Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

projecteink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 302 posts

Re: 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

#131

Post by Lysodium »

konschubert wrote: post #39
yunusabd wrote: post #27

Boldly expanding the definition of "art" ;) Reminds me of the eink calendar concept that has been bouncing around the web for some years [1]. There's also this project [2] based on the same concept. It seems to me though that these kinds of projects are always held back by the exorbitant costs of decently sized eink displays. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KDkFgOHZ5I [2] https://github.com/speedyg0nz/MagInkCal

Yea, I sell a ready-to-use an eink calendar and the display is definitely the main cost driver. It’s about half of my BOM. That’s also why, admittedly, my calendar has a much smaller display than this newspaper. (It’s this: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale... )

That’s a really cool product to have on a desk. Are there any plans to use color e-ink displays or would that bump up the price point too much?

Re: 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

#133

Post by JKCalhoun »

alexandernl wrote: post #2

I'm a news junkie, and the power and allure of a newspaper's front page have always fascinated me. When I stumbled upon an article written by a Google engineer who had built an e ink device with the front page of his favorite daily newspaper prominently displayed on his wall, I was a bit jealous. So, I worked with a e-ink company called Visionect in Slovenia to build a version that comes shipped ready to put on your…

The e-ink newspaper project comes up from time to time and I keep waiting for the prices to come down to Earth.

Guess I'm still going to have to wait, ha ha.

I did play around with an affordable (smaller) display and liked the result though (but since it was small I did not ry to emulate a newspaper but rather a vintage Mac).

Re: 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

#135

Post by JKCalhoun »

GlacierFox wrote: post #61
konschubert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make a similar product, with a smaller screen and at a lower price point. It’s very cool what you have done, let’s maybe collaborate or join forces? My product is an e-paper calendar: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...

Looks really cheap too.

Hmmmm, trying to see your point of view, what I would do differently....

If one is going to use plywood for the frame, maybe a nice "multi-ply" plywood (Europly, Apple Ply, etc.). The Japanese kids make speakers from plywood and love to show off the "plys" because they use the good multi-ply stuff.

Frame could be cut with more CNC precision? (Looking at the inner cut in particular).

Maybe the stand should be cut from extruded aluminum of some interesting cross section rather than the Scrabble-tile-holder-like block of wood.

Given those changes I would raise the price as well to $199 and think nothing of that.

(Also, would like to dial down the refreshes — or at the very least, not refresh if the pixels are unchanged. Unless somehow they are able to do invisible refreshes on the e-ink display — 'cause e-ink refreshes sure can be distracting and ugly.)

Re: 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

#136

Post by muki »

p10jkle wrote: post #97
hau wrote: post #78

This screen comes with a subscription based cloud CMS. The only way to pass image to this display semms to be through a proprietary application which is this so called CMS. There are no other connectivity options mentioned. You are unable to use this screen if: - subscription is not paid - company decides to terminate your subscription under any condition of your contract - company decides to sunset software or a pro…

No, this isn't true. I run the Visionect software suite ( https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectSoftwareSuite/index.html ) on a Raspberry pi and the screen talks to it over localhost. No outbound connectivity or subscription is needed.

I would like to caveat that a bit. I'm running two Visionect screens at home (I really do love them, hardware-wise especially) from a similar setup (local Visionect server running on Raspberry Pi).

As far as I understand though, they have stopped offering support for non-subscribers, and they also seem to have stopped producing builds for ARM devices a couple of years ago (but the server software works even with new firmware versions). I am still betting on them supporting local installs for a while (based on my understanding that at least some of their corporate clients would want an on-prem solution), but am a little bit worried it might not be as openly available forever. I am therefore slowly researching my best migration path from a Raspberry Pi to some affordable and reasonably low powered x86 thing. Suggestions welcome.

P.S.: The biggest selling point for me compared with some other (more open) E-ink screens is the battery. I keep mine on the fridge with a magnet and can't really use one that needs to be plugged in all the time in the same place. If anyone knows of anything similar and controllable locally, I'd be very interested to read about it.

Re: 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

#138

Post by naikrovek »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #133
alexandernl wrote: post #2

I'm a news junkie, and the power and allure of a newspaper's front page have always fascinated me. When I stumbled upon an article written by a Google engineer who had built an e ink device with the front page of his favorite daily newspaper prominently displayed on his wall, I was a bit jealous. So, I worked with a e-ink company called Visionect in Slovenia to build a version that comes shipped ready to put on your…

The e-ink newspaper project comes up from time to time and I keep waiting for the prices to come down to Earth. Guess I'm still going to have to wait, ha ha. I did play around with an affordable (smaller) display and liked the result though (but since it was small I did not ry to emulate a newspaper but rather a vintage Mac).

yeah the displays are where the cost is, here, and until the company that makes these giant panels starts pricing them sanely, there won't be any products built with it which are priced sanely.

Re: 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

#139

Post by JKCalhoun »

dobin wrote: post #64

Looks nice, but it's still just more news for the news addicted. Silly idea dump: How about: A 4k TV in form of a window, which displays a live stream of a 4k camera of various places in nature. Lets say, in the middle of the forest, or a beach in italy. To have a window into another place, for some calm and mindfulness.

Was thinking about something like that recently — recalling maybe some kind of art piece from a decade or two back?

1) Place a camera + display somewhere in an urban area of the world so that random pedestrians can come and watch the display, will be on camera.

2) Place any number of these identical setups in other areas of the world.

3) Arbitrarily feed the camera from one to the display of another (shuffle every 24 hours?).

You get people seeing/reacting to others seeing/reacting ... possibly to them, possibly to others who are seeing/reacting to....

Re: 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

#140

Post by JKCalhoun »

mechhacker wrote: post #85

Would be interesting to me to have something like this, but in landscape mode, and with slowly changing blueprints of aircraft, rockets, ships, cars... Example: https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Portals/14/EasyGalleryImage...

That would be cool. And simple to do in Python with a small display. There are a number of projects on GitHub that can be easily modified to pull this off.
Post reply on HN