40 ms·

An updated daily front page of The New York Times as artwork on your wall

783 points by knes 6y ago

mawise 6y ago
I remember that previous post, and was interested in building something similar. I got turned off by the high prices of large eink displays but I did build an amazon lambda to let me use that published PDF as a daily news-source. I really like not having an infinite scroll or any links to anything else. It's open if other people want to use it: https://nytonline.net https://nytonline.net
- moritonal 6y ago
  That's beautiful!
- seppin 6y ago
  Is there any way to have this as an ipad screensaver of sorts?
  - als0 6y ago
    iOS doesn't let you have that amount of control.
    - airstrike 6y ago
      "There's an app for that"
      - seppin 6y ago
        But seriously, is there? A quick glance shows nothing
        airstrike 6y ago
        I don't think there is, sadly. Time to write one, I suppose. I'll pay $1.99 for one if you build it
- samschooler 6y ago
  This is so cool! (One bug I found; I think you're using GMT time, so right now as of 4:30pm Pacific, its going to the day after, so the 12th, which is 404ing).
  - mawise 6y ago
    Yeah, I've noticed that too. One of these days I'll probably get around to fixing it. :)
- airstrike 6y ago
  I'm getting a 404 error
- airstrike 6y ago
  I wonder what it would take to go back retroactively and publish this for every date... It would make for one wonderfully interesting archive
0xdeadb00f 6y ago
I wanted to see more pictures of the screen from the front dammit! I would like to know what it would look like if I were to just get up and stand in front of it as if I were reading it. There's one shot that's almost 3m away. Then the rest are extreme close ups only showing half the thing at an angle!
- paperwasp42 6y ago
  I believe the author was concerned about the copyright infringement that might occur due to showing the entire front page. Seems he purposely made all text below the headlines unreadable. Perfectly reasonable concern, although I too wish there was a clearer shot of the front. Dang copyright laws!
  - 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
    That thought sort of crossed my mind too. It almost seemed too intentional I guess
- handmodel 6y ago
  Same. Can it also show HQ black and white sketches? Or other artwork? I remember getting a digital photo frame for my parents when I was like 14 and instantly (even with teenage sensibilities) being upset that it looked fake and tacky. If it looks like paper or photo or painting - that's great.
  - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
    Yes, this is third time I'm sharing this link but I have a large format (A4) e-ink device and I actually love it for when it's just sitting on a stand and showing my chosen images. https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_my_joy_from_the_lumi_has_come_from/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_m...
dazbradbury 6y ago
I didn't expect the e-ink display to cost 2.3k Euro's, but I love the concept and it looks great. If the price could come down I think a consumer product that can be pointed at any web page would have lots of amazing use cases - from dynamic picture frame, to news, stats, etc.
MattShirley 6y ago
Looks cool. I've wanted a Google Calendar integrated e-ink screen device for awhile.
- ISL 6y ago
  The primary blocker is the price. This use-case is going to be huge when the price falls enough. I can imagine using two or three in various contexts around the house/office.
- fotta 6y ago
  Same and now I'm actually debating getting that 32" panel. I've longed for some sort of pinboard style display that I can put things like calendar and reminders on for years now.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  I built one using raspberry pi and PaPiRus display. It's tiny but it suffices for a desktop notification system. I also gamified it using a plant so that I would read all unread emails by the end of day (having it grow/die depending if I hit the goal). You should give it a shot.
paxys 6y ago
I have been constantly hearing about eink getting cheaper/better for over a decade now, but the price that the author paid (2300 euros for a 32-inch screen) seems ridiculous. At that price point does it make any sense to not just get a regular LCD for a small fraction of the cost? Dimming the brightness and adjusting the color profile will get you pretty close in terms of experience. The few dollars a year in electricity savings isn't relevant either.
- kokey 6y ago
  When I saw the article I thought that perhaps he found that well priced large e-ink display or pulled from a failed product, but turns out he just found a large one.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  The difference between eink and LCD is big enough that it's not even worth doing without the eink. A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. And it would very obviously just be a TV. While the eink looks amazing. I think you either have to shell out the money for eink, or don't do it at all.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - slg 6y ago
    >A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. It really depends on how you do it. They sell TV's like The Frame[1] from Samsung ($599 for the 32" version) that look much closer to a picture frame and are designed for almost this exact purpose. If you are in some semi-permanent home (you probably should be before you spend $2.7k on an art piece) it isn't much work to mount it in a way that would hide the cables. From the looks of the photos in this article, the e-Ink version isn't event mounted flush against the wall and appears to be tilted downward. I don't love the way that looks given the cost. I would much rather spend half the money on that TV and a professional mounting. [1] - https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-frame/32-class-the-frame-qled-hdr-smart-tv-2020-qn32ls03tbfxza/ https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-...
mhb 6y ago
How many people today even know what "an unfolded New York Times" means?
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  Probably almost everyone over the age of 13, at least in the US. Just like how most people still know what CD players are.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Oh comon, unlike the cassette tape or floppy, newspapers are still around everywhere
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Before the Coronavirus, I'd still see people reading the physical New York Times on the subway. Some people were amazingly good at one-handing it too—they could turn the page while still holding onto the pole with their other hand. Don't know how they did it, really.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Perhaps nearly everyone. I used to read it on BART before I switched to the WSJ and then quit using SF's shite public transit.
jeppesen-io 6y ago
Absolutly lovely. I wan't it
Flockster 6y ago
Discussion of the mentioned Display: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323
offtop5 6y ago
I would pay for a commercial version of this project . 500$ would be a reasonable price .
- siraben 6y ago
  This can be done on a smaller form factor at around 400 Euros with the reMarkable tablet, see [0]. [0] https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    Thank you so much for that link! I just got my reMarkable2 (which I adore) and this is quite useful. Both by itself as well as for hacking pointers. Being able to use my reMarkable as a static eInk display of a content of my choice is so useful, something I always missed with my kindle.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Currently, BOM cost is higher than that, I believe. But we can hope that with devices like the Remarkable bringing larger format e-ink that the pricing can be driven down with process improvements that come from scale.
- amelius 6y ago
  An e-reader of that size would be much more expensive.
- jstepka 6y ago
  i would love this as an art piece. if you were willing to make one to sell i would buy it.
- kondro 6y ago
  The screen itself _is_ a commercial product. The custom software to run this is only a few dozen LoC on a server and you could probably work out how to hack it directly with the Visionect software.
bengotow 6y ago
Ahh this is super cool! Looking at the Visionect product line and their website isn’t entirely clear - do you need to pay a subscription fee for the cloud service that manages the device settings? This would be a great piece of office art but will be a much harder sell if there’s a paid cloud component... EDIT: Answered my own question. The cloud software is included and you can run it yourself, they just optionally allow you to use their hosted version: https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectSoftwareSuite/Installation.html https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectSoftwareSuite/Installati...
snarfy 6y ago
I'm too cheap. I would see a paywall.
- nl 6y ago
  The front page (as a PDF) is freely available. Here's today's: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/11/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/11/nytfrontpage/scan... Modify the URL to get previous dates.
  - p1mrx 6y ago
    I'm surprised that NYT still offers these PDFs unauthenticated. If enough people build these displays, they will eventually take notice and turn them into (literal) paywalls.
    - berkes 6y ago
      The irony when your wall-mount suddenly shows a (rendering of a) cookie-popup or a "subscribe to get full access" popup.
save_ferris 6y ago
I love the idea of an e-ink display as an art piece, but does a dedicated display for news headlines really operate in the spirit of calm technology, given the current political climate?
- meibo 6y ago
  I think this varies a lot from person to person - I love being up to date and knowing what's going on in the world keeps me 'calm', just to give perspective. As an art piece, this certainly keeps itself in the background and never tries to get your attention, instead just catches your eye, which might fit the 'calm technology' paradigm a bit better.
- mmastrac 6y ago
  Neither being obsessed with the news nor being completely away from it will bring calm. You need to give yourself "just enough" time to process what's happening and yield control to the world. Of course, this is easier said than done and I'm failing terribly at it.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    And, I think the idea of just having the front page of the New York Times on your wall, which will only show a set number of stories and will only ever update once per day, could be a great moderating force!
  - airstrike 6y ago
    My approach is to only read headlines (from reputable sources like WSJ and Bloomberg)
- baddash 6y ago
  Interesting thought. On the one hand, its lighting (or lack thereof) causes it to visually blend in with its surroundings; it doesn't stand out at all and functions as a piece of art. But its content can metaphorically yell at a person. I think calm technology is characterized by tech which is easily ignorable/does not outwardly communicate unless the user wants to interact with it. Given that the display effectively functions as a piece of art unless someone decides to look at and read it, I don't think it would contradict with this characterization. The stress that would be responsible for violating the spirit of calm technology only exists after a person decides to read the display.
nemothekid 6y ago
That screen looks absolutely amazing; $2500 is an incredibly steep price for what would be a sick art piece.
- pacaro 6y ago
  That's definitely a matter of perspective, once you consider it as an art piece you should consider the pricing in terms of how art is priced. It's approx $800 per sq ft, which certainly wouldn't be considered expensive in the art world. Of course galleries usually take about a 40% cut, so the retail price would probably end up north of $5,000, probably more if the artist wants to make any money too. Which definitely moves the price per sq ft up.
bra-ket 6y ago
awesome technical work, but why would you want to stare at lies & political propaganda all day
- jstepka 6y ago
  why would anyone want to talk to you on any day. what an awful comment to something so beautiful.
  - bra-ket 6y ago
    I think misinformation is awful, making it look pretty and sticking on a wall doesn't help
slyrus 6y ago
Props for the Lapierre Morgon!
nl 6y ago
Just noting that this is based on a previous project[1] which used a slightly less costly ($1500 vs $2300) e-ink panel: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper-display-va3200-qaa/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-monochrome-epap... There is also a 4096 color 31" e-ink display available: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-display-ec312tt2/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-di... and a 42" mono display: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/42%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper-display-va3200-rbb/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/42%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper... [1] https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b407822494 https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40...
- tyingq 6y ago
  $1500 + a $500 driver board (https://shopkits.eink.com/product/v5-system-board/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/v5-system-board/) And a frame, etc.
  - nl 6y ago
    Yeah, and frustratingly or fortunately (depending on how you look at it) that board has a full Linux/WiFi/Bluetooth stack on it so you don't need/can't use a ESP32/Whatever. Competition in the space would be great.
  - changdizzle 6y ago
    It looks like someone else linked this Ali Express item @ $1500 elsewhere in the thread: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/largest-32-inch-e-ink-big_60798201923.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.6437766dW0KPeZ&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/largest-32-inch-e-ink... Does this one require a driver board as well?
- 1_2__4 6y ago
  Why is this company so obsessed with disallowing “consumer” purchases of their products? What’s the purpose or benefit?
- ek750 6y ago
soheil 6y ago
You can probably buy an e ink display on Alibaba for less than $100 if you negotiate enough. This one is 12.5" [0] which might be large enough for a lot of use cases. If not I suppose multiple ones can be stacked right next to each other. [0] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Large-12-48-E-Ink-display_60794581741.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Large-12-48-E-Ink-dis...
- jjcm 6y ago
  It seems like the actual display he mentions in the article is available on alibaba as well, though it is $1500: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Largest-E-ink-Display-Large-E_60798201923.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.6437766dW0KPeZ&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Largest-E-ink-Display...
  - soheil 6y ago
    To get to that size stacking 3 of them on top of each other probably wouldn't look so bad, it'd be like having 3 <hr> tags on the page.
    - eightails 6y ago
      Hell, since we're talking wall-art here, just embrace the separated look and call it a triptych.
- roel_v 6y ago
  The spec sheet on that link says '2x FPC interface', what does that mean? When I google 'fpc to hdmi' I get a bunch of generic hdmi cables. Is 'FPC' just a form factor to transfer an hdmi signal? More to the point, how would I hook up a display like this to an RPi, and how would I hook up 3 to anything without using a GPU with 3 outputs?
pugworthy 6y ago
eInk displays are really quite fun to work with. Pre-pandemic shutdown, I was working on a custom work badge holder that was primarily an eInk display to show my picture and daily work calendar. A little Arduino can easily pull down my week's schedule from Outlook, then update the screen for the current day, then put itself in a deep (extremely low power consumption) sleep until it's time to update with the next day. Wake up, update display, go back to sleep - all in a few seconds with minimal battery use. And any time I re-sync via USB, it updates the schedule and the display, plus charges a small LiPo battery that runs things. Is it super useful? Eh no, everything it has is on my phone already. Is it fun tech to work with? Most definitely. PS Probably most people know this but in case not, once you set an eInk display, it requires no power to maintain the image. I've got a few small ones I put images on a few years ago that are still just fine.
- emilecantin 6y ago
  You could probably improve upon this with an ESP8266; built-in WiFi and the ability to deep sleep should allow for completely wireless operation for a couple weeks / months.
  - robotastic 6y ago
    Adafruit just released this as a product! https://www.adafruit.com/product/4800 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4800
allenu 6y ago
In a similar vein, someone previously created a "Very Slow Movie Player" using e-ink.[1] I always thought this would make for a nice little art piece in a room. [1] https://medium.com/s/story/very-slow-movie-player-499f76c48b62 https://medium.com/s/story/very-slow-movie-player-499f76c48b...
- mewse 6y ago
  I posted a few days back that I was putting together one of these, very similar to the one described in that story. The e-ink screen I was waiting for (this one: https://www.waveshare.com/6inch-e-paper-hat.htm https://www.waveshare.com/6inch-e-paper-hat.htm) arrived literally days after I posted that comment, about a month earlier than expected, and I now mostly have an initial version of the project working. Some comments: A nice 6” screen for $70ish is a pretty great deal, although I’ll confess that I’m thinking about upgrading to their similar 9.7” screen, which is about double the price. A full frame update takes about half a second (but the whole screen does flash white during it, so it definitely draws the eye if you have it anywhere in your eyeline when the frame update happens. In theory the display supports partial updates, but I’m not sure it supports them in greyscale display modes; I haven’t investigated that yet) One gotcha which I hadn’t planned for is that even when fully blank, the display isn’t really white. I’d say that it’s maybe a 30% grey, so the movie frame can often appear to just be a big black rectangle, unless the room lighting is really good. And if you’re framing the display with a white mat around it (as I did), then that’s just going to make it look even darker again. I think I’m going to have to cut a new mat from a darker material. And in the meantime, I’m boosting brightness and contrast of each extracted frame before converting to greyscale, and that’s helped a lot. (In the medium story, Bryan is using a 3D printed frame in black without a mat, which strongly mitigates the contrast issue) Another gotcha I ran into is that the frame I bought to put the project in (an Ikea Hovsta) turns out not to be deep enough to house a pi + the hat which controls it, so I’m probably going to need to buy a deeper frame (right now I have the pi hanging out the back while the frame sits on my desk). You might be able to squeeze everything into the frame if you used a RPi Zero and wired the connections individually, instead of connecting via the HAT.. but I’m not sure whether an RPi Zero will be able to keep up with decoding a HD video stream and dithering and displaying frames even at a 2.5 minutes/frame speed. (I haven’t tested at all; it might be totally fine!)
jeromenerf 6y ago
I was expecting something of a « hack » and was a bit disappointed to read once again that eink is still so expensive. Buying a industrial printer refurb could even make sense economically at this point. With the added bonus of displaying the full week front pages.
- Uehreka 6y ago
  This made me go “But I have a fair amount of disposable income, how expensive is ‘expensive’ exactly?” So I RTFA’d. Folks, an eInk display the size of a newspaper broadsheet costs 2300 euro, purchase ramen accordingly.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    32" eInk wall art, or a 16-core Ryzen 9 workstation with 128GB of RAM. Let me think, hmmm, I guess I can't really put a price on impressing my hipster friends.
    - eigenvalue 6y ago
      Where can you get a workstation like that for $2,300? Is that building it yourself out of parts? Last time I looked into getting a machine like that it seemed to cost more like $4,000+.
      - gautamcgoel 6y ago
        $2300 is a reasonable estimate if he builds it himself.
      - jefb 6y ago
        Self-build can easily meet those specs (minus OS + monitor + peripherals). Example $2333 build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t4FjZZ https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t4FjZZ
reledi 6y ago
Love this. The price tag may seem high but it's competitive for wall art. What other iconic works are there that give you an idea of what's happening in the world? Time, New Yorker, ...
- eightails 6y ago
  I was just thinking how cool it would be to have a colour e-ink display showing something like the current New Yorker cover. They do exist [0] but are likely significantly more expensive again than monochrome, and the 32" panel listed on the site is only 720p. [0] https://www.eink.com/color-technology.html https://www.eink.com/color-technology.html
sailfast 6y ago
A yearly print subscription is probably only a couple bucks more per month when added to the monthly digital you’re paying for. Get it in paper at your doorstep and save a bunch of money? Or hang it on the wall daily? If you want to read more just... turn to the right page! Edit: I understand it’s not as fun or as arty to do this. I get why the OP is doing it, but $2700 seems like a lot. You could automate 25 kindles and a raspberry pi to create a collage (or show 20 different front pages?) for that kind of money.
- dqv 6y ago
  It's wall art, not the news. The author reads the news just fine with their news subscriptions. The form is more important than the function, at least to the author. Of course it can be achieved in any number of ways, but the author chose this way because it is pleasing to the eye.
siraben 6y ago
For a cheaper version of this (400 vs. 2300 Euros) on the reMarkable tablet, see remarkable_news[0], which runs as a systemd service and periodically refetches the URL of choice. [0] https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news
- dazbradbury 6y ago
  Thanks for the link - but that is quite a lot smaller at 10 inches vs. 32 inches so the price comparison isn't quite like for like.
iLtc 6y ago
I bought a 7.5-inch eink screen from Amazon, put it in a photo frame, and programmed it to show my todo list so that I could check the list without turn on my laptop. It is pretty good. The only thing that annoys me is that when it refreshes, the screen flashes (in back and white) multiple times, which disturbs me.
- mewse 6y ago
  Usually the e-ink screens which flash multiple times during an update are tri-color screens; most commonly either black/white/red or black/white/yellow (and other colors are apparently available, but much less commonly seen in the wild!) Every display like that which I’ve used could be put into a display mode where it shows only black/white, which will make updates a lot faster and result in the screen only flashing once per full update. For example, I have a very small black/white/red display which takes about six flashes and 15 seconds to complete a display update, but if I put it into black/white mode (i.e.: disabling support for red), then the update takes less than a second and only one flash. That might be an option for you if you don’t mind giving up the third color!
- hossbeast 6y ago
  That sounds awesome, mind linking the product?
aerovistae 6y ago
I will pay money for this if you make it for sale. So will my friend. Take my money!!
- ctvo 6y ago
  It is for sale. 2,300 euros for a 32" eInk display. Did you read the link?
  - aerovistae 6y ago
    I read the first few paragraphs, then searched for a dollar sign, which did not come up, nor did a euro sign, because oddly the author chose to write out "2300 euro's" [sic]. So a little bit hard to find the buried price for people who aren't interested in reading the whole column.
jakecopp 6y ago
> The Place & Play 32 inch is a pricey (2300 euro’s) but very beautiful piece of hardware You can get the ENTIRE paper delivered, to your door, every day, for how many years with 2300 Euros? :D
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  You forgot to add in the cost of paying someone to quietly replace the paper on your wall before you wake up each morning.
- paxys 6y ago
  And the price is just for the display. The paper itself is extra :P
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  In Netherlands, where the author is located, less than 3.5 years, assuming this website is legit: https://subscribe.inyt.com/ https://subscribe.inyt.com/
  - berkes 6y ago
    > In Netherlands Off-topic, but it really is `the Netherlands`; not unlike "the United Kingdom". As Dutchmen myself, I too often see software doing this wrong, which is why I mention it here; in dropdowns, validations, invoices etc. When you design a "country dropdown", its `the Netherlands`, and it comes after `Nepal` and before `Netherlands Antilles`, and it should be highlighted when someone types `net`. Often one can "solve" the sorting by moving the `the` to the back: `Netherlands, the`, `United Kingdom, the`, though that's a bit of a hack more than an actual solution.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      At least you don't have to guess whether you're filed under 'UK', 'England', or 'Great Britain' four times (USB-style) before you find it. (Yes it is usually UK, but often enough isn't to be annoying. There are legitimate reasons you might want to be more specific, but IME it seems to happen just at random, based on where the developer got a 'countries list', I suppose.) Not to mention when UK sites, or sites that already know I'm in the UK, give me an otherwise alphabetised list with 'United States' at the top, and then even when I start typing 'Uni' make me go through UAE first...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hanoz 6y ago
Every couple of weeks I find myself wondering: "It's (insert year here), why no e-ink picture frames yet?". Much as I like tinkering, I don't want a cobbled together raspberry pi plus lower power mamagement module with some alibaba special screen, all wrapped together with duct tape. I just want a nice looking consumer grade device, maybe 8x6" or thereabouts, reasonable resolution, grayscale is fine if necessary, an sd card slot where I can stick a load of jpegs and let it run with a photo change or two a day, with about six months in between recharges. Is that too much to ask? I'm sure the first company to do this is going to make a killing.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Because eink color is garbage, and people want color for photos.
  - hanoz 6y ago
    People may think they want colour, but I'm convinced it's not as much as they don't want something resembling a glaring low grade android device, propped up on a bookshelf, with a usb power lead trailing out of it to the nearest socket. A nice sharp grayscale, hang and forget (maybe on an actual wall), with the e-paper aesthetic, is going to beat this hands down.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      Even monochrome ink is pretty lousy without a strong backlight.
      - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
        I'd disagree entirely. As mentioned in my other comment, I have an e-ink tablet on a stand on my desk[1], and I think it looks stunning, especially contrast wise. It has that "real physical object" kind of aesthetic, that is virtually irreplaceable if you want a thing of beauty. It doesn't glow in low light, and it's only increasingly visible as Ambient light gets brighter. Those are features for a static thing to look at in my book. https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_my_joy_from_the_lumi_has_come_from/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_m...
onecommentman 6y ago
I’m torn between thinking this is a performance art piece commenting on the consolidation of media outlets, and a Cramer piece from a lost Seinfeld episode (“Jerry, you gotta see this. It’s great. All the news, all the time, you never need to leave your apartment. Think of the money you save on shoes...”)
djitz 6y ago
The finished product looks like a muggle version of The Daily Prophet
bookofjoe 6y ago
Off topic but interesting: Every New York Times Front Page Since 1852 in Under a Minute — https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/02/the-rise-of-the-image-every-ny-times-front-page-since-1852-in-under-a-minute/ https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/02/the-rise-of-the-image...
yftsui 6y ago
Newseum used to print these front pages and display them selectively along the side walk, it is closed now but it publishes the front page of major papers around the world in PDF. https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/. You could make it I refresh local newspaper, or WSJ, i.e. https://cdn.newseum.org/dfp/pdf11/WSJ.pdf https://cdn.newseum.org/dfp/pdf11/WSJ.pdf It would be really cool if it is not $2500 though
mmhsieh 6y ago
this would be nice for arxiv prints too.
myself248 6y ago
Why is everyone so obsessed with what this costs? I'd imagine a lot of us have couches with a similar price tag, despite much cheaper options being available. This is likewise part of someone's living room, they can spend whatever they like on it as a matter of taste.
- tvanantwerp 6y ago
  Frankly, why do couches cost so much? I'd like e-ink and furniture prices to both trend down.
  - myself248 6y ago
    They're bulky to store and ship. It'd be cool if couches came as a kit with an order sheet for you to source the foam locally. The frame and coverings would fit in a door-sized package. Hmm.
  - berkes 6y ago
    I'm on the other end: Why is furniture so damn cheap? It uses natural resources, causes waste, needs transport, and above all, needs manufacturing, by craftsman and women. My wife repairs (upholstery) furniture and car interiors; with european wages, refurbishing, say, your designer-office chair or sofa easily costs upwards of €2000 (the answer, I'm afraid, is that "manufacturing" is cheap because of defacto slavery (sweatshops) of state subsidy (China), that "waste" and ecological footprint is not included in the price, and transport also subsidised by both the far-too-cheap "overseas" labor, and often even direct from states.)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- milofeynman 6y ago
  Because I come to hacker news wanting cool DIY tech I can do something with in my home. At $2300 this article is interesting but not what I was hoping for. "Oh that's really cool I could do X with it." Looks up price -> closes tab.
sammorrowdrums 6y ago
It's not at this large scale, but I have an Onyx Lumi, and somehow my favourite thing about it is that I changed all the lock screens to pictures from the Moomins, and it sits on a stand on my office desk [1]. The Lumi is capable of playing video in e-ink, and I actually had a desire to see a classic newspaper like this, but with small videos instead of images, I love that old new tech concept as simple as a newspaper with moving images (on click probably, more than constantly aminating). I also use it daily as a practical device and it's only a 13" size (A4), so substantially smaller, but people would still question how much I paid, and probably question me even harder if they new I'd also got a ReMarkable 2 on pre-order. I just love the aesthetic of e-ink so much. I previously submitted a post about the Dasung Paperlike monitor[2], and I actually bought it years ago and sold it because I couldn't handle the refresh rate, but I was interested to see they are still going and still the best in class for that use-case. The Onyx Lumi actually also works as a second monitor so my dream of working outside on sunglasses might still happen. I love this use of e-ink as wall art, and I have hoped for years the technology could become more ubiquitous outside of e-readers. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_my_joy_from_the_lumi_has_come_from/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_m... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760676
interestica 6y ago
From what I can tell, https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/07/06/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/07/06/nytfrontpage/scan... is the earliest instance of the page. I was really hoping to go way back.
- nugget 6y ago
  All New York Times content (including front pages) from 1851-1925 should be in the public domain. Are there any projects to scan, publish, or otherwise make them available to people? This format, combined with the ability to hop around in time, would be pretty neat.
- harrisonjackson 6y ago
  That was my favorite take away from the post. Now I have a new Zapier Daily Slack Post :clap:
  - interestica 6y ago
    That's way more hardcore. I only went so far as to create a bookmark with dynamic date: 1. create new bookmark 2. use following as URL: javascript:link=today=new Date();dd=today.getDate();mm=today.getMonth()+1;window.location="https://static01.nyt.com/images/"+today.getFullYear()+'/'+((mm<10)?'0'+mm:mm)+'/'+((dd<10)?'0'+dd:dd)+"/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf";
boneitis 6y ago
In similar vein, I'd always thought to use the daily APOD (astronomy picture of the day) photos with or without the accompanying summary (have not thought out the project any farther than this) for any sort of similar, daily refreshing piece. I don't care too much how janky it is: raspi, Chinese lcd, barebones/no casing, etc etc. If someone created a dumbed-down tutorial to make this happen, I'd be really inclined to recreate it. (And perhaps, there already are a dozen such tutorials out there ready to make me eat my words.)
calbear81 6y ago
What about a physical front page that gets printed daily using something like an HP Designjet T210? You can mount it (it's wireless) and it can print 2' wide from a roll of paper. You feed the paper into a custom frame (add margins to the PDF -> JPG script) and then add a slightly sharp cutting edge at the bottom of the frame so that every day the previous day's frontpage will come out from the bottom of the frame and you can tear it off (reuse as needed). You would need to pay for something like a 700' roll of 24" butcher paper for $18 and ink (yes I know HP is a terrible company on ink) but it might be even more realistic!
- cube00 6y ago
  Add a shredder to the bottom and you have your own daily Banksy performance art.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  Now you've got me thinking about how to translate this to my POS printer. I'm already grabbing the NYT front page into DayOne, I might as well get more use out of it :)
- drivers99 6y ago
  What about subscribing to the paper and having it delivered?
  - Majromax 6y ago
    Getting an entire paper delivered just for the front page? What a waste!
- calbear81 6y ago
  If anyone is going to build this, that would be an awesome DIY project but hopefully you have a printer that works w/o buying one.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
The New York Times should sell this. I wouldn’t mind having the daily newspaper on my wall.
rgj 6y ago
It’s a cool thing but come on, you bought it, you didn’t build it. Why are people proud on things they bought?
- Slartie 6y ago
  <sarcasm> But...but...but he wrote a bit of PHP that uses ImageMagick to convert the PDF to a JPG! </sarcasm> At least he linked to the original posting by that Google guy who actually built his version from parts instead of buying a ready-to-go-but-pricey solution and tethering himself to some cloud CMS backend of the manufacturer.
Exuma 6y ago
Cool idea
wtfrmyinitials 6y ago
I choose to believe that the juxtaposition of Aperol and The New York Times was intentional
hkolk 6y ago
Hmm.. not 100% sure but I see 2 bugs in the PHP script: 1. the src of the image in the HTML is the local path on the hosting server (it would become src="/var/www/nyt/nyt.jpg" ) 2. The v= parameter always uses current date, even if it downloaded yesterdays image. I assume it is being used to prevent caching, but thus doesnt really work. I'd use either an hash of the file or store the date used for the download in a variable and use that.
luka-birsa 6y ago
Founder of Visionect here. I'm so happy when these kinds of posts surface as this is exactly how we've envisoned our platform to be used - by tinkerers builidng interesting ideas. I do see a lot of comments regarding the price, so it's best if I do the general disclaimer. E Ink screens are very pricy (compared to LCD). The driving is even pricier. And since this is not a mass-mass produced product (at least not in a sense of your 75" OLED TV) you get to the price that you have. We've worked for years on getting the price down for the E Ink screens (trust me on this), but there is a question of critical mass. E Ink in the non-reader, non-shelf label applications is still a very niche solution, that will command very high price. I hate to say it, but the only way we could have brought the price down with current quantities is if we built an inferior product as the price right now is the function of Bill-of-Materials. We tried a lot of applications, some covered previously here on HN, we currently see that there are just two other avenues where E Ink is being used and has the potential for mass depoyments in the near future. 1. In offices it can be used as interactive signage - we've built a very successful solution for meeting room booking around it (see http://getjoan.com http://getjoan.com). 2. The market for outdoor displays - especialy smart bus stops that run on solar - is starting to ramp up. Check out what our partners are doing in this space (a recent live deployment https://www.visionect.com/blog/coimbra-the-city-of-the-students-whose-public-transport-runs-on-sunlight/ https://www.visionect.com/blog/coimbra-the-city-of-the-stude...). If anyone would like to get more information about E Ink, please shoot - we've tried every E Ink display out there, played with color display and probably seen every E Ink application out there. You can also shoot me a direct mail to luka.birsa AT visionect.com.
- cyrusmg 6y ago
  I have read somewhere here on HN that the E Ink scene (and price) is limited by patents. Can you share more on that ?
  - luka-birsa 6y ago
    E Ink owns the majority of the patents, so direct clones of E Ink are being made under license. I do not think that the patents are the limiting factor - the specific applications are somewhat limited compared to widespread use of OLED. For the applications that have mass apeal we saw that the price goes down to a comparable level of an LCD (eg in ebook readers and shelf labels). There is also a bunch of innovation happening in the market - competitors like ClearInk are trying to build a better version of E paper, but it's always hard to scale some new technology and it will take some time before anything substantial comes along. E Ink was lucky that they found the killer app in ebook readers and that really helped them get to volumes that allow them to build these screens in commercial volumes.
WA 6y ago
Imagine waking up one day and half of that frame is "We value your privacy, please accept our cookies" and the other half is "you ran out of free articles for this month, please sign up for a subscription here". Might be more realistic as well.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rzz3 6y ago
Does it pop up and ask you to subscribe if you look at it? :D
Biqh1 6y ago
I wish newspapers in the UK would provide APIs to download scans of their front page like the New York Times do.
whytaka 6y ago
I would like something like this but with the actual news/blogs that would interest me day-to-day. Then I could make it a ritual/rule that the only information I can consume would be from this display away from my office whilst standing. Then I will block all news sites from my computing devices.
epanchin 6y ago
Very cool. I'm considering replicating this, cycling through https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers
computerlab 6y ago
A few years back an artist did a LCD piece that used the daily NYT front page image as the seed for a generative painting: https://anthology.rhizome.org/daily-times-performer https://anthology.rhizome.org/daily-times-performer
chrisweekly 6y ago
> As more and more connected devices arrive in our homes, it’s a good time to remember the principles of Calm Technology, first formulated at Xerox PARC in 1995. They talk about how technology should respect our attention and remain in the background most of the time, how relevant information should be presented calmly and make use of the periphery.
cainxinth 6y ago
€2300 is too rich for my blood, but I would totally buy something like this if it was more affordable.
prennert 6y ago
I have been looking for a small eink screen solution to put next to my screen to show my google calendar (agenda) and maybe the time. Does anyone have recommendations of devices that would make that easy?
mandeepj 6y ago
Instead of NY Times homepage, I will customize it to something like iGoogle
pjettter 6y ago
Hm. Cool. Expensive. What about a projector that shoots an image to a persistent sensitive surface. That would be reinvention of photography! Let's say, reset with one frequency of light, then flash with an image that holds for > 24h. Hm!
pettycashstash2 6y ago
Is anyone else receiving when trying to open this link? Cloudflare Access Forbidden You do not have permission to view this page Ray ID: 5f12f738eb06e839
car 6y ago
Check out Inkplate [1], which is an ESP32 based 6.5" E Ink display, refurbed from a kindle. It has everything to build a wall mounted screen, that can update itself over Wifi or Bluetooth with battery for weeks. They Croatian company [2] is already working on a 10" model. [1]https://www.crowdsupply.com/search?q=inkplate https://www.crowdsupply.com/search?q=inkplate [2]https://inkplate.io https://inkplate.io
charliebrownau 6y ago
WTF would you want the Lying Fakestream legacy ' news ' as art work Here is a novel idea GET OUT SIDE Go walk in nature Visit a park

783 points by knes 6y ago

I remember that previous post, and was interested in building something similar. I got turned off by the high prices of large eink displays but I did build an amazon lambda to let me use that published PDF as a daily news-source. I really like not having an infinite scroll or any links to anything else. It's open if other people want to use it: https://nytonline.net https://nytonline.net

moritonal 6y ago
That's beautiful!
seppin 6y ago
Is there any way to have this as an ipad screensaver of sorts?
- als0 6y ago
  iOS doesn't let you have that amount of control.
  - airstrike 6y ago
    "There's an app for that"
    - seppin 6y ago
      But seriously, is there? A quick glance shows nothing
      - airstrike 6y ago
        I don't think there is, sadly. Time to write one, I suppose. I'll pay $1.99 for one if you build it
samschooler 6y ago
This is so cool! (One bug I found; I think you're using GMT time, so right now as of 4:30pm Pacific, its going to the day after, so the 12th, which is 404ing).
- mawise 6y ago
  Yeah, I've noticed that too. One of these days I'll probably get around to fixing it. :)
airstrike 6y ago
I'm getting a 404 error
airstrike 6y ago
I wonder what it would take to go back retroactively and publish this for every date... It would make for one wonderfully interesting archive

0xdeadb00f 6y ago

I wanted to see more pictures of the screen from the front dammit! I would like to know what it would look like if I were to just get up and stand in front of it as if I were reading it. There's one shot that's almost 3m away. Then the rest are extreme close ups only showing half the thing at an angle!

paperwasp42 6y ago
I believe the author was concerned about the copyright infringement that might occur due to showing the entire front page. Seems he purposely made all text below the headlines unreadable. Perfectly reasonable concern, although I too wish there was a clearer shot of the front. Dang copyright laws!
- 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
  That thought sort of crossed my mind too. It almost seemed too intentional I guess
handmodel 6y ago
Same. Can it also show HQ black and white sketches? Or other artwork? I remember getting a digital photo frame for my parents when I was like 14 and instantly (even with teenage sensibilities) being upset that it looked fake and tacky. If it looks like paper or photo or painting - that's great.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  Yes, this is third time I'm sharing this link but I have a large format (A4) e-ink device and I actually love it for when it's just sitting on a stand and showing my chosen images. https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_my_joy_from_the_lumi_has_come_from/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_m...

dazbradbury 6y ago

I didn't expect the e-ink display to cost 2.3k Euro's, but I love the concept and it looks great. If the price could come down I think a consumer product that can be pointed at any web page would have lots of amazing use cases - from dynamic picture frame, to news, stats, etc.

MattShirley 6y ago

Looks cool. I've wanted a Google Calendar integrated e-ink screen device for awhile.

ISL 6y ago
The primary blocker is the price. This use-case is going to be huge when the price falls enough. I can imagine using two or three in various contexts around the house/office.
fotta 6y ago
Same and now I'm actually debating getting that 32" panel. I've longed for some sort of pinboard style display that I can put things like calendar and reminders on for years now.
three_seagrass 6y ago
I built one using raspberry pi and PaPiRus display. It's tiny but it suffices for a desktop notification system. I also gamified it using a plant so that I would read all unread emails by the end of day (having it grow/die depending if I hit the goal). You should give it a shot.

paxys 6y ago

I have been constantly hearing about eink getting cheaper/better for over a decade now, but the price that the author paid (2300 euros for a 32-inch screen) seems ridiculous. At that price point does it make any sense to not just get a regular LCD for a small fraction of the cost? Dimming the brightness and adjusting the color profile will get you pretty close in terms of experience. The few dollars a year in electricity savings isn't relevant either.

kokey 6y ago
When I saw the article I thought that perhaps he found that well priced large e-ink display or pulled from a failed product, but turns out he just found a large one.
buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
The difference between eink and LCD is big enough that it's not even worth doing without the eink. A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. And it would very obviously just be a TV. While the eink looks amazing. I think you either have to shell out the money for eink, or don't do it at all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- slg 6y ago
  >A dim LCD newspaper on your wall would look really tacky, imo. It really depends on how you do it. They sell TV's like The Frame[1] from Samsung ($599 for the 32" version) that look much closer to a picture frame and are designed for almost this exact purpose. If you are in some semi-permanent home (you probably should be before you spend $2.7k on an art piece) it isn't much work to mount it in a way that would hide the cables. From the looks of the photos in this article, the e-Ink version isn't event mounted flush against the wall and appears to be tilted downward. I don't love the way that looks given the cost. I would much rather spend half the money on that TV and a professional mounting. [1] - https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-frame/32-class-the-frame-qled-hdr-smart-tv-2020-qn32ls03tbfxza/ https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-...

mhb 6y ago

How many people today even know what "an unfolded New York Times" means?

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
Probably almost everyone over the age of 13, at least in the US. Just like how most people still know what CD players are.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Oh comon, unlike the cassette tape or floppy, newspapers are still around everywhere
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Before the Coronavirus, I'd still see people reading the physical New York Times on the subway. Some people were amazingly good at one-handing it too—they could turn the page while still holding onto the pole with their other hand. Don't know how they did it, really.
renewiltord 6y ago
Perhaps nearly everyone. I used to read it on BART before I switched to the WSJ and then quit using SF's shite public transit.

jeppesen-io 6y ago

Absolutly lovely. I wan't it

Flockster 6y ago

Discussion of the mentioned Display: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323

offtop5 6y ago

I would pay for a commercial version of this project . 500$ would be a reasonable price .

siraben 6y ago
This can be done on a smaller form factor at around 400 Euros with the reMarkable tablet, see [0]. [0] https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news
- _ph_ 6y ago
  Thank you so much for that link! I just got my reMarkable2 (which I adore) and this is quite useful. Both by itself as well as for hacking pointers. Being able to use my reMarkable as a static eInk display of a content of my choice is so useful, something I always missed with my kindle.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
renewiltord 6y ago
Currently, BOM cost is higher than that, I believe. But we can hope that with devices like the Remarkable bringing larger format e-ink that the pricing can be driven down with process improvements that come from scale.
amelius 6y ago
An e-reader of that size would be much more expensive.
jstepka 6y ago
i would love this as an art piece. if you were willing to make one to sell i would buy it.
kondro 6y ago
The screen itself _is_ a commercial product. The custom software to run this is only a few dozen LoC on a server and you could probably work out how to hack it directly with the Visionect software.

bengotow 6y ago

Ahh this is super cool! Looking at the Visionect product line and their website isn’t entirely clear - do you need to pay a subscription fee for the cloud service that manages the device settings? This would be a great piece of office art but will be a much harder sell if there’s a paid cloud component... EDIT: Answered my own question. The cloud software is included and you can run it yourself, they just optionally allow you to use their hosted version: https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectSoftwareSuite/Installation.html https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectSoftwareSuite/Installati...

snarfy 6y ago

I'm too cheap. I would see a paywall.

nl 6y ago
The front page (as a PDF) is freely available. Here's today's: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/11/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/11/nytfrontpage/scan... Modify the URL to get previous dates.
- p1mrx 6y ago
  I'm surprised that NYT still offers these PDFs unauthenticated. If enough people build these displays, they will eventually take notice and turn them into (literal) paywalls.
  - berkes 6y ago
    The irony when your wall-mount suddenly shows a (rendering of a) cookie-popup or a "subscribe to get full access" popup.

save_ferris 6y ago

I love the idea of an e-ink display as an art piece, but does a dedicated display for news headlines really operate in the spirit of calm technology, given the current political climate?

meibo 6y ago
I think this varies a lot from person to person - I love being up to date and knowing what's going on in the world keeps me 'calm', just to give perspective. As an art piece, this certainly keeps itself in the background and never tries to get your attention, instead just catches your eye, which might fit the 'calm technology' paradigm a bit better.
mmastrac 6y ago
Neither being obsessed with the news nor being completely away from it will bring calm. You need to give yourself "just enough" time to process what's happening and yield control to the world. Of course, this is easier said than done and I'm failing terribly at it.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  And, I think the idea of just having the front page of the New York Times on your wall, which will only show a set number of stories and will only ever update once per day, could be a great moderating force!
- airstrike 6y ago
  My approach is to only read headlines (from reputable sources like WSJ and Bloomberg)
baddash 6y ago
Interesting thought. On the one hand, its lighting (or lack thereof) causes it to visually blend in with its surroundings; it doesn't stand out at all and functions as a piece of art. But its content can metaphorically yell at a person. I think calm technology is characterized by tech which is easily ignorable/does not outwardly communicate unless the user wants to interact with it. Given that the display effectively functions as a piece of art unless someone decides to look at and read it, I don't think it would contradict with this characterization. The stress that would be responsible for violating the spirit of calm technology only exists after a person decides to read the display.

nemothekid 6y ago

That screen looks absolutely amazing; $2500 is an incredibly steep price for what would be a sick art piece.

pacaro 6y ago
That's definitely a matter of perspective, once you consider it as an art piece you should consider the pricing in terms of how art is priced. It's approx $800 per sq ft, which certainly wouldn't be considered expensive in the art world. Of course galleries usually take about a 40% cut, so the retail price would probably end up north of $5,000, probably more if the artist wants to make any money too. Which definitely moves the price per sq ft up.

bra-ket 6y ago

awesome technical work, but why would you want to stare at lies & political propaganda all day

jstepka 6y ago
why would anyone want to talk to you on any day. what an awful comment to something so beautiful.
- bra-ket 6y ago
  I think misinformation is awful, making it look pretty and sticking on a wall doesn't help

slyrus 6y ago

Props for the Lapierre Morgon!

nl 6y ago

Just noting that this is based on a previous project[1] which used a slightly less costly ($1500 vs $2300) e-ink panel: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper-display-va3200-qaa/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-monochrome-epap... There is also a 4096 color 31" e-ink display available: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-display-ec312tt2/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-di... and a 42" mono display: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/42%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper-display-va3200-rbb/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/42%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper... [1] https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b407822494 https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40...

tyingq 6y ago
$1500 + a $500 driver board (https://shopkits.eink.com/product/v5-system-board/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/v5-system-board/) And a frame, etc.
- nl 6y ago
  Yeah, and frustratingly or fortunately (depending on how you look at it) that board has a full Linux/WiFi/Bluetooth stack on it so you don't need/can't use a ESP32/Whatever. Competition in the space would be great.
- changdizzle 6y ago
  It looks like someone else linked this Ali Express item @ $1500 elsewhere in the thread: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/largest-32-inch-e-ink-big_60798201923.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.6437766dW0KPeZ&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/largest-32-inch-e-ink... Does this one require a driver board as well?
1_2__4 6y ago
Why is this company so obsessed with disallowing “consumer” purchases of their products? What’s the purpose or benefit?
ek750 6y ago

soheil 6y ago

You can probably buy an e ink display on Alibaba for less than $100 if you negotiate enough. This one is 12.5" [0] which might be large enough for a lot of use cases. If not I suppose multiple ones can be stacked right next to each other. [0] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Large-12-48-E-Ink-display_60794581741.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Large-12-48-E-Ink-dis...

jjcm 6y ago
It seems like the actual display he mentions in the article is available on alibaba as well, though it is $1500: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Largest-E-ink-Display-Large-E_60798201923.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.6437766dW0KPeZ&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Largest-E-ink-Display...
- soheil 6y ago
  To get to that size stacking 3 of them on top of each other probably wouldn't look so bad, it'd be like having 3 <hr> tags on the page.
  - eightails 6y ago
    Hell, since we're talking wall-art here, just embrace the separated look and call it a triptych.
roel_v 6y ago
The spec sheet on that link says '2x FPC interface', what does that mean? When I google 'fpc to hdmi' I get a bunch of generic hdmi cables. Is 'FPC' just a form factor to transfer an hdmi signal? More to the point, how would I hook up a display like this to an RPi, and how would I hook up 3 to anything without using a GPU with 3 outputs?

pugworthy 6y ago

eInk displays are really quite fun to work with. Pre-pandemic shutdown, I was working on a custom work badge holder that was primarily an eInk display to show my picture and daily work calendar. A little Arduino can easily pull down my week's schedule from Outlook, then update the screen for the current day, then put itself in a deep (extremely low power consumption) sleep until it's time to update with the next day. Wake up, update display, go back to sleep - all in a few seconds with minimal battery use. And any time I re-sync via USB, it updates the schedule and the display, plus charges a small LiPo battery that runs things. Is it super useful? Eh no, everything it has is on my phone already. Is it fun tech to work with? Most definitely. PS Probably most people know this but in case not, once you set an eInk display, it requires no power to maintain the image. I've got a few small ones I put images on a few years ago that are still just fine.

emilecantin 6y ago
You could probably improve upon this with an ESP8266; built-in WiFi and the ability to deep sleep should allow for completely wireless operation for a couple weeks / months.
- robotastic 6y ago
  Adafruit just released this as a product! https://www.adafruit.com/product/4800 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4800

allenu 6y ago

In a similar vein, someone previously created a "Very Slow Movie Player" using e-ink.[1] I always thought this would make for a nice little art piece in a room. [1] https://medium.com/s/story/very-slow-movie-player-499f76c48b62 https://medium.com/s/story/very-slow-movie-player-499f76c48b...

mewse 6y ago
I posted a few days back that I was putting together one of these, very similar to the one described in that story. The e-ink screen I was waiting for (this one: https://www.waveshare.com/6inch-e-paper-hat.htm https://www.waveshare.com/6inch-e-paper-hat.htm) arrived literally days after I posted that comment, about a month earlier than expected, and I now mostly have an initial version of the project working. Some comments: A nice 6” screen for $70ish is a pretty great deal, although I’ll confess that I’m thinking about upgrading to their similar 9.7” screen, which is about double the price. A full frame update takes about half a second (but the whole screen does flash white during it, so it definitely draws the eye if you have it anywhere in your eyeline when the frame update happens. In theory the display supports partial updates, but I’m not sure it supports them in greyscale display modes; I haven’t investigated that yet) One gotcha which I hadn’t planned for is that even when fully blank, the display isn’t really white. I’d say that it’s maybe a 30% grey, so the movie frame can often appear to just be a big black rectangle, unless the room lighting is really good. And if you’re framing the display with a white mat around it (as I did), then that’s just going to make it look even darker again. I think I’m going to have to cut a new mat from a darker material. And in the meantime, I’m boosting brightness and contrast of each extracted frame before converting to greyscale, and that’s helped a lot. (In the medium story, Bryan is using a 3D printed frame in black without a mat, which strongly mitigates the contrast issue) Another gotcha I ran into is that the frame I bought to put the project in (an Ikea Hovsta) turns out not to be deep enough to house a pi + the hat which controls it, so I’m probably going to need to buy a deeper frame (right now I have the pi hanging out the back while the frame sits on my desk). You might be able to squeeze everything into the frame if you used a RPi Zero and wired the connections individually, instead of connecting via the HAT.. but I’m not sure whether an RPi Zero will be able to keep up with decoding a HD video stream and dithering and displaying frames even at a 2.5 minutes/frame speed. (I haven’t tested at all; it might be totally fine!)

jeromenerf 6y ago

I was expecting something of a « hack » and was a bit disappointed to read once again that eink is still so expensive. Buying a industrial printer refurb could even make sense economically at this point. With the added bonus of displaying the full week front pages.

Uehreka 6y ago
This made me go “But I have a fair amount of disposable income, how expensive is ‘expensive’ exactly?” So I RTFA’d. Folks, an eInk display the size of a newspaper broadsheet costs 2300 euro, purchase ramen accordingly.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  32" eInk wall art, or a 16-core Ryzen 9 workstation with 128GB of RAM. Let me think, hmmm, I guess I can't really put a price on impressing my hipster friends.
  - eigenvalue 6y ago
    Where can you get a workstation like that for $2,300? Is that building it yourself out of parts? Last time I looked into getting a machine like that it seemed to cost more like $4,000+.
    - gautamcgoel 6y ago
      $2300 is a reasonable estimate if he builds it himself.
    - jefb 6y ago
      Self-build can easily meet those specs (minus OS + monitor + peripherals). Example $2333 build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t4FjZZ https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t4FjZZ

reledi 6y ago

Love this. The price tag may seem high but it's competitive for wall art. What other iconic works are there that give you an idea of what's happening in the world? Time, New Yorker, ...

eightails 6y ago
I was just thinking how cool it would be to have a colour e-ink display showing something like the current New Yorker cover. They do exist [0] but are likely significantly more expensive again than monochrome, and the 32" panel listed on the site is only 720p. [0] https://www.eink.com/color-technology.html https://www.eink.com/color-technology.html

sailfast 6y ago

A yearly print subscription is probably only a couple bucks more per month when added to the monthly digital you’re paying for. Get it in paper at your doorstep and save a bunch of money? Or hang it on the wall daily? If you want to read more just... turn to the right page! Edit: I understand it’s not as fun or as arty to do this. I get why the OP is doing it, but $2700 seems like a lot. You could automate 25 kindles and a raspberry pi to create a collage (or show 20 different front pages?) for that kind of money.

dqv 6y ago
It's wall art, not the news. The author reads the news just fine with their news subscriptions. The form is more important than the function, at least to the author. Of course it can be achieved in any number of ways, but the author chose this way because it is pleasing to the eye.

siraben 6y ago

For a cheaper version of this (400 vs. 2300 Euros) on the reMarkable tablet, see remarkable_news[0], which runs as a systemd service and periodically refetches the URL of choice. [0] https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news

dazbradbury 6y ago
Thanks for the link - but that is quite a lot smaller at 10 inches vs. 32 inches so the price comparison isn't quite like for like.

iLtc 6y ago

I bought a 7.5-inch eink screen from Amazon, put it in a photo frame, and programmed it to show my todo list so that I could check the list without turn on my laptop. It is pretty good. The only thing that annoys me is that when it refreshes, the screen flashes (in back and white) multiple times, which disturbs me.

mewse 6y ago
Usually the e-ink screens which flash multiple times during an update are tri-color screens; most commonly either black/white/red or black/white/yellow (and other colors are apparently available, but much less commonly seen in the wild!) Every display like that which I’ve used could be put into a display mode where it shows only black/white, which will make updates a lot faster and result in the screen only flashing once per full update. For example, I have a very small black/white/red display which takes about six flashes and 15 seconds to complete a display update, but if I put it into black/white mode (i.e.: disabling support for red), then the update takes less than a second and only one flash. That might be an option for you if you don’t mind giving up the third color!
hossbeast 6y ago
That sounds awesome, mind linking the product?

aerovistae 6y ago

I will pay money for this if you make it for sale. So will my friend. Take my money!!

ctvo 6y ago
It is for sale. 2,300 euros for a 32" eInk display. Did you read the link?
- aerovistae 6y ago
  I read the first few paragraphs, then searched for a dollar sign, which did not come up, nor did a euro sign, because oddly the author chose to write out "2300 euro's" [sic]. So a little bit hard to find the buried price for people who aren't interested in reading the whole column.

jakecopp 6y ago

> The Place & Play 32 inch is a pricey (2300 euro’s) but very beautiful piece of hardware You can get the ENTIRE paper delivered, to your door, every day, for how many years with 2300 Euros? :D

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
You forgot to add in the cost of paying someone to quietly replace the paper on your wall before you wake up each morning.
paxys 6y ago
And the price is just for the display. The paper itself is extra :P
smnrchrds 6y ago
In Netherlands, where the author is located, less than 3.5 years, assuming this website is legit: https://subscribe.inyt.com/ https://subscribe.inyt.com/
- berkes 6y ago
  > In Netherlands Off-topic, but it really is `the Netherlands`; not unlike "the United Kingdom". As Dutchmen myself, I too often see software doing this wrong, which is why I mention it here; in dropdowns, validations, invoices etc. When you design a "country dropdown", its `the Netherlands`, and it comes after `Nepal` and before `Netherlands Antilles`, and it should be highlighted when someone types `net`. Often one can "solve" the sorting by moving the `the` to the back: `Netherlands, the`, `United Kingdom, the`, though that's a bit of a hack more than an actual solution.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    At least you don't have to guess whether you're filed under 'UK', 'England', or 'Great Britain' four times (USB-style) before you find it. (Yes it is usually UK, but often enough isn't to be annoying. There are legitimate reasons you might want to be more specific, but IME it seems to happen just at random, based on where the developer got a 'countries list', I suppose.) Not to mention when UK sites, or sites that already know I'm in the UK, give me an otherwise alphabetised list with 'United States' at the top, and then even when I start typing 'Uni' make me go through UAE first...

deleted 6y ago

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hanoz 6y ago

Every couple of weeks I find myself wondering: "It's (insert year here), why no e-ink picture frames yet?". Much as I like tinkering, I don't want a cobbled together raspberry pi plus lower power mamagement module with some alibaba special screen, all wrapped together with duct tape. I just want a nice looking consumer grade device, maybe 8x6" or thereabouts, reasonable resolution, grayscale is fine if necessary, an sd card slot where I can stick a load of jpegs and let it run with a photo change or two a day, with about six months in between recharges. Is that too much to ask? I'm sure the first company to do this is going to make a killing.

TylerE 6y ago
Because eink color is garbage, and people want color for photos.
- hanoz 6y ago
  People may think they want colour, but I'm convinced it's not as much as they don't want something resembling a glaring low grade android device, propped up on a bookshelf, with a usb power lead trailing out of it to the nearest socket. A nice sharp grayscale, hang and forget (maybe on an actual wall), with the e-paper aesthetic, is going to beat this hands down.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    Even monochrome ink is pretty lousy without a strong backlight.
    - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
      I'd disagree entirely. As mentioned in my other comment, I have an e-ink tablet on a stand on my desk[1], and I think it looks stunning, especially contrast wise. It has that "real physical object" kind of aesthetic, that is virtually irreplaceable if you want a thing of beauty. It doesn't glow in low light, and it's only increasingly visible as Ambient light gets brighter. Those are features for a static thing to look at in my book. https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_my_joy_from_the_lumi_has_come_from/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_m...

onecommentman 6y ago

I’m torn between thinking this is a performance art piece commenting on the consolidation of media outlets, and a Cramer piece from a lost Seinfeld episode (“Jerry, you gotta see this. It’s great. All the news, all the time, you never need to leave your apartment. Think of the money you save on shoes...”)

djitz 6y ago

The finished product looks like a muggle version of The Daily Prophet

bookofjoe 6y ago

Off topic but interesting: Every New York Times Front Page Since 1852 in Under a Minute — https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/02/the-rise-of-the-image-every-ny-times-front-page-since-1852-in-under-a-minute/ https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/02/the-rise-of-the-image...

yftsui 6y ago

Newseum used to print these front pages and display them selectively along the side walk, it is closed now but it publishes the front page of major papers around the world in PDF. https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ https://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/. You could make it I refresh local newspaper, or WSJ, i.e. https://cdn.newseum.org/dfp/pdf11/WSJ.pdf https://cdn.newseum.org/dfp/pdf11/WSJ.pdf It would be really cool if it is not $2500 though

mmhsieh 6y ago

this would be nice for arxiv prints too.

myself248 6y ago

Why is everyone so obsessed with what this costs? I'd imagine a lot of us have couches with a similar price tag, despite much cheaper options being available. This is likewise part of someone's living room, they can spend whatever they like on it as a matter of taste.

tvanantwerp 6y ago
Frankly, why do couches cost so much? I'd like e-ink and furniture prices to both trend down.
- myself248 6y ago
  They're bulky to store and ship. It'd be cool if couches came as a kit with an order sheet for you to source the foam locally. The frame and coverings would fit in a door-sized package. Hmm.
- berkes 6y ago
  I'm on the other end: Why is furniture so damn cheap? It uses natural resources, causes waste, needs transport, and above all, needs manufacturing, by craftsman and women. My wife repairs (upholstery) furniture and car interiors; with european wages, refurbishing, say, your designer-office chair or sofa easily costs upwards of €2000 (the answer, I'm afraid, is that "manufacturing" is cheap because of defacto slavery (sweatshops) of state subsidy (China), that "waste" and ecological footprint is not included in the price, and transport also subsidised by both the far-too-cheap "overseas" labor, and often even direct from states.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
milofeynman 6y ago
Because I come to hacker news wanting cool DIY tech I can do something with in my home. At $2300 this article is interesting but not what I was hoping for. "Oh that's really cool I could do X with it." Looks up price -> closes tab.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago

It's not at this large scale, but I have an Onyx Lumi, and somehow my favourite thing about it is that I changed all the lock screens to pictures from the Moomins, and it sits on a stand on my office desk [1]. The Lumi is capable of playing video in e-ink, and I actually had a desire to see a classic newspaper like this, but with small videos instead of images, I love that old new tech concept as simple as a newspaper with moving images (on click probably, more than constantly aminating). I also use it daily as a practical device and it's only a 13" size (A4), so substantially smaller, but people would still question how much I paid, and probably question me even harder if they new I'd also got a ReMarkable 2 on pre-order. I just love the aesthetic of e-ink so much. I previously submitted a post about the Dasung Paperlike monitor[2], and I actually bought it years ago and sold it because I couldn't handle the refresh rate, but I was interested to see they are still going and still the best in class for that use-case. The Onyx Lumi actually also works as a second monitor so my dream of working outside on sunglasses might still happen. I love this use of e-ink as wall art, and I have hoped for years the technology could become more ubiquitous outside of e-readers. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_my_joy_from_the_lumi_has_come_from/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/jem97h/most_of_m... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760676

interestica 6y ago

From what I can tell, https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/07/06/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/07/06/nytfrontpage/scan... is the earliest instance of the page. I was really hoping to go way back.

nugget 6y ago
All New York Times content (including front pages) from 1851-1925 should be in the public domain. Are there any projects to scan, publish, or otherwise make them available to people? This format, combined with the ability to hop around in time, would be pretty neat.
harrisonjackson 6y ago
That was my favorite take away from the post. Now I have a new Zapier Daily Slack Post :clap:
- interestica 6y ago
  That's way more hardcore. I only went so far as to create a bookmark with dynamic date: 1. create new bookmark 2. use following as URL: javascript:link=today=new Date();dd=today.getDate();mm=today.getMonth()+1;window.location="https://static01.nyt.com/images/"+today.getFullYear()+'/'+((mm<10)?'0'+mm:mm)+'/'+((dd<10)?'0'+dd:dd)+"/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf";

boneitis 6y ago

In similar vein, I'd always thought to use the daily APOD (astronomy picture of the day) photos with or without the accompanying summary (have not thought out the project any farther than this) for any sort of similar, daily refreshing piece. I don't care too much how janky it is: raspi, Chinese lcd, barebones/no casing, etc etc. If someone created a dumbed-down tutorial to make this happen, I'd be really inclined to recreate it. (And perhaps, there already are a dozen such tutorials out there ready to make me eat my words.)

calbear81 6y ago

What about a physical front page that gets printed daily using something like an HP Designjet T210? You can mount it (it's wireless) and it can print 2' wide from a roll of paper. You feed the paper into a custom frame (add margins to the PDF -> JPG script) and then add a slightly sharp cutting edge at the bottom of the frame so that every day the previous day's frontpage will come out from the bottom of the frame and you can tear it off (reuse as needed). You would need to pay for something like a 700' roll of 24" butcher paper for $18 and ink (yes I know HP is a terrible company on ink) but it might be even more realistic!

cube00 6y ago
Add a shredder to the bottom and you have your own daily Banksy performance art.
zimpenfish 6y ago
Now you've got me thinking about how to translate this to my POS printer. I'm already grabbing the NYT front page into DayOne, I might as well get more use out of it :)
drivers99 6y ago
What about subscribing to the paper and having it delivered?
- Majromax 6y ago
  Getting an entire paper delivered just for the front page? What a waste!
calbear81 6y ago
If anyone is going to build this, that would be an awesome DIY project but hopefully you have a printer that works w/o buying one.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

The New York Times should sell this. I wouldn’t mind having the daily newspaper on my wall.

rgj 6y ago

It’s a cool thing but come on, you bought it, you didn’t build it. Why are people proud on things they bought?

Slartie 6y ago
<sarcasm> But...but...but he wrote a bit of PHP that uses ImageMagick to convert the PDF to a JPG! </sarcasm> At least he linked to the original posting by that Google guy who actually built his version from parts instead of buying a ready-to-go-but-pricey solution and tethering himself to some cloud CMS backend of the manufacturer.

Exuma 6y ago

Cool idea

wtfrmyinitials 6y ago

I choose to believe that the juxtaposition of Aperol and The New York Times was intentional

hkolk 6y ago

Hmm.. not 100% sure but I see 2 bugs in the PHP script: 1. the src of the image in the HTML is the local path on the hosting server (it would become src="/var/www/nyt/nyt.jpg" ) 2. The v= parameter always uses current date, even if it downloaded yesterdays image. I assume it is being used to prevent caching, but thus doesnt really work. I'd use either an hash of the file or store the date used for the download in a variable and use that.

luka-birsa 6y ago

Founder of Visionect here. I'm so happy when these kinds of posts surface as this is exactly how we've envisoned our platform to be used - by tinkerers builidng interesting ideas. I do see a lot of comments regarding the price, so it's best if I do the general disclaimer. E Ink screens are very pricy (compared to LCD). The driving is even pricier. And since this is not a mass-mass produced product (at least not in a sense of your 75" OLED TV) you get to the price that you have. We've worked for years on getting the price down for the E Ink screens (trust me on this), but there is a question of critical mass. E Ink in the non-reader, non-shelf label applications is still a very niche solution, that will command very high price. I hate to say it, but the only way we could have brought the price down with current quantities is if we built an inferior product as the price right now is the function of Bill-of-Materials. We tried a lot of applications, some covered previously here on HN, we currently see that there are just two other avenues where E Ink is being used and has the potential for mass depoyments in the near future. 1. In offices it can be used as interactive signage - we've built a very successful solution for meeting room booking around it (see http://getjoan.com http://getjoan.com). 2. The market for outdoor displays - especialy smart bus stops that run on solar - is starting to ramp up. Check out what our partners are doing in this space (a recent live deployment https://www.visionect.com/blog/coimbra-the-city-of-the-students-whose-public-transport-runs-on-sunlight/ https://www.visionect.com/blog/coimbra-the-city-of-the-stude...). If anyone would like to get more information about E Ink, please shoot - we've tried every E Ink display out there, played with color display and probably seen every E Ink application out there. You can also shoot me a direct mail to luka.birsa AT visionect.com.

cyrusmg 6y ago
I have read somewhere here on HN that the E Ink scene (and price) is limited by patents. Can you share more on that ?
- luka-birsa 6y ago
  E Ink owns the majority of the patents, so direct clones of E Ink are being made under license. I do not think that the patents are the limiting factor - the specific applications are somewhat limited compared to widespread use of OLED. For the applications that have mass apeal we saw that the price goes down to a comparable level of an LCD (eg in ebook readers and shelf labels). There is also a bunch of innovation happening in the market - competitors like ClearInk are trying to build a better version of E paper, but it's always hard to scale some new technology and it will take some time before anything substantial comes along. E Ink was lucky that they found the killer app in ebook readers and that really helped them get to volumes that allow them to build these screens in commercial volumes.

WA 6y ago

Imagine waking up one day and half of that frame is "We value your privacy, please accept our cookies" and the other half is "you ran out of free articles for this month, please sign up for a subscription here". Might be more realistic as well.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rzz3 6y ago

Does it pop up and ask you to subscribe if you look at it? :D

Biqh1 6y ago

I wish newspapers in the UK would provide APIs to download scans of their front page like the New York Times do.

whytaka 6y ago

I would like something like this but with the actual news/blogs that would interest me day-to-day. Then I could make it a ritual/rule that the only information I can consume would be from this display away from my office whilst standing. Then I will block all news sites from my computing devices.

epanchin 6y ago

Very cool. I'm considering replicating this, cycling through https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers

computerlab 6y ago

A few years back an artist did a LCD piece that used the daily NYT front page image as the seed for a generative painting: https://anthology.rhizome.org/daily-times-performer https://anthology.rhizome.org/daily-times-performer

chrisweekly 6y ago

> As more and more connected devices arrive in our homes, it’s a good time to remember the principles of Calm Technology, first formulated at Xerox PARC in 1995. They talk about how technology should respect our attention and remain in the background most of the time, how relevant information should be presented calmly and make use of the periphery.

cainxinth 6y ago

€2300 is too rich for my blood, but I would totally buy something like this if it was more affordable.

prennert 6y ago

I have been looking for a small eink screen solution to put next to my screen to show my google calendar (agenda) and maybe the time. Does anyone have recommendations of devices that would make that easy?

mandeepj 6y ago

Instead of NY Times homepage, I will customize it to something like iGoogle

pjettter 6y ago

Hm. Cool. Expensive. What about a projector that shoots an image to a persistent sensitive surface. That would be reinvention of photography! Let's say, reset with one frequency of light, then flash with an image that holds for > 24h. Hm!

pettycashstash2 6y ago

Is anyone else receiving when trying to open this link? Cloudflare Access Forbidden You do not have permission to view this page Ray ID: 5f12f738eb06e839

car 6y ago

Check out Inkplate [1], which is an ESP32 based 6.5" E Ink display, refurbed from a kindle. It has everything to build a wall mounted screen, that can update itself over Wifi or Bluetooth with battery for weeks. They Croatian company [2] is already working on a 10" model. [1]https://www.crowdsupply.com/search?q=inkplate https://www.crowdsupply.com/search?q=inkplate [2]https://inkplate.io https://inkplate.io

charliebrownau 6y ago

WTF would you want the Lying Fakestream legacy ' news ' as art work Here is a novel idea GET OUT SIDE Go walk in nature Visit a park