7 ms·

E-paper is making it's way into museums

57 points by luka-birsa 10y ago

tgb 10y ago
I saw some touch-screen displays labeling artwork in the Gallerie de'llAcademia in Venice that gave detailed background and history and explained the scene being depicted. Thank god! I know nothing about art and embarrassingly little about history and like to go to museums to learn, but they usually suck at teaching! They just have the year the object was made and a label, usually, plus artist if known. No context. Nothing explaining why this piece is out front and not hiding in storage. You're expected to already know that. And then when you do get audio tours or descriptions, they're often banal and just describe the object that you can already see ("The girl on the left looks onto the scene with a pained expression" so what?!).
wudag 10y ago
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.
- biofox 10y ago
  Not to mention interactive displays acting as fomites.
- csydas 10y ago
  Mmm, in this case, as long as the labels are just labels, I think on the whole for the lifetime of product for net changes. From the eink site under the bistable display, the device draws once then really isn't drawing power. [1] They claim that theoretically as long as nothing needs to change, it will stay that way. So, I guess it really depends on how often museums have to change labels or wish to update the labels. Even if it's a one and done, I do think that the net energy savings of a horde of labels as opposed to new label printings every time would result in net savings both financially and ecologically. Often the labels are not just simple paper and require more resources to make, etc. I don't think this is necessarily saving any rainforests, per say, but I also don't think it's draining electricity. [1] http://www.eink.com/technology.html http://www.eink.com/technology.html
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  > one guy will be able to handle the device at a given time Handle what device? As the photos at the link plainly show, these are wall mounted e-paper signs.
jbb555 10y ago
"All report an average cost of $70-$100 per label, " Why so much to print a traditional label?
- binarymax 10y ago
  Usually museum labels are very high quality, mounted inside of laminate or glass. Definitely not $100 worth, but when you factor in design and installation labor then it might reach that in theory.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Here's a link to the hardware: https://www.visionect.com/technology#hardware https://www.visionect.com/technology#hardware Details of the controller board: https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectPandaDS.html 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 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, but also for super-low-power LCDs, which is kind of a different thing. Fortunately, Visionect seems to be using "the real deal", i.e. ink-based displays. Now the only question for me - where can I get my 24” e-ink display for my computer?
- karyon 10y ago
  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...
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    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.
    - y04nn 10y ago
      On OSX, in the accessibility settings you can make your display greyscale, change the contrast and invert colors.
  - david-given 10y ago
    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.
vincentkriek 10y ago
Although 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"?
- Illniyar 10y ago
  One of the reasons from the article is multiple language support.
  - dagw 10y ago
    If you have n signs with different languages next to each other then everybody can read the sign at the same time. If you have one sign that can switch between n different languages then only a subset of the people there can read the sign at the same time.
- toyg 10y ago
  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.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  How about showing different slides to show more text. Imagine it rotating between 5 blocks of text. That's 5x the information you can display. I'm usually disappointed by the tiny amounts of texts those little placards show.
  - jordache 10y ago
ehmuidifici 10y ago
Its 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.
- ciroduran 10y ago
  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 https://www.amazon.com/Art-Power-Boris-Groys/dp/0262072920)
  - ehmuidifici 10y ago
    but to call them 'outdated' is a bit of a stretch I didn't say that =)
  - goldenkey 10y ago
    Theres no need to link to Amazon when recommending a book. Amazon has been quite hostile to us devs lately in terms of culture/employment. I think the book and author name plaintext is enough. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260512
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  E-paper is kinda incredible. It uses no power once its drawn and works off the light in the room. I mean, we could make this placard with the newest OLED displays, but it would look distracting and tacky to have this bright source of light next to the artwork. Its not outdated if nothing can compete against it in these use cases. The same way I'm typing this message on a 101-key style keyboard with a design that is pretty much unchanged for 30+ years.
ThePadawan 10y ago
We use similar displays for room occupation displays on our campus (made by https://www.roomz.io/ 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.
- achow 10y ago
  Looks neat. How much do they cost? Could not see any pricing information in the website.
- luka-birsa 10y ago
  You can check https://joanassistant.com https://joanassistant.com which is a room booking system, based on the same technology. It integrates with Exchange, Office 365 and Google Apps, connects via WiFi and runs for months on single battery charge. Its fully interactive and updates instantly.
coldpie 10y ago
"making it is way"
- trav4225 10y ago
  For some reason, everyone on Hacker News spells it "it's"... :-/
  - posterboy 10y ago
    "Its" seems obsolete there, even.
  - sbuttgereit 10y ago
    And don't get me started on "their", "there", or "they're"... though on Hacker News commenters knowledgeable of the correct usage of "their" and "there" seems to be the least common.
- coredog64 10y ago
  Does "coldpie's" mean "coldpie is" or "belonging to coldpie"?
  - coldpie 10y ago
    Either, depending on the context. What's your point?
Pamar 10y ago
Can someone please correct the it's in the title?
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y ago
  I thought it might be a sly reference to the "it's" found in the museum label depicted in the article photo.
the-dude 10y ago
German retailer 'Mediamarkt' ( electronics ) already uses e-ink price-tags and displays for over a year now. Seen in NL.
ekianjo 10y ago
> seamlessly blending in with the paintings Certainly does not like so from the pictures.
sigio 10y ago
Various stores in the Netherlands are currently using EPaper like screens as price-tags. Examples are Mediamarkt/Saturn and Makro/Metro. Nice way to automatically update pricing and have up-to-date pricetags.
- posterboy 10y ago
  I'd say this is more for posterity than anything, seeing how those thrive on aggressive advertisement.
Zekio 10y ago
Anyone seen cheap E-paper solutions, one could use at home for various things?
- luka-birsa 10y ago
  Sure, you can use HTML&JS to create an interactive E-Paper device with the technology that Visionect offers - check the development kits: https://www.visionect.com/development_kits https://www.visionect.com/development_kits
  - dagw 10y ago
    I doubt that $700 counts as cheap to most people
- thesimon 10y ago
  You can use a cheap Kindle for playing a bit around with web pages: https://github.com/PaulFreund/WebLaunch https://github.com/PaulFreund/WebLaunch (No first hand experience yet, weekend project for this weekend :))
mk7 10y ago
The best think about e-paper is low-power usage: it needs >>no power<< to hold an image. Power is consumed only when changing the image...
- napsy 10y ago
  ... not to mention very good reading capability when exposed to direct sunlight
cmod 10y ago
A good case where design really does matter. These things stick out like sore thumbs. Good museum labels blend. They certainly don't look like old thermostats. I can't imagine most museum curators would dare to put these on their walls. And anyway — why constrain all information to a single display. If the goal is to get more information about a painting to a view, there are more solutions both more efficient and kinder to the patrons. This feels like a case where a simple (dare I say it?!) QR code would have much longer, smarter legs.
- paulcole 10y ago
  Not every visitor can use a QR code. I can't think of a single situation where QR code is the best answer.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
...and "its" seems to be making it is way out of the English Language.
jordache 10y ago
is replacing physical labels such a significant overhead for museums? I would think in the effort associated with updating art pieces, the new label is a drop in the bucket.
- laurent123456 10y ago
  Also, like all software, the digital labels are unlikely to "just work" so maintenance will become an additional expense, which is likely to be more expensive than just printing labels.
- Tharkun 10y ago
  I don't think the act of replacing them is the biggest cost, but having to make hundreds (or thousands) of custom printed labels is definitely costly. I can see this saving time and money in a lot of places.
analogmemory 10y ago
I wonder how long till someone figures out how to make unauthorized edits. If it's just over wifi...
56k 10y ago
its.

57 points by luka-birsa 10y ago

tgb 10y ago

I saw some touch-screen displays labeling artwork in the Gallerie de'llAcademia in Venice that gave detailed background and history and explained the scene being depicted. Thank god! I know nothing about art and embarrassingly little about history and like to go to museums to learn, but they usually suck at teaching! They just have the year the object was made and a label, usually, plus artist if known. No context. Nothing explaining why this piece is out front and not hiding in storage. You're expected to already know that. And then when you do get audio tours or descriptions, they're often banal and just describe the object that you can already see ("The girl on the left looks onto the scene with a pained expression" so what?!).

wudag 10y ago

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.

biofox 10y ago
Not to mention interactive displays acting as fomites.
csydas 10y ago
Mmm, in this case, as long as the labels are just labels, I think on the whole for the lifetime of product for net changes. From the eink site under the bistable display, the device draws once then really isn't drawing power. [1] They claim that theoretically as long as nothing needs to change, it will stay that way. So, I guess it really depends on how often museums have to change labels or wish to update the labels. Even if it's a one and done, I do think that the net energy savings of a horde of labels as opposed to new label printings every time would result in net savings both financially and ecologically. Often the labels are not just simple paper and require more resources to make, etc. I don't think this is necessarily saving any rainforests, per say, but I also don't think it's draining electricity. [1] http://www.eink.com/technology.html http://www.eink.com/technology.html
GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
> one guy will be able to handle the device at a given time Handle what device? As the photos at the link plainly show, these are wall mounted e-paper signs.

jbb555 10y ago

"All report an average cost of $70-$100 per label, " Why so much to print a traditional label?

binarymax 10y ago
Usually museum labels are very high quality, mounted inside of laminate or glass. Definitely not $100 worth, but when you factor in design and installation labor then it might reach that in theory.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Here's a link to the hardware: https://www.visionect.com/technology#hardware https://www.visionect.com/technology#hardware Details of the controller board: https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectPandaDS.html 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 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, but also for super-low-power LCDs, which is kind of a different thing. Fortunately, Visionect seems to be using "the real deal", i.e. ink-based displays. Now the only question for me - where can I get my 24” e-ink display for my computer?

karyon 10y ago
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...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  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.
  - y04nn 10y ago
    On OSX, in the accessibility settings you can make your display greyscale, change the contrast and invert colors.
- david-given 10y ago
  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.

vincentkriek 10y ago

Although 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"?

Illniyar 10y ago
One of the reasons from the article is multiple language support.
- dagw 10y ago
  If you have n signs with different languages next to each other then everybody can read the sign at the same time. If you have one sign that can switch between n different languages then only a subset of the people there can read the sign at the same time.
toyg 10y ago
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.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
How about showing different slides to show more text. Imagine it rotating between 5 blocks of text. That's 5x the information you can display. I'm usually disappointed by the tiny amounts of texts those little placards show.
- jordache 10y ago

ehmuidifici 10y ago

Its 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.

ciroduran 10y ago
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 https://www.amazon.com/Art-Power-Boris-Groys/dp/0262072920)
- ehmuidifici 10y ago
  but to call them 'outdated' is a bit of a stretch I didn't say that =)
- goldenkey 10y ago
  Theres no need to link to Amazon when recommending a book. Amazon has been quite hostile to us devs lately in terms of culture/employment. I think the book and author name plaintext is enough. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260512
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
E-paper is kinda incredible. It uses no power once its drawn and works off the light in the room. I mean, we could make this placard with the newest OLED displays, but it would look distracting and tacky to have this bright source of light next to the artwork. Its not outdated if nothing can compete against it in these use cases. The same way I'm typing this message on a 101-key style keyboard with a design that is pretty much unchanged for 30+ years.

ThePadawan 10y ago

We use similar displays for room occupation displays on our campus (made by https://www.roomz.io/ 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.

achow 10y ago
Looks neat. How much do they cost? Could not see any pricing information in the website.
luka-birsa 10y ago
You can check https://joanassistant.com https://joanassistant.com which is a room booking system, based on the same technology. It integrates with Exchange, Office 365 and Google Apps, connects via WiFi and runs for months on single battery charge. Its fully interactive and updates instantly.

coldpie 10y ago

"making it is way"

trav4225 10y ago
For some reason, everyone on Hacker News spells it "it's"... :-/
- posterboy 10y ago
  "Its" seems obsolete there, even.
- sbuttgereit 10y ago
  And don't get me started on "their", "there", or "they're"... though on Hacker News commenters knowledgeable of the correct usage of "their" and "there" seems to be the least common.
coredog64 10y ago
Does "coldpie's" mean "coldpie is" or "belonging to coldpie"?
- coldpie 10y ago
  Either, depending on the context. What's your point?

Pamar 10y ago

Can someone please correct the it's in the title?

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y ago
I thought it might be a sly reference to the "it's" found in the museum label depicted in the article photo.

the-dude 10y ago

German retailer 'Mediamarkt' ( electronics ) already uses e-ink price-tags and displays for over a year now. Seen in NL.

ekianjo 10y ago

> seamlessly blending in with the paintings Certainly does not like so from the pictures.

sigio 10y ago

Various stores in the Netherlands are currently using EPaper like screens as price-tags. Examples are Mediamarkt/Saturn and Makro/Metro. Nice way to automatically update pricing and have up-to-date pricetags.

posterboy 10y ago
I'd say this is more for posterity than anything, seeing how those thrive on aggressive advertisement.

Zekio 10y ago

Anyone seen cheap E-paper solutions, one could use at home for various things?

luka-birsa 10y ago
Sure, you can use HTML&JS to create an interactive E-Paper device with the technology that Visionect offers - check the development kits: https://www.visionect.com/development_kits https://www.visionect.com/development_kits
- dagw 10y ago
  I doubt that $700 counts as cheap to most people
thesimon 10y ago
You can use a cheap Kindle for playing a bit around with web pages: https://github.com/PaulFreund/WebLaunch https://github.com/PaulFreund/WebLaunch (No first hand experience yet, weekend project for this weekend :))

mk7 10y ago

The best think about e-paper is low-power usage: it needs >>no power<< to hold an image. Power is consumed only when changing the image...

napsy 10y ago
... not to mention very good reading capability when exposed to direct sunlight

cmod 10y ago

A good case where design really does matter. These things stick out like sore thumbs. Good museum labels blend. They certainly don't look like old thermostats. I can't imagine most museum curators would dare to put these on their walls. And anyway — why constrain all information to a single display. If the goal is to get more information about a painting to a view, there are more solutions both more efficient and kinder to the patrons. This feels like a case where a simple (dare I say it?!) QR code would have much longer, smarter legs.

paulcole 10y ago
Not every visitor can use a QR code. I can't think of a single situation where QR code is the best answer.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

...and "its" seems to be making it is way out of the English Language.

jordache 10y ago

is replacing physical labels such a significant overhead for museums? I would think in the effort associated with updating art pieces, the new label is a drop in the bucket.

laurent123456 10y ago
Also, like all software, the digital labels are unlikely to "just work" so maintenance will become an additional expense, which is likely to be more expensive than just printing labels.
Tharkun 10y ago
I don't think the act of replacing them is the biggest cost, but having to make hundreds (or thousands) of custom printed labels is definitely costly. I can see this saving time and money in a lot of places.

analogmemory 10y ago

I wonder how long till someone figures out how to make unauthorized edits. If it's just over wifi...

56k 10y ago

its.