems like a red herring.
| k1t wrote:
| The point is that it only uses power when changing the
| image, so a small battery can run it for a long time - not
| that it works during a power outage.
|
| (and of course it is a lot easier to change than a printed
| photo)
| nomel wrote:
| For $2,200, you could run a 35W 43" $160 TV for _29
| years_ , if your power is $0.3/kWh. In reality, much
| more, with a dim display at night.
|
| I understand being eco friendly, but that's an absurd,
| entirely negligible, justification.
|
| I would claim the reflective display is the killer
| feature.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Many of e-ink's use cases involve low power environments.
| This is often due to logistics - not cost.
| adql wrote:
| I'd love big reflective/tranflective display but I'd
| imagine because of rarity the prices would also be pretty
| high
| callalex wrote:
| As the person you are replying to clearly stated, it has
| nothing to do with drawing power from a wall socket. It's
| about enabling new uses that work on battery power that
| can last for months/years instead of minutes.
| nomel wrote:
| I see now that my perspective was too bound to the
| context. Thanks.
| malfist wrote:
| But that's not the only benefit of eink.
|
| EInk doesn't have a backlight. So it's easy to see in glaring
| light. It's also not disruptive if so, you want to use it as
| a digital picture frame and you don't want light from the
| display bothering your eyes day and night.
|
| EInk is a more peaceful display technology, and some people
| put a lot of value on that.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Is the control board actually wrong, or is the cable supposed to
| be origami folded for adjustment? A control board that works
| should be really close to the right one if it weren't.
| Dave_Rosenthal wrote:
| I've looked, and it doesn't seem to exist, but I still can't
| believe there isn't an emissive display on the market that can
| just emulate the look of a passive display. (i.e. match the
| 'white' of the display to inbound light)
|
| All you need is a high quality RGB light sensor or three and an
| accurate way to dim a backlight. None of this seems very hard.
| Sure, it wouldn't show the shape of shadows or whatever, but it
| would still be highly effective. Why can't the image just go
| black when I turn the lights off?
| ggm wrote:
| The Samsung art series TV has fooled me in an AirBnB. It took
| me quite a while to realise it wasn't an expensive framed
| print.
|
| It was daylight in a well lit bright room. The frame and
| background were just right to look like modern simple poster
| framing. The minute sun set, of course it stopped looking
| right. Thats when I realized we had a TV after all.
|
| My partner pointed out the art had changed at least two times
| across daylight hours. I had just blanked that out.
| supportengineer wrote:
| >> instantly nerd-snipped
|
| er, what?
| mcphage wrote:
| It's a term from an old XKCD: https://xkcd.com/356/
| supportengineer wrote:
| Oh, snipe not snip.
| ea016 wrote:
| Thanks, fixing the typo :)
| Aspos wrote:
| You have plenty of space behind the screen. Wondering if you
| could harness wifi signal to generate power. Given days between
| changes, perhaps you could harvest enough amperage to make a
| change.
|
| Or maybe you could hide a Qi charger into the wall?
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23181-1
| esafak wrote:
| Samsung sells an LED TV specifically for this use case. Currently
| only at 4K.
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/the-frame/highlights/
| renewiltord wrote:
| A friend has the Samsung Frame and I think you can only
| interface with it via the Samsung SmartThings app. It's quite
| closed. So you need an online thing for the TV and then you
| upload it into their app.
| rjvs wrote:
| They make it superficially closed but it's pretty simple to
| get around it with a USB drive. Really all you have to do is
| ignore their subscription system and size your images to
| match the screen.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Or a Pi
| mholm wrote:
| Yep, it's very locked down, and Art Mode behavior is often
| anti-user to promote their $10/month Art Store subscription.
| There are limited matting options and I believe it
| intentionally crops photos incorrectly, even if you upload in
| the correct aspect ratio. It also takes about a minute to
| scroll down to 'User Art' sections with how slow their UI is.
| rjvs wrote:
| Their Art Store promotion is annoying persistent but not
| actually required if you put images onto a USB and have it
| slurp them up; all you need to do is ignore their requests
| for subscription when setting it up. All that's required is
| to resize them to full screen with your own matte, or you
| can just crop the images to the right aspect ratio.
| Depending upon your desire for fidelity, you could also use
| ML image extension to get the right aspect ratio.
|
| This doesn't get around all the other annoying bugs in the
| firmware of course.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I'm browsing this link for a good 5min. Looks interesting. I
| get that it tries to simulate paper, but I have no idea how.
|
| Even the "explore technology" link has little extra detail. I
| don't even know if it's backlit.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| It's just a tv with a picture frame and some additional
| software/wallpapers
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Thanks. The selling copy in dumb because the product is.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| It's just a TV with a matte screen and a way for Samsung to
| sell you public domain art.
| rjvs wrote:
| The main tech is a very anti-reflective coating; the best
| I've seen on a mainstream TV. It is backlit but in Art Mode
| the backlight is turned down (you can control how much and
| there is an ambient light sensor that fine-tunes your
| choice). The combination of low emission, quite low
| reflection and static content is pretty compelling for me in
| a lit room.
|
| I have the white frame on the bezel against a light-coloured
| wall and when displaying art it's much less imposing on the
| room than an empty black screen. Obviously it uses more power
| than standby but it's also quite a bit less than a dynamic
| screensaver.
|
| Don't know that I'd get another one; the bugs in Samsung's
| software are annoying (I just want it to display the art, or
| a picture from a single HDMI input, how hard can they
| possibly make it?) but perhaps that's standard for modern
| TVs.
| huehehue wrote:
| I have one of these, and only in a very specific environment is
| it convincing as not-a-TV (aside from the concerns of privacy
| and their proprietary app).
|
| Especially at night, I find the backlight makes it painfully
| obvious that it's just a TV and I'd much rather have something
| like e-ink which blends into the surroundings.
| bigfudge wrote:
| They look cool. Would be great to have an oled version
| without a backlight.
| pama wrote:
| LED on oled stands for light emitting diodes, so they are a
| backlight.
| xnx wrote:
| "An OLED display works without a backlight because it
| emits its own visible light."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED
| 4death4 wrote:
| While true, I think the original complaint about the
| backlight was more about the fact that the TV is emitting
| light, which a picture doesn't do. OLEDs don't solve that
| problem unless you want to display a black square.
| [deleted]
| 4death4 wrote:
| The individual pixels (other than the black ones) would
| still emit light so it wouldn't be convincing. A normal
| picture doesn't emit any light.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I would love two wall mounted e-ink displays showing chess boards
| so my 14 year old son could play chess with his grandfather.
|
| I imagine the game keeping track of whose turn it is and being
| able to give voice commands to make moves.
|
| Then they could play games over a longer period of time, maybe
| make one move per day.
| 93po wrote:
| 10 inch is probably workable and is also $2800 more affordable:
|
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-10#products
| jareklupinski wrote:
| what's your budget :)
|
| the Lilygo T5 with Touch screen + a lipo battery would have all
| the hardware you need
|
| just need to port chess to the platform after that
| https://www.hackster.io/Sergey_Urusov/arduino-mega-chess-d54...
|
| figuring out NAT traversal to get them talking to each other
| from each other's homes might be tricky/fun, but there may be
| ways around that...
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Pretty cool at $36.36 USD
|
| https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t5-4-7-inch-e-paper-v2-3
|
| It would be great to be able to buy this in a size that would
| mount easily into common photo frame formats.
|
| Ideally with a battery that could last months and optional
| power.
|
| If I was retired it's the sort of project I'd happily waste
| time on.
| konschubert wrote:
| I am making these displays that come in a wooden frame:
|
| https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-
| cale...
|
| You could render the current state of the chess game to an
| image and serve that image on a URL on the internet. Then
| you can connect the display to that image:
|
| https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-
| calendar/image...
|
| Admittedly that's still a lot of work from your side, and a
| little applet to keep running...
| schlarpc wrote:
| I have a similar display, and also use blue noise dithering. Mine
| is driven in the backend by a web browser, which means I was able
| to abuse CSS and mix-blend-mode to do the dithering for me:
| ha-card::after { content: ""; background-image:
| url(/local/visionect-dither.png); background-repeat:
| repeat; position: absolute; height: 100%;
| width: 100%; display: block; mix-blend-mode:
| multiply; }
|
| The dithering texture used is 128_128/LDR_LLL1_10.png from
| https://github.com/Calinou/free-blue-noise-textures
| ghusbands wrote:
| Looking at the example image in the article for the dithering,
| it does unnecessarily reduce the quality in some areas, like
| the water on the left, the buildings in the bottom left and the
| background on the right.
| lawlessone wrote:
| what are the 3d and 4d textures?
| jalict wrote:
| Usually something like volumetric data, animations, or other
| forms of data packed into something the GPU can swallow. I am
| not sure why you would apply the filters to those kinds.
| webkike wrote:
| (I could be wrong, but here's what I'm guessing) 3D refers to
| RGB, and 4D refers to RGB plus Alpha
| freedomben wrote:
| When are we going to have cheaper e-ink screens available? Anyone
| know if the situation has changed in the last couple of years?
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
| grawlinson wrote:
| Realistically, it'll be when the patents expire.
| eli wrote:
| My understanding is it's much more about demand than patents.
|
| LED panels got cheap because we built factories that pump out
| a _lot_ of them.
| lrem wrote:
| I just glanced, they still want about 500 bucks for the 13"
| screen and half of that for the board to drive it. While I
| have no clue what making the screen at a low scale might
| cost, the board cannot possibly be five times more
| expensive than a Raspberry Pi, can it?
| avianlyric wrote:
| Realistically you're not paying for the hardware when you
| buy the driver board, but rather the software baked into
| those boards.
|
| The waveforms, and the algorithms that create waveforms,
| used to drive eInk displays at reasonable speeds and
| produce high quality images are highly proprietary and
| very difficult to develop. In theory it's easy to make an
| eInk display an image, but doing that in a reasonable
| period of time, when transitioning from potentially any
| starting state, and handling the crosstalk between
| pixels, makes creating good images on an eInk display
| pretty hard to get right.
| sho_hn wrote:
| No, simple driver boards aren't super complicated. Nor
| are the chips on them manufactured on the fanciest nodes.
| They're not super-high-volume either though and as a
| result somewhat expensive on a BoM.
|
| Here's the data sheet for the ITE IT8951, a frequently-
| used ASIC for this purpose that supports basic partial
| updates as well: https://www.waveshare.net/w/upload/1/18/
| IT8951_D_V0.2.4.3_20...
|
| Here's a sourcing price: https://www.win-
| source.net/products/detail/ite/it8951e-64-dx...
|
| It's basically a fairly simple SPI interface (or here a
| SPI wrapper around an internal Z80 protocol). The rest of
| the board is power supply handling and a DRAM framebuffer
| chip, external to the driver ASIC on SPI as well. I wrote
| a custom driver for this in Rust for my project, and it
| only took about a day despite a few leaky-abstractions
| oddities in how it communicates over SPI.
|
| The chip itself is basically buffer handling, image
| processing (features like JPEG decode, resampling and
| some LUT mechanisms) and a waveform generator. Others
| will have some IP blocks for, say, a HDMI frontend. Any
| decent chip company can crank this out pretty quick.
| There's easily 10+ product lines on the market.
|
| For simple things you may not even need one and can drive
| the panel from an MCU directly.
|
| There are more expensive, more advanced drivers that
| implement more complicated and higher-performance (say,
| refresh rate) update schemes or I/O though.
| GaggiX wrote:
| Which patents need to expire to have cheaper e-ink displays?
| fortran77 wrote:
| They'll just keep repeating thus trope whenever an e-ink
| project comes up. (They don't think that LCD screens have
| patents too?)
| bigfudge wrote:
| Surely most LCD patents have expired by now?
| fortran77 wrote:
| 'And there are new ones as tech improves
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah I built one with 10" screens
|
| https://dheera.net/projects/einkframe/
|
| I really want to upgrade to at least 31" but it's rather
| expensive.
|
| Separately in the next irritation of this project I'm hoping to
| use an ESP32 instead of an RPi Zero to power it, and use the
| deep sleep mode so it can periodically update but sleep through
| the rest of the time, allowing a few months of battery life
| with no wire sticking out.
|
| Even more ideal would be putting a thin strip of solar panel on
| the top edge of the frame to keep it charged, and use some kind
| of supercapacitor to power the ESP32, though I don't know if
| the parts for that exist, especially solar panel that is 1cm
| wide.
| ea016 wrote:
| OP here. Your project is really cool, thanks for sharing. I
| was considering the same idea, but it means updating the
| drivers to work on an ESP32
|
| The best option I found so far is a timer shield that can
| wake up the Raspberry periodically:
| https://www.pishop.us/product/sleepy-pi-2-power-
| management-s...
| KomoD wrote:
| What makes E-Ink so damn expensive?
| 1-6 wrote:
| Good question. It has been answered before:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143407
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I like this project and the write up, but it
| seems a little bit overkill. These e-ink displays are 3 thousand
| each and this guy is the CTO of PhotoRoom. Hey it's not coming
| out of my pocket and I don't know if it's company or personal
| money, but it seems a little bit off.
| moroark wrote:
| I love it. 2 Ideas:
|
| You should upload a massively complicated where's waldo like
| scene and have waldo appear in different places each hour.
|
| Have a portrait with lots of subtle details but they change
| slowly over time. Ex. girl goes from earing-less to small earings
| to big earings. Just have lots of small details subtly change but
| at a rate which makes them hard to detect.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Really cool project!
|
| If you're into looking at different dithering techniques, there
| are a few interesting ones compared in this old CodeGolf question
| (disclaimer: I'm the one with the Fortran answer)
|
| https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/26554/dither-a-...
| Charon77 wrote:
| > We found that running 2 full white images did a good enough
| job, without disrupting the experience too much
|
| Some devices actually clear by outputting the invert of the
| image. Maybe this will be faster
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