Live data from Hacker News

A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

imgur.com

101–110 of 311 posts

Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

#101
post #78

Great trick with laser cutter and black paint on the pcb. I wonder how end resolution compares to milled pcb. Also this is one of problems I have with Imgur. How to archive such detailed imgur post? I have tried ripme [1](great for grabbing image sets without addnotations), printscreen browser extensions (mixed results - most do not cope with floating menus and have problems with dynamic image loading), page saving o…

unrelated but evernote's webclipper does a good job and can capture the page. You can also 'print to PDF' from your browser.

I will look up webclipper. Printing as I stated (assumed printing to pdf not paper) does not always work as imgur page is dynamic and does not retain all content loaded on screen (at least on Chromium and Vivaldi).

Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

#102
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the carts NFC and turn Share on when you remove it. You could Tap to swap whatever gif is currently displayed on someone else's cart. That's probably easier than dirt cheap, disposable displays.

Do disposable displays exist? The ones i have, at least, aren't biodegradable at all, and are in fact barely recyclable at all. Seems like you're proposing an environmental disaster.

The closest kind of such a display I can think of would be a cholesteric liquid crystal display:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesteric_liquid_crystal

...and even that may not be. I only say that it might, because I have a credit-card sized (it looks identical to a credit card - same size, same thickness) device from my bank, that was given to me as a customer for generating a 2-factor authentication number. The number is displayed as a set of 6 7-segment digits on such a display. I've had it for over 15 years, and it is still running off its original battery.

That said, I've never seen such a display which was larger than what is on my card, nor one that had color (the one on my card is a "greyish-green" color). Plus the displays are very slow to update (but, like e-ink displays, they don't need power to retain the image - at least in the short term; over time, the numbers on mine "degrade").

But supposedly, when the card's battery is "used up", and the card no longer works, you're supposed to cut it up along certain "lines" printed on the back of the card, and throw it in the trash. I doubt that it is biodegradable, but it might be recyclable.

Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

#103

I think wizards call this a normal camera.

The camera is not the interesting part. The cartridge is the cool thing, and the camera was designed and built solely as the means to show it off from a very restricted frame of reference.

In order to maximize the effect, the cartridge should be programmed to "develop" the initial image with a visual effect from a black screen, and then hold there for a few seconds. And then, when the person you're showing off to starts to think "Ah, this is just a digital version of a Polaroid photo--that's not so impressive," that is when you start looping the animation.

You have to give the person a chance to make an assumption before you break it.

Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

#105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem like USB could handle the charging and data transfer with some kind of custom connection to make docking and undocking easy.

"Some kind of custom connection" is the real issue here.

The Raspberru Pi has I2C support, right? I would expect that can be used for data transfer, though it will probably be slow.

Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

#107
post #33

Very cool. If you can make that cartridge dirt cheap, you will have invented an exciting new technology. Build a V2 with cheaper tech, change your wording a bit as to what the device does, keep the polaroid link a little bit, but make it your own and then I think you'll have something that could kick ass on Kickstarter.

Yeah the real jam would be a low profile e-ink + custom pcb "prints." The low fidelity + refresh rate (compared w e.g. an LCD) could be positioned as a feature.

Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

#108

Hah, not exactly what most people think when you use the word 'print' but then again ... People have asked what is the impact of 'free' CPUs. Something Dave Rosenthal realized way back in the 90's was that the electronics for driving a display could be printed on the margins of the display and eliminate the need for a separate controller board. Having watched the evolution of displays and seeing Mary Lou Jepsen's wor…

Definitely agree with you.. this was just a concept for me that I was able to build with off the shelf parts but this is exactly the type of discussion I was hoping to get going..

Re: A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

#109

Hah, not exactly what most people think when you use the word 'print' but then again ... People have asked what is the impact of 'free' CPUs. Something Dave Rosenthal realized way back in the 90's was that the electronics for driving a display could be printed on the margins of the display and eliminate the need for a separate controller board. Having watched the evolution of displays and seeing Mary Lou Jepsen's wor…

also I agree I use the word print loosely but I guess after seeing all those print functions in programming languages, I thought there was no better way to put it
Post reply on HN