Yet an other example of "progress is not obviously better" : like these commercial centers' electronic maps, one guy will be able to handle the device at a given time, and all 5 people around will have to wait him to finish before being able to just know the title. And I'm skeptical about the reduced ecological impact of electricity and electronic devices as compared to paper.
E-paper is making it's way into museums
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Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#12We use similar displays for room occupation displays on our campus (made by https://www.roomz.io/ ). For me, the most interesting thing to learn was that "battery-powered" means that the manufacturer expects a battery to last 2-3 years , as the displays maintain no active WiFi connection, and are only woken up sporadically via RF.
Looks neat.
How much do they cost? Could not see any pricing information in the website.
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#13Here's a link to the hardware: https://www.visionect.com/technology#hardware Details of the controller board: https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectPandaDS.html And the thing that was interesting for me the most, the screens they use: https://docs.visionect.com/ElectronicPaperDisplays.html Now why the screens were most interesting for me? Because "e-paper" name has in the past been used not just for e-ink-like displays…
In case the last question was serious (i honestly don't know): You wouldn't want that except for daily work (except maybe for reading longer texts), at least not with current e-ink technology. Even with proper colors, adding several 100ms of latency to everything you do at the computer slows you down while typing, makes scrolling ugly etc. Not to think of videos or games...
It is serious. I'd like that for my text editor. And for most of my Internet browsing (which consists of reading text). It doesn't even need to be full-colour, I'd live with grayscale for now. Refresh rates are better nowadays, especially if you refresh only parts of the screen - which would be the case for text editing.
Sure it won't be as fluid as 1080p @ 120Hz, but I'd like it anyway.
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#14Its funny how we link 'museum' with 'outdated things'. When I first saw that title I just thought that would be something like e-paper being obsolete.
Museums are certainly in need of redefining their purpose, but to call them 'outdated' is a bit of a stretch, I'm afraid. I would recommend anyone interested in the role of museums in today's society to read Art Power (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Power-Boris-Groys/dp/0262072920)
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#15Yet an other example of "progress is not obviously better" : like these commercial centers' electronic maps, one guy will be able to handle the device at a given time, and all 5 people around will have to wait him to finish before being able to just know the title. And I'm skeptical about the reduced ecological impact of electricity and electronic devices as compared to paper.
Not to mention interactive displays acting as fomites.
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#16Here's a link to the hardware: https://www.visionect.com/technology#hardware Details of the controller board: https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectPandaDS.html And the thing that was interesting for me the most, the screens they use: https://docs.visionect.com/ElectronicPaperDisplays.html Now why the screens were most interesting for me? Because "e-paper" name has in the past been used not just for e-ink-like displays…
In case the last question was serious (i honestly don't know): You wouldn't want that except for daily work (except maybe for reading longer texts), at least not with current e-ink technology. Even with proper colors, adding several 100ms of latency to everything you do at the computer slows you down while typing, makes scrolling ugly etc. Not to think of videos or games...
You can get refresh on a Kindle screen down to under 100ms if you want plain black and white. You only get the ludicrous refresh times if you want greyscale --- I believe they do some kind of dithering over time to achieve that.
Back in the old days I had a Hercules monitor with slow phosphor. I've tried to find some figures on the response rate, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar speed to the eink screen. It was really comfortable on the eyes and I slightly miss it (of course, it was the size of a postcard compared to a modern monitor). So I think an eink monitor could be quite usable for certain purposes.
The thing I'd be concerned about is scrolling. We've got very used to monitors which will scroll smoothly. I've seen monitors which just turned into hash when scrolling; there's a reason why vi and emacs have modes for page-at-a-time scrolling.
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#17Although I can see the advantage of having a digital label in a lot of cases, I don't see the necessity in a museum environment. There is serious human interaction necessary to change the collection to move and change the works of art. It would be easy to change the label at that time. What use case is there to change the label "on the fly"?
Say you want to change a descriptive text, because there is a typo or maybe you just have 10 mins to spare and want to expand something. Currently, you type your text, print it somehow (often on laminated or plastic material, but might be more much complex), then walk to the work at the other end of the goddamn gallery (because Murphy) and replace the label.
With a networked display, you click on an icon and type your new text. Done.
And of course, if the label becomes a hypertext, the possibilities are endless; but that will not scale well in busy museums where you can't have anyone hogging the screen for minutes.
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#18Its funny how we link 'museum' with 'outdated things'. When I first saw that title I just thought that would be something like e-paper being obsolete.
Museums are certainly in need of redefining their purpose, but to call them 'outdated' is a bit of a stretch, I'm afraid. I would recommend anyone interested in the role of museums in today's society to read Art Power ( https://www.amazon.com/Art-Power-Boris-Groys/dp/0262072920 )
but to call them 'outdated' is a bit of a stretch
I didn't say that =)
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#19"making it is way"
Re: E-paper is making it's way into museums
#20Can someone please correct the it's in the title?