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I worked on a number of digital photo frames, including on ones like that. E-ink is not the most suitable thing for it in its current form. First, large size
by baybal2 6y ago
I worked on a number of digital photo frames, including on ones like that.
E-ink is not the most suitable thing for it in its current form.
First, large size EPD cost an arm, and a leg, and custom one costs even more.
Second, there are no 8 bit EPD controllers as of now a mortal can buy, which means grays look very bad.
Third, there are inherent physical limitations which make increasing gray resolution of EPDs quite hard. The precision you want, the slower would the refresh rate be.
If somebody is old enough to remember, (saying this as a 30 years old is indeed amusing to myself) the last active matrix monochrome LCDs had 8 bit, and more of gray resolution, but they are all discontinued now, or cost an arm, and a leg as "medical imaging" specialty.
- rriepe 6y agoDespite all this, E-ink's biggest problem is that Amazon owns all the tech and doesn't want to ever see it succeed.
- jfim 6y agoCan you elaborate on that? As far as I know, E ink corporation and related patents are owned by a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Company_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Company_history
- rriepe 6y agoI thought Amazon held them, my bad. I was interested in this space around the time of the Kindle Fire release. It seemed to me like they just didn't want to chase a form factor that couldn't sell 90% of their media. So maybe there is a way, but no will.
- icedistilled 6y agoyou mean being relegated being used for price tags in whole foods isn't succeeding? I really want some of those and the ability to updated them.
- JKCalhoun 6y agoMaybe you've already seen: https://hackaday.com/2020/11/27/repurposing-large-electronic-price-tags/ https://hackaday.com/2020/11/27/repurposing-large-electronic...
- icedistilled 6y agoThanks. That's pretty awesome. Looks like they did run into the issue of no data sheets and had to hack around to get/make the driver for updating the screen, which is what I expected. Hope they keep improving it! And at $15 that's a great price. I paid more for a 2.5"x1" display but I needed the friendly pi integration.
- clash 6y agoAt 150 dpi the image depth is not a problem. Here is the 4-bit image of the 1929 Bentley as displayed on the frame for reference: https://www.instagram.com/p/CItoGRLh52n/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CItoGRLh52n/ On the device you only notice if you get extremely close.
- baybal2 6y agoNote, they have dithering, and they likely went for the best one possible.
- clash 6y agoThey == the ArtFrame's built-in software ;) What I posted was generated by the device. It is an example of the actual picture quality.
- tertius 6y agoYes, with a specifically chosen image.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cookingmyserver 6y agoInteresting accusation. What attributes of this photo would lend itself to be of better quality in such a display?
- ISL 6y ago(Disclaimer: I think this display is awesome -- can't allocate the funds for it right now, but will be keeping an eye on it going forward.) The image is "contrasty", showing lots of hard transitions from bright to dark. With displays of low bit-depth, the hard thing to do is smooth gradients of tonality.
- 6y ago
- leipert 6y agoWhat would you suggest for an affordable picture frame displaying digital art?
- dsr_ 6y agoIf you can plug it into a wall, have a Raspberry Pi 4 series driving a 4K TV of the size of your choice. The cheapest one I see on Amazon right now is a 40" 4K HDR from Vizio, with quite a small bezel - $240. Hang it on a wall and paint the bezel white, or make a nice wood frame for it.
- dafoex 6y ago40" is massive for a picture frame
- dsr_ 6y agoWhen you don't like the pictures, you can change them. You can give them special frames and mattes. You can show 36 Views of Mount Fuji all at once, and then two at a time. And you can watch Netflix on it later.
- adrianN 6y ago5W for the Pi, 60W for the screen is about 550kWh per year, or around 200kg of CO2 (give or take your local energy mix). That's about 10% of an average Indian's emissions.
- baybal2 6y agoA second hand TV? Large size LCDs got ridiculously cheap with time. It may be cheaper to by a 40 inch LCD panel, than a 10 inch high-end Eink
- Fnoord 6y agoThe costs in electricity bill is gonna be big compared to e-ink. Refresh rate of static picture can be terrible, OK for this use case. There's also color e-ink devices, though not many, and the colors were IMO too pastel-ish. Although backlight of a second hand TV might also be dying, I agree say Chromecast on TV gives a nice effect. My oldest kid gets impressed, FWIW.
- dafoex 6y agoOn the second point, my experience comes from a Kobo Glo HD eReader, but the rendition of photographs is very good - cliché, but its like a printed page. Line art obviously works best because its bold and high contrast, but colour digital art and black and white photographs all display very well in my opinion.
- the__alchemist 6y ago> E-ink is not the most suitable thing for it in its current form. What would you say is?
- baybal2 6y agoAs I wrote above, from technical side, it is the great cost of i creasing gray depth
- the__alchemist 6y agoI agree that the poor contrast etc of EPDs hurt them, including in this area. I'm questioning what you think are better alternatives for this use; I don't think there are any that don't have flaws worth weighing.
- userbinator 6y agoSecond, there are no 8 bit EPD controllers as of now a mortal can buy, which means grays look very bad. Third, there are inherent physical limitations which make increasing gray resolution of EPDs quite hard. The precision you want, the slower would the refresh rate be. For a digital picture frame, refresh rate isn't that important. In fact, a "gradual shading" on refresh might even make for a neat transition effect[1]. IMHO it's just the "cartel" (they like to keep the details of driving their displays confidential) of EPD controller companies who haven't produced controllers with more than 16 levels of grayscale, but the material is fundamentally analog and here is proof that if you drive the display directly, you can get at least 32 levels of grayscale if not more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284 With a bit of careful calibration, I believe far finer grayscale is possible. [1] Although EPDs have been around for a long time now, I have yet to see the demoscene do anything with them --- a directly driven display naturally allows for a lot of effects due to it effectively being an "analog write-only memory".
- baybal2 6y agoEPDs are highly, highly nonlinear in their driving response. It for a good reason full info behind making LUTs for driving EPD screens is kept as high secret.
- Privacy846 6y agoAt what point does it become mandatory to refer to your own age in a self-deprecating way if it happens to come up?