20 ms·

I made an eInk newspaper

547 points by graiz 6y ago

zo1 6y ago
Unfortunately, the price for the e-ink display is "€2,300".
- slater 6y ago
  That's aaaalmost down to vaguely-affordable, though. Used to be that eInk Corp. wouldn't even pick up the phone for less than at least $10k+
  - derefr 6y ago
    These direct-sales eInk products are essentially SDKs for their tech, so it makes sense that they’ve always been low-volume B2B products with high per-unit prices. Nevertheless, there has been a recent decrease in price of this SDK hardware. I believe it’s been driven by eInk having created a modular substrate (all the stuff in a display, minus the panel) allowing cheaper iteration on their panel technology. So people can buy the SDK substrate component once; and then buy a new SDK panel component each time eInk reformulates it. Lower manufacturing costs + cheaper logistics for eInk Corp. = cheaper costs for everyone else, even when buying the whole kit together. (Sort of the same reason that essentially the same cube-shelf design is cheaper from IKEA — IKEA just packs wood tightly into a flat box, and then piles those flat boxes up in a shipping container; and when you buy it and get it delivered, it’s still flat right up until it’s in your house. Other manufacturers, meanwhile, assemble the thing at some point — whether at the factory or at the story — and then ship it at least once in assembled form, where it’s taking up a huge amount of space in the container / on the truck.)
    - jameshart 6y ago
      I actually realized when I was in the ikea warehouse recently pondering why ikea still don’t offer home delivery for most things: they actually just never pay anyone to move or handle less than a pallet-load of flat pack boxes at a time. You do that labor yourself for them - taking the cart, finding the box (or multiple separate boxes for a lot of their more customizable combination items) in the warehouse, picking it, taking it to the scanning station, loading it for transport. All that labor that you do as a customer is a core part of Ikea’s competitive advantage. Even if other companies ship you items flatpacked, they’re still doing all that work ikea doesn’t.
      - derefr 6y ago
        It’s funny. I live in a city where public transit is very good and I don’t need to own a car (so I don’t.) One of the inconveniences in my life is getting large furniture from stores. I can get to an IKEA just fine — but I have no way to get the products back home on my own. If they would let me, I would actually be perfectly happy to go to the IKEA, pick the boxes myself, and even load them into their truck myself, if that would result in the items then being driven to my house. I have to imagine that IKEA would be pretty okay with that arrangement as well. I wonder why they don’t offer that “service”...
        detaro 6y ago
        Is there no third-party filling that niche? Here in Berlin there's companies that pretty much offer "guy with van that picks you up at IKEA" (or other furniture stores, but at IKEA there's usually one lingering about waiting for customers) Although I thought they'd deliver almost everything by now too if you want. but haven't checked in a long time.
        dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
        It may look easy for you but it would complicate things for them. After packing your stuff you would probably want to get back home in the same vehicle, right? Otherwise the driver could get there before you. But in order to optimize, they will try to serve several customers at once - it would be impossible to let them all into the same large truck. SO basically you have two options: either use their online story (the most convenient option) or use public transport to go there and a taxi (of adequate size) to get back home. I usually use the former option after having visited the store first to actually try the products I intend to buy. I don't treat their stores as stores but as showrooms.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        The IKEAs I've been to all offer delivery for a fee, and at least one offered order picking for an additional fee.
      - zaxomi 6y ago
        In Sweden, IKEA have trailers and vans that you can rent, or they can deliver it to you.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Funnily enough officially they still don't. For some reason you're in theory not allowed to buy the evaluation kits as a consumer.
- crumpled 6y ago
  $2,576 US
  - 0x53 6y ago
    Yikes. I immediately went to see how much it was, because I have always wanted to buy a large eink screen. Guess I'll be waiting a bit more.
  - techbubble 6y ago
    I really like the concept of eInk, but for that price a regular wall-mounted display plus DAKboard[1] plus electricity will have to suffice. [1] https://dakboard.com/site https://dakboard.com/site
dheera 6y ago
I put a 10" eInk in a picture frame and it looks fantastic. Really waiting for the day when 32" becomes affordable. WaveShare, come on, I'm looking at you.
- offtop5 6y ago
  I tried this with a Raspberry Pi zero, and I basically couldn't get it to work. I noticed it also got very hot very fast. Are there any challenges that you ran into while building your project
  - dheera 6y ago
    I used this https://www.waveshare.com/10.3inch-e-Paper-HAT.htm https://www.waveshare.com/10.3inch-e-Paper-HAT.htm with a Pi Zero W with no issues other than occasional hangups of the signalling but that was solved with a software watchdog. Here are some pics of my setup. I had to de-solder the Waveshare header and solder on a 90 degree header to get this to fit in the frame in a low profile. (Ugh I wish things were sold without headers soldered) https://imgur.com/FQlan27 https://imgur.com/FQlan27 https://imgur.com/rot8knd https://imgur.com/rot8knd As far as getting hot really fast, the first thing I can think of is if you accidentally plugged in the GPIO rotated 180 degrees -- even briefly -- you might have fried one or both boards. Second thing I can think of, although it's more likely to just damage the e-Ink rather than make things become hot -- is e-Ink displays don't like to be hot-plugged/unplugged -- you should have all the connections plugged in before switching the system on.
    - ingend88 6y ago
      Can you set this up as a calendar?
      - ZeKK14 6y ago
        Yeah, but it involves a lot of development. I made this a few months back : https://github.com/ugomeda/esp32-epaper-display https://github.com/ugomeda/esp32-epaper-display I'm working on a more "user-friendly" version :)
efrank02 6y ago
You should cite the original
ComputerGuru 6y ago
This is basically a rip off the previously discussed (and much more well-written) original here: https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b407822494 https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40... It was previously discussed at length - I actually assumed someone had rediscovered it and posted it here again. Interesting that TFM doesn’t cite the very relevant prior art.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  Shame on the people that make interesting hobby projects without citing everybody that ever influenced them.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Did you read the post? > Why did I build this? I saw something similar online a few years ago and I couldn’t find it for sale so I decided to built it myself. It is lazy that he should have done some searching make a more concrete cite than just mention that he remembers seeing it. But at least he mentions he was influenced by prior art.
  - graiz 6y ago
    Not lazy... I googled for quite a bit and couldn't find the link. I wasn't claiming it as original. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean any offense by the comment. If anything, I think even if the link was findable not finding it but saying you saw it somewhere is fine. In this case, ya, not being able to find the link is a good enough excuse to just mentioning that you saw it elsewhere.
- fotta 6y ago
  Here’s another one from 4 months ago with lots of discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726
eli 6y ago
That's funny -- I just did the same thing! We both must have read that same earlier post about using Visionect to display the NYT and ran out and ordered one. I didn't get a chance to write it up yet but here's my software https://github.com/elidickinson/newsvision https://github.com/elidickinson/newsvision I skipped the HTML renderer and used the python library to push image data right to the display's frame buffer. Seems simpler if you're doing the hard work of turning it into an image yourself anyway. I also grabbed the full list of newspapers and used imagemagick to annotate each image with the paper name and location. It's a little hacky, but seems to work. It's admittedly an expensive display, but it really is very well made piece of hardware.
- elondaits 6y ago
  I didn’t understand going through HTML to render it with a headless browser instead of rendering the PDF directly with Ghostscript or something like that.
  - eli 6y ago
    I used poppler-utils but the OP apparently used imagemagick on PDFs directly which I didn’t know was possible. (To be fair the device does HTML rendering by default and the API for pushing images isn’t super obvious)
  - asiachick 6y ago
    2 reasons I'd use HTML 1. I'm taking untrusted PDFs and running them on my machine. Using something like say puppeteer that PDF renderer runs in a sandbox. Ghostscript, not so much. PDFs can have code in them 2. Using HTML via puppeteer lets me render tons of other things I might want to render than just PDFs. Plenty if beautiful algorithmic art out there that runs in a browser.
- eli 6y ago
  Some other ideas: overlay additional data or insert other screens in the rotation like a local weather map and bus times. Add another mode to display portraits or fine art. I also want to try different dithering and scaling techniques to see if I can get the text crisper. I also think it’d be neat to make an alexa skill for it so you could issue voice commands. Maybe have it show the song and artist data for what’s playing on Spotify.
jnovek 6y ago
Slight topic hijack: I desperately want an eInk display attached to my computer. I have amblyopia, and my vision can only be corrected to ~20/50. I develop significant eye strain using normal computer monitors and eInk is much easier on my eyes. The only monitor-sized eInk display I’m aware of for normal consumers is the 13.3” Onyx Boox Max at nearly $1000. Does anyone know of a cheaper product out there that would meet my needs?
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Dasung is the only manufacturer that's known for producing e-ink monitors but they are not any cheaper: - Review of Dasung's current generation 13.3" e-ink monitor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeC3LIFTaho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeC3LIFTaho - Preview video of their upcoming 25.3" e-ink monitor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY If low cost is a priority, previous generations of Dasung's e-ink displays occasionally show up on eBay.
  - singularity2001 6y ago
    any idea what the 25.3" e-ink monitor will cost? its €1500 for the 13.3" version, so … https://www.ebay.de/itm/Dasung-e-ink-Monitor-HD-FT/133442474452?epid=2314973626&hash=item1f11ca91d4:g:SOIAAOSw1zJe6gsZ https://www.ebay.de/itm/Dasung-e-ink-Monitor-HD-FT/133442474...
    - IshKebab 6y ago
      Probably around €3 or 4k then.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  There aren't any cheaper options (e-ink displays are patent encumbered) but Dasung has a similarly priced 13.3" display built with the intention of being used as a monitor if you end up going that route. Even crazier is a 23.5" version they just came out with for just over $3,000.
- hanemile 6y ago
siraben 6y ago
For those who own a reMarkable tablet, you can get a similar effect on your suspend screen by running remarkable-news[0]. When suspended, power consumption is very low (idle) and the screen is not powered, making it ideal for static content. [0] https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  This is awesome. Thanks for the headsup
- varispeed 6y ago
  I have reMarkable tablet, but I have not installed anything. What is a chance of bricking the device by doing so? I also found that I can't really write any notes with it as it is not encrypted, so now it is just a - oh irony - a paperweight for me. I should have done more research before buying. Is it possible to encrypt the notes?
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    As much as I like to Encrypt All The Things™, unless you're concerned about somebody stealing the physical device, you don't need to encrypt it. It should be possible to set up an encrypted directory with something like FUSE (though afaik FUSE doesn't run on the reMarkable), though. https://github.com/evidlo/remarkable_entware https://github.com/evidlo/remarkable_entware lets you install fstools.
    - varispeed 6y ago
      I would like to read and scribble on work documents (personal data, confidential documentation and so on) and regardless whether the device could be stolen or data unencrypted landed on rM servers, if there was a leak no insurer would help with that in terms of recovering losses. It is just not possible to use for business as potential for the damage huge. Now I am not sure why would I take any chances even with personal notes, not to mention loading any personal documents on it and who knows who looks at it when they land on the cloud unencrypted. It takes only one disgruntled employee.
keenreed 6y ago
Laser printer also works quite well. It can even display multiple pages at the same time :)
- azinman2 6y ago
  Or how about the actual newspaper?
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    Newspaper can't do gifs
Redoubts 6y ago
I like the display, but the need for a CMS running in a docker container on the other end to push images is asinine. Why is the eink market this weird?
- eli 6y ago
  The visionect server? I actually like that it’s a relatively dumb hardware with “server” software you can choose to run yourself. It’s pretty good software especially from a hardware company.
  - napsy 6y ago
    Yes, because the device is "dumb", it can achieve long battery autonomy. For example, our Joan products can work up to 6 months on battery without recharging.
  - Redoubts 6y ago
    It’s fine it’s a dumb display, I’m just surprised i can’t just make a socket connection and push some packets into the display over lan. It’s not just “server” software, there’s a full legit web app sitting in the middle.
    - eli 6y ago
      You might be interested in a more DIY approach: https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b407822494 https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40...
    - napsy 6y ago
      The current solution offers a management interface for a fleet of such devices with different content and "renderers" and power and activity statistics and charts and an HTTP API interface.
    - X-Cubed 6y ago
      Listening on a port (running as a server) requires that the network interface remains up at all times, consuming more battery, than a client interface where the network interface can be turned off (or put into low power mode) until the next poll event occurs.
anonu 6y ago
To spend $2500 on this is a bit outrageous. You can't carry it with you or fold it up. Who reads a newspaper standing in front of a wall... Unless you're at a urinal? The price needs to come down to make this useful. It's $250 a year for a daily paper subscription to the NYT. I could get it for ten years for the cost of this tech.
- Etheryte 6y ago
  I would love to have something of this kind as a calendar and agenda on my wall, but as you mentioned the price is currently ridiculously oppressive. Can't wait for the patents to expire so competition in this space becomes viable.
  - eli 6y ago
    My understanding is the patents aren’t the major obstacle today. There just isn’t enough volume yet to drive down production cost. LEDs used to be real expensive too.
    - neolog 6y ago
      Which companies other than EInk are making these displays? Displaydata might but I can't tell.
      - eli 6y ago
        This is the comment I was thinking of from the founder of visionect https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25067824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25067824
        neolog 6y ago
        That's really interesting.
  - napsy 6y ago
    Hello, I work for Visionect, the company that makes the hardware. We have a wireless e-ink based product that does exactly what you want. Check out Joan at https://getjoan.com https://getjoan.com
ruph123 6y ago
Man I love e-ink devices so much. My Onyx Boox Note Air is one of the nicest and useful devices I have ever owned. I absolutely love it and their open platform. (I even ditched my Kindle oasis for the Poke3) I always regarded e-ink as a soon-to-be (or already) obsolete technology and while that might still be true, I absolutely love it for reading and writing. There is currently nothing better.
- jnovek 6y ago
  How is the stylus input on the Note Air? Does it seem good enough for drawing?
  - ruph123 6y ago
    I’d say it is very good. According to mydeepguide it is between remarkable 1 and 2. So not the best but pretty good. I used an iPad and Pencil before and it feels better compared to that. But the iPad is more dependent on the iPad. I am shot at drawing, so not sure. I only draw up diagrams and things like that.
- nzmsv 6y ago
  Open? In what universe? They are blatant GPL violators: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hl09g7/onyx_boox_chinese_company_will_not_share_their/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hl09g7/onyx_boox_chi...
  - ruph123 6y ago
    Open because it runs Android and I can install any apps I want and even root the thing if I wanted to. (And by default it runs without google play services) Compare this to the Remarkable who probably does not violate the GPL but whose software platform does not allow me to simply add more functionality. Good example of “practically open” to “technically in the GNU sense ... bla bla bla”.
    - proto-n 6y ago
ingend88 6y ago
I am looking to use one of these but then setup as a family calendar. Any suggestions.
- eli 6y ago
  Visionect place & play is great if you can swing the price.
- napsy 6y ago
  There is a product, called Joan Home that is meant for home use and can display a single Google calendar https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home/ https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home/. If you share the calendar, it can be perfect to show family events. Disclaimer: I work for the company that develops the Joan product and the e-ink display, mentioned in the article.
  - xd1936 6y ago
    Great product, love the idea. €4.99/mo is a lot for essentially querying an external database. What is that subscription get me, exactly?
- SilverRed 6y ago
  This is probably the easiest one to get started with https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica/inkplate-6 https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica/inkplate-6 Its old kindle screens reverse engineered and stuck on a dev board containing an esp wifi chip.
- edent 6y ago
  I built one using an old, cheap eReader. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/turn-an-old-ereader-into-an-information-screen-nook-str/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/turn-an-old-ereader-into-an...
anigbrowl 6y ago
It's very cool that this is catching on. $2500 is expensive but if demand can be spread outside of the existing commercial market then a virtuous circle may result - falling product prices combined with lowered energy use and increased utility. This could pair very well with a simple voice-controlled interface; besides newspapers it seems like it could be great for maps and dashboards/instrumentation displays. I really hope this follows the same track as 'digital photo frames' that preceded LEDs becoming cheap, ubiquitous, and of excellent quality. Great as they are, I also like E-ink for its lower power use and lack of luminance. Re the blog page, I would have liked larger photos including close-ups; it looks great in the video but with a cut every few seconds it's hard to really study the quality.
- varispeed 6y ago
  It's about the cost of a two year subscription of a reputable newspaper. It would be nice if one of them cut a deal e.g. subscription and a tablet and make PR about being eco-friendly as it will not use paper etc.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    What reputable newspaper costs $1250 a year?
    - varispeed 6y ago
      I messed up. Telegraph costs about ~$600 per year, The Times is about similar price, so both could get you in the $1200 area (It's good to see different sides to find truth somewhere in the middle, so having just one subscription is not a great idea).
xiii1408 6y ago
Very cool! This reminds me a bit of the installation outside UC Berkeley's Free Speech Cafe, where they display the day's issue of about a dozen world newspapers, including one from exactly 100 years ago to the day [1]. (They stopped updating during the pandemic.) Your project sounds like the perfect piece of technology to add to an installation like this (or to essentially create a new version of it). [1] https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/08/07/stop-the-presses-theres-a-place-in-berkeley-where-time-and-the-pandemic-stood-still https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/08/07/stop-the-presses-the...
jacobmischka 6y ago
I'm probably missing something, but it seems wasteful to convert PDFs to HTML just to convert them to images in a separate stage immediately afterward?
- napsy 6y ago
  It is possible to use the HTTP backend where you manually convert PDF to images and then push images directly to the server and the device.
- graiz 6y ago
  Someone else mentioned a way to push images directly to the display but I didn't find an API to make this work. Also using HTML allows my to inject other dynamic content, not just PDF's such as a dashboard, weather, widgets, etc. It also makes it easier to display error messages if the newspaper server is down without needing to render images for errors.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Couldn't the HTML rendering be done on a smartphone, and then sent wirelessly to the display? So, essentially making the display a "dumb" one?
jetgirl 6y ago
You could start a (tiny) newspaper for the cost of this.
rmason 6y ago
I've always thought the future of newspapers was an iPad sized e-ink reader. One cheap enough for papers to give away to their subscribers. Yet it hasn't happened and I'm left wondering why? I think it's because the newspaper industry has tunnel vision. You might ask what about newspaper apps on phones? First it isn't an ideal screen size for a newspaper. Second they only show a fraction of the articles. They also keep articles on their scroll for days and days. I don't know about you but I don't chose a digital delivery to get days old stories. I think the industry needs a well funded disruptor. Living in Michigan I can tell you that without Elon Musk we'd never be moving toward battery powered automobiles. I've dealt with Gannett's customer service and I have come away convinced that they hate their customers.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  > Yet it hasn't happened and I'm left wondering why? I thought it had to do more with the patents on a lot of the e-ink technology? I've been waiting for a proper e-ink monitor that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg for years.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    You and me both. Maybe it's demand that will drive down the price. Now, if you and I each buy one ... I will if you will. ;-)
- nafizh 6y ago
  It’s the e-ink patent problem. Nothing innovative is happening because of the e-ink parent company.
  - AshamedCaptain 6y ago
    Please don't start with this BS again. Every time e-ink is mentioned in this forum, the same. There is absolutely no proof that e-Ink is boycotting their own business, much less using patents. There are eInk devices and manufacturers to spare. eInk is just expensive to manufacture. Personally I think there is just no demand. You could build a large reflective LCD for a fraction of the price; you would have none of the problems of eInk -- such as the bad refresh rate -- and users have a hard time distinguishing an eInk panel from a reflective-LCD panel anyway (see the Pebble). Even accounting for the energy consumption it would probably be a close call in cost, unless you plan on updating the panel only a couple times per week. The fact that no one of the LCD panel manufacturers are doing this even with leftovers from other production lines just shows how little demand there is, outside of HN-welcome hobbyist projects and other low-power areas such as smartwatches.
BeetleB 6y ago
Slight tangent, but Calibre has a feature that lets you download articles from various sites (including news sites) and producing ebooks out of each (daily). When I first bought an ebook reader, this became my primary way of consuming news. I'd connect my ereader to the PC, and download the news. One ebook per newspaper. It was so much better than reading on the PC. And it looked a lot like a traditional newspaper. No banner ads and pointless links. Just the story with relevant photos in B/W. Then I stopped reading news. Still have fond memories of reading the news on eInk, though.
- jamiek88 6y ago
  Hmmm this seems right up my street. Do you manually add the pages or can it auto scrape?
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    The details are here.[1] A third party HOWTO is here.[2] Calibre has a bunch of "recipes" for some popular news sites. I know I added some of my own. It was not particularly hard, but of course, it breaks when the source makes changes to their site. You specify the recipes you want and it downloads them periodically. This link[3] has examples of how it would look on an ereader (it's quite old so it may look different now): [1] https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html [2] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-news-updates-kindle-calibre/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-news-updates-kindle-calibr... [3] https://michaeltalbotuk.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/how-to-use-calibre-to-read-newspapers-magazines-for-free/ https://michaeltalbotuk.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/how-to-use-...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
http://johnnylee.net/projects/thesis/ http://johnnylee.net/projects/thesis/ from which foldable displays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSR_6-Y5Kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSR_6-Y5Kg
fortran77 6y ago
> The display is 99% more power efficient than a traditional LCD, so the display can run for months without being charged. Wow! It's not even twice as power efficient as an LCD! I would have thought it would be much more power efficient than that. The manufacture's web page makes the same claim: https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ How does it run for months on a battery if it's only 99% more efficient than an LCD panel?
- Tarsul 6y ago
  now that you're saying it, it does read like you say. I and probably 99% of people read it the way it's meant: it uses just 1% of the energy needed for an equally big LCD, which means it can stay on 100 times as long. They should've used a better wording, yes.
nullify88 6y ago
After seeing the one with the new york times, I thought about having a colour eink display that would display related album or artist art as I played music from my chromecast audio plugged in my hifi. Just finding a high quality source of images is hard but Apple iTunes has a decent selection. Other opportunities could be displaying the days RSS feeds or HN posts.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  As far as I have seen, color eink is just an lcd with an extra matte plastic layer over the top. You can get 3 color real e paper displays but thats really pushing the tech and it takes ages to refresh.
denysvitali 6y ago
Oh cool! > €2,300.00 Uhm
dmje 6y ago
Looks great until you see the price of the display. €2,300 buys you a daily newspaper every day for 5 years...
YeBanKo 6y ago
It’s just way too expensive. PLACE & PLAY 32″ – $2,576.00 eInk tech is great, it’s been around for a long time and the adoption is very slow. For this pri e you can get very thing lg oled hdr tv 60-70”.
danellis 6y ago
In case anyone's wondering, the display costs over $2500.
mcdevilkiller 6y ago
Only for $2.5k, though.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Lol his previous post was from 2006 ("CSS Still sucks" - about which I partly agree with some of his points but not overall - I think it did wonders for the web and I use it a lot to customise sites so they don't piss me off with their bloated designs). Nice project, but reading a paper from the wall doesn't seem very comfortable. PS: This screen is ridiculously expensive but you can get pretty nice 12" ones for 200 bucks from waveshare. Even with a 3-color option (black/white/red). Someone also did this with a 7" full colour one recently. Which looked amazing, if you have very good eyes :P Those full colour ones cost only 70 bucks by the way, though getting one is a problem in itself.
- generj 6y ago
  The 12” ones from Waveshare are unfortunately 1-bit grayscale (e.g. on/off, black/white) so any of the pictures will require quite a bit of dithering and the text isn’t as crisp as I’d like even at the large resolution. Probably resolvable with an algorithm, but I gave up and finished the project. I would get the largest display that offers 4-but grayscale from Waveshare and go with it.
louwrentius 6y ago
For those of us who: 1. Don't have $2300 to spend on a hobby 2. Can live with very slow refresh-rates I've found an epaper / eInk display on Waveshare that might be interesting. https://louwrentius.com/a-1248-inch-1304x984-three-color-e-paper-display-by-waveshare.html https://louwrentius.com/a-1248-inch-1304x984-three-color-e-p...
davidhariri 6y ago
Credit where credit is due. I'm pretty sure Max Braun did this first. Check out all of his other projects: https://braun.design https://braun.design
smcleod 6y ago
$3,549.65 AUD for that 32" panel is... astounding!
- system2 6y ago
  One powerful computer and 6 very nice monitors can be purchased with that money...
interestica 6y ago
You can add javascript as a bookmark in chrome to bring up the current New York Times front page: 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";
nudpiedo 6y ago
I wish there was a way to add touch such screens a touch panel. I've search long time how to do it but I only could find prebuilt panels for ratios different than the eink screen I was interested. If anyone knows how to build one it will be very helpful to me as I want to build my custom reader/notetaker from scratch.
m463 6y ago
I did something similar with the new york times home page .pdf they provide: https://static01.nyt.com/images/<year>/<month>/<day>/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf (I just emailed it to myself each morning) It got old pretty quickly. What I found was that the New York Times has great articles that get posted here on HN. However with the front page with subjects I didn't really care about, I noticed a definite bias. I don't really care about subjects related to trump or biden, but their stories were pretty overtly subjective. I learned a bit about media bias that I wouldn't have picked up reading just tech articles (being so close to the subject). now I email myself wikipedia current events: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Current_ev...
- swebs 6y ago
  >now I email myself wikipedia current events Same (except the email part). Its also useful to check the page history for each day too since it can often be a political battleground.
bfrye 6y ago
Not going to lie, this is sort of bad ass!
m-p-3 6y ago
Why is that so expensive?! https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/
Animats 6y ago
The 32 inch e-Ink display costs $2,576. For which you can get an 86 inch 4K HDTV at Costco. The e-Ink people have got to get their costs down.
- robinsoh 6y ago
  > The e-Ink people have got to get their costs down. I work in the display industry. No vendor can get their cost down unless they're able to get their volumes up to millions of units per quarter. It's a power scaling law. I doubt E-Ink even manages to sell 10,000 32 inch displays per quarter and if I'm not mistaken these backplanes and laminate material are kerfed by hand! Notice that small sized displays on the other hand are much cheaper. As long as there's nobody willing to pony up an order for a million 32 inch displays, the status quo will likely remain the same.
  - 1-6 6y ago
    It’s amazing to think about how much everything we use around us may actually cost without volume. Free trade is good stuff but hope we can keep it going for a long time.
  - naravara 6y ago
    Honestly I'm surprised I don't see more instances of the technology being used for things like windows or sunglasses with controllable opacity/tinting. It's a much less price sensitive market at least. I've seen them in practice but it's rare and generally in contexts where I assume it is super duper expensive (like in hotels in Dubai sorts of places).
    - zanecodes 6y ago
      As far as E-Ink goes, my understanding is that it works by moving charged ink particles from one end of a microscopic capsule to the other, so that white and black particles switch places, resulting in a visible color change. All this is to say that the display surface isn't exactly changing color or opacity, it's just moving it around, so I doubt it could be used to create a surface that goes from transparent to opaque and vice versa. On the other hand, LCD could be used to create an opacity-changing window, but LCD panels block a lot of light even when they're fully "transparent," which is why they consume so much power (their backlights have to be very bright).
rcarmo 6y ago
I love this and would buy one instantly if it wasn’t this horrendously expensive. I suppose we’ll just have to wait for the IKEA WOLLPAPERR edition... Edit: there seem to be smaller, hackable displays around as surplus, but still, nothing as big: https://hackaday.com/2020/11/27/repurposing-large-electronic-price-tags/ https://hackaday.com/2020/11/27/repurposing-large-electronic...
roberthahn 6y ago
I would love to have one of these eInk displays in my woodworking shop for displaying project plans while I work! I hope this product becomes commoditized soon!
ocbyc 6y ago
Not bad for $2,576.00
generj 6y ago
I did something similar with a much smaller (and much less expensive) 12.48” screen from Waveshare. Cost about $200 all in. Guests are frequently confused why I’ve printed out today’s New York Times. One downside is the aspect ratio not aligning so the newspaper must be cropped. I’ve chosen to show the top 60% or so of the paper. Another is that the display I chose is 1-but and dithering uses up quite a bit of the useful resolution. If I were starting over again I’d get a display with 4-but grayscale.

547 points by graiz 6y ago

zo1 6y ago

Unfortunately, the price for the e-ink display is "€2,300".

slater 6y ago
That's aaaalmost down to vaguely-affordable, though. Used to be that eInk Corp. wouldn't even pick up the phone for less than at least $10k+
- derefr 6y ago
  These direct-sales eInk products are essentially SDKs for their tech, so it makes sense that they’ve always been low-volume B2B products with high per-unit prices. Nevertheless, there has been a recent decrease in price of this SDK hardware. I believe it’s been driven by eInk having created a modular substrate (all the stuff in a display, minus the panel) allowing cheaper iteration on their panel technology. So people can buy the SDK substrate component once; and then buy a new SDK panel component each time eInk reformulates it. Lower manufacturing costs + cheaper logistics for eInk Corp. = cheaper costs for everyone else, even when buying the whole kit together. (Sort of the same reason that essentially the same cube-shelf design is cheaper from IKEA — IKEA just packs wood tightly into a flat box, and then piles those flat boxes up in a shipping container; and when you buy it and get it delivered, it’s still flat right up until it’s in your house. Other manufacturers, meanwhile, assemble the thing at some point — whether at the factory or at the story — and then ship it at least once in assembled form, where it’s taking up a huge amount of space in the container / on the truck.)
  - jameshart 6y ago
    I actually realized when I was in the ikea warehouse recently pondering why ikea still don’t offer home delivery for most things: they actually just never pay anyone to move or handle less than a pallet-load of flat pack boxes at a time. You do that labor yourself for them - taking the cart, finding the box (or multiple separate boxes for a lot of their more customizable combination items) in the warehouse, picking it, taking it to the scanning station, loading it for transport. All that labor that you do as a customer is a core part of Ikea’s competitive advantage. Even if other companies ship you items flatpacked, they’re still doing all that work ikea doesn’t.
    - derefr 6y ago
      It’s funny. I live in a city where public transit is very good and I don’t need to own a car (so I don’t.) One of the inconveniences in my life is getting large furniture from stores. I can get to an IKEA just fine — but I have no way to get the products back home on my own. If they would let me, I would actually be perfectly happy to go to the IKEA, pick the boxes myself, and even load them into their truck myself, if that would result in the items then being driven to my house. I have to imagine that IKEA would be pretty okay with that arrangement as well. I wonder why they don’t offer that “service”...
      - detaro 6y ago
        Is there no third-party filling that niche? Here in Berlin there's companies that pretty much offer "guy with van that picks you up at IKEA" (or other furniture stores, but at IKEA there's usually one lingering about waiting for customers) Although I thought they'd deliver almost everything by now too if you want. but haven't checked in a long time.
      - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
        It may look easy for you but it would complicate things for them. After packing your stuff you would probably want to get back home in the same vehicle, right? Otherwise the driver could get there before you. But in order to optimize, they will try to serve several customers at once - it would be impossible to let them all into the same large truck. SO basically you have two options: either use their online story (the most convenient option) or use public transport to go there and a taxi (of adequate size) to get back home. I usually use the former option after having visited the store first to actually try the products I intend to buy. I don't treat their stores as stores but as showrooms.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        The IKEAs I've been to all offer delivery for a fee, and at least one offered order picking for an additional fee.
    - zaxomi 6y ago
      In Sweden, IKEA have trailers and vans that you can rent, or they can deliver it to you.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  Funnily enough officially they still don't. For some reason you're in theory not allowed to buy the evaluation kits as a consumer.
crumpled 6y ago
$2,576 US
- 0x53 6y ago
  Yikes. I immediately went to see how much it was, because I have always wanted to buy a large eink screen. Guess I'll be waiting a bit more.
- techbubble 6y ago
  I really like the concept of eInk, but for that price a regular wall-mounted display plus DAKboard[1] plus electricity will have to suffice. [1] https://dakboard.com/site https://dakboard.com/site

dheera 6y ago

I put a 10" eInk in a picture frame and it looks fantastic. Really waiting for the day when 32" becomes affordable. WaveShare, come on, I'm looking at you.

offtop5 6y ago
I tried this with a Raspberry Pi zero, and I basically couldn't get it to work. I noticed it also got very hot very fast. Are there any challenges that you ran into while building your project
- dheera 6y ago
  I used this https://www.waveshare.com/10.3inch-e-Paper-HAT.htm https://www.waveshare.com/10.3inch-e-Paper-HAT.htm with a Pi Zero W with no issues other than occasional hangups of the signalling but that was solved with a software watchdog. Here are some pics of my setup. I had to de-solder the Waveshare header and solder on a 90 degree header to get this to fit in the frame in a low profile. (Ugh I wish things were sold without headers soldered) https://imgur.com/FQlan27 https://imgur.com/FQlan27 https://imgur.com/rot8knd https://imgur.com/rot8knd As far as getting hot really fast, the first thing I can think of is if you accidentally plugged in the GPIO rotated 180 degrees -- even briefly -- you might have fried one or both boards. Second thing I can think of, although it's more likely to just damage the e-Ink rather than make things become hot -- is e-Ink displays don't like to be hot-plugged/unplugged -- you should have all the connections plugged in before switching the system on.
  - ingend88 6y ago
    Can you set this up as a calendar?
    - ZeKK14 6y ago
      Yeah, but it involves a lot of development. I made this a few months back : https://github.com/ugomeda/esp32-epaper-display https://github.com/ugomeda/esp32-epaper-display I'm working on a more "user-friendly" version :)

efrank02 6y ago

You should cite the original

ComputerGuru 6y ago

This is basically a rip off the previously discussed (and much more well-written) original here: https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b407822494 https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40... It was previously discussed at length - I actually assumed someone had rediscovered it and posted it here again. Interesting that TFM doesn’t cite the very relevant prior art.

yoz-y 6y ago
Shame on the people that make interesting hobby projects without citing everybody that ever influenced them.
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Did you read the post? > Why did I build this? I saw something similar online a few years ago and I couldn’t find it for sale so I decided to built it myself. It is lazy that he should have done some searching make a more concrete cite than just mention that he remembers seeing it. But at least he mentions he was influenced by prior art.
- graiz 6y ago
  Not lazy... I googled for quite a bit and couldn't find the link. I wasn't claiming it as original. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean any offense by the comment. If anything, I think even if the link was findable not finding it but saying you saw it somewhere is fine. In this case, ya, not being able to find the link is a good enough excuse to just mentioning that you saw it elsewhere.
fotta 6y ago
Here’s another one from 4 months ago with lots of discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726

eli 6y ago

That's funny -- I just did the same thing! We both must have read that same earlier post about using Visionect to display the NYT and ran out and ordered one. I didn't get a chance to write it up yet but here's my software https://github.com/elidickinson/newsvision https://github.com/elidickinson/newsvision I skipped the HTML renderer and used the python library to push image data right to the display's frame buffer. Seems simpler if you're doing the hard work of turning it into an image yourself anyway. I also grabbed the full list of newspapers and used imagemagick to annotate each image with the paper name and location. It's a little hacky, but seems to work. It's admittedly an expensive display, but it really is very well made piece of hardware.

elondaits 6y ago
I didn’t understand going through HTML to render it with a headless browser instead of rendering the PDF directly with Ghostscript or something like that.
- eli 6y ago
  I used poppler-utils but the OP apparently used imagemagick on PDFs directly which I didn’t know was possible. (To be fair the device does HTML rendering by default and the API for pushing images isn’t super obvious)
- asiachick 6y ago
  2 reasons I'd use HTML 1. I'm taking untrusted PDFs and running them on my machine. Using something like say puppeteer that PDF renderer runs in a sandbox. Ghostscript, not so much. PDFs can have code in them 2. Using HTML via puppeteer lets me render tons of other things I might want to render than just PDFs. Plenty if beautiful algorithmic art out there that runs in a browser.
eli 6y ago
Some other ideas: overlay additional data or insert other screens in the rotation like a local weather map and bus times. Add another mode to display portraits or fine art. I also want to try different dithering and scaling techniques to see if I can get the text crisper. I also think it’d be neat to make an alexa skill for it so you could issue voice commands. Maybe have it show the song and artist data for what’s playing on Spotify.

jnovek 6y ago

Slight topic hijack: I desperately want an eInk display attached to my computer. I have amblyopia, and my vision can only be corrected to ~20/50. I develop significant eye strain using normal computer monitors and eInk is much easier on my eyes. The only monitor-sized eInk display I’m aware of for normal consumers is the 13.3” Onyx Boox Max at nearly $1000. Does anyone know of a cheaper product out there that would meet my needs?

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Dasung is the only manufacturer that's known for producing e-ink monitors but they are not any cheaper: - Review of Dasung's current generation 13.3" e-ink monitor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeC3LIFTaho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeC3LIFTaho - Preview video of their upcoming 25.3" e-ink monitor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY If low cost is a priority, previous generations of Dasung's e-ink displays occasionally show up on eBay.
- singularity2001 6y ago
  any idea what the 25.3" e-ink monitor will cost? its €1500 for the 13.3" version, so … https://www.ebay.de/itm/Dasung-e-ink-Monitor-HD-FT/133442474452?epid=2314973626&hash=item1f11ca91d4:g:SOIAAOSw1zJe6gsZ https://www.ebay.de/itm/Dasung-e-ink-Monitor-HD-FT/133442474...
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    Probably around €3 or 4k then.
zamadatix 6y ago
There aren't any cheaper options (e-ink displays are patent encumbered) but Dasung has a similarly priced 13.3" display built with the intention of being used as a monitor if you end up going that route. Even crazier is a 23.5" version they just came out with for just over $3,000.
hanemile 6y ago

siraben 6y ago

For those who own a reMarkable tablet, you can get a similar effect on your suspend screen by running remarkable-news[0]. When suspended, power consumption is very low (idle) and the screen is not powered, making it ideal for static content. [0] https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_news

secfirstmd 6y ago
This is awesome. Thanks for the headsup
varispeed 6y ago
I have reMarkable tablet, but I have not installed anything. What is a chance of bricking the device by doing so? I also found that I can't really write any notes with it as it is not encrypted, so now it is just a - oh irony - a paperweight for me. I should have done more research before buying. Is it possible to encrypt the notes?
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  As much as I like to Encrypt All The Things™, unless you're concerned about somebody stealing the physical device, you don't need to encrypt it. It should be possible to set up an encrypted directory with something like FUSE (though afaik FUSE doesn't run on the reMarkable), though. https://github.com/evidlo/remarkable_entware https://github.com/evidlo/remarkable_entware lets you install fstools.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    I would like to read and scribble on work documents (personal data, confidential documentation and so on) and regardless whether the device could be stolen or data unencrypted landed on rM servers, if there was a leak no insurer would help with that in terms of recovering losses. It is just not possible to use for business as potential for the damage huge. Now I am not sure why would I take any chances even with personal notes, not to mention loading any personal documents on it and who knows who looks at it when they land on the cloud unencrypted. It takes only one disgruntled employee.

keenreed 6y ago

Laser printer also works quite well. It can even display multiple pages at the same time :)

azinman2 6y ago
Or how about the actual newspaper?
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Newspaper can't do gifs

Redoubts 6y ago

I like the display, but the need for a CMS running in a docker container on the other end to push images is asinine. Why is the eink market this weird?

eli 6y ago
The visionect server? I actually like that it’s a relatively dumb hardware with “server” software you can choose to run yourself. It’s pretty good software especially from a hardware company.
- napsy 6y ago
  Yes, because the device is "dumb", it can achieve long battery autonomy. For example, our Joan products can work up to 6 months on battery without recharging.
- Redoubts 6y ago
  It’s fine it’s a dumb display, I’m just surprised i can’t just make a socket connection and push some packets into the display over lan. It’s not just “server” software, there’s a full legit web app sitting in the middle.
  - eli 6y ago
    You might be interested in a more DIY approach: https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b407822494 https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40...
  - napsy 6y ago
    The current solution offers a management interface for a fleet of such devices with different content and "renderers" and power and activity statistics and charts and an HTTP API interface.
  - X-Cubed 6y ago
    Listening on a port (running as a server) requires that the network interface remains up at all times, consuming more battery, than a client interface where the network interface can be turned off (or put into low power mode) until the next poll event occurs.

anonu 6y ago

To spend $2500 on this is a bit outrageous. You can't carry it with you or fold it up. Who reads a newspaper standing in front of a wall... Unless you're at a urinal? The price needs to come down to make this useful. It's $250 a year for a daily paper subscription to the NYT. I could get it for ten years for the cost of this tech.

Etheryte 6y ago
I would love to have something of this kind as a calendar and agenda on my wall, but as you mentioned the price is currently ridiculously oppressive. Can't wait for the patents to expire so competition in this space becomes viable.
- eli 6y ago
  My understanding is the patents aren’t the major obstacle today. There just isn’t enough volume yet to drive down production cost. LEDs used to be real expensive too.
  - neolog 6y ago
    Which companies other than EInk are making these displays? Displaydata might but I can't tell.
    - eli 6y ago
      This is the comment I was thinking of from the founder of visionect https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25067824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25067824
      - neolog 6y ago
        That's really interesting.
- napsy 6y ago
  Hello, I work for Visionect, the company that makes the hardware. We have a wireless e-ink based product that does exactly what you want. Check out Joan at https://getjoan.com https://getjoan.com

ruph123 6y ago

Man I love e-ink devices so much. My Onyx Boox Note Air is one of the nicest and useful devices I have ever owned. I absolutely love it and their open platform. (I even ditched my Kindle oasis for the Poke3) I always regarded e-ink as a soon-to-be (or already) obsolete technology and while that might still be true, I absolutely love it for reading and writing. There is currently nothing better.

jnovek 6y ago
How is the stylus input on the Note Air? Does it seem good enough for drawing?
- ruph123 6y ago
  I’d say it is very good. According to mydeepguide it is between remarkable 1 and 2. So not the best but pretty good. I used an iPad and Pencil before and it feels better compared to that. But the iPad is more dependent on the iPad. I am shot at drawing, so not sure. I only draw up diagrams and things like that.
nzmsv 6y ago
Open? In what universe? They are blatant GPL violators: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hl09g7/onyx_boox_chinese_company_will_not_share_their/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hl09g7/onyx_boox_chi...
- ruph123 6y ago
  Open because it runs Android and I can install any apps I want and even root the thing if I wanted to. (And by default it runs without google play services) Compare this to the Remarkable who probably does not violate the GPL but whose software platform does not allow me to simply add more functionality. Good example of “practically open” to “technically in the GNU sense ... bla bla bla”.
  - proto-n 6y ago

ingend88 6y ago

I am looking to use one of these but then setup as a family calendar. Any suggestions.

eli 6y ago
Visionect place & play is great if you can swing the price.
napsy 6y ago
There is a product, called Joan Home that is meant for home use and can display a single Google calendar https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home/ https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home/. If you share the calendar, it can be perfect to show family events. Disclaimer: I work for the company that develops the Joan product and the e-ink display, mentioned in the article.
- xd1936 6y ago
  Great product, love the idea. €4.99/mo is a lot for essentially querying an external database. What is that subscription get me, exactly?
SilverRed 6y ago
This is probably the easiest one to get started with https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica/inkplate-6 https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica/inkplate-6 Its old kindle screens reverse engineered and stuck on a dev board containing an esp wifi chip.
edent 6y ago
I built one using an old, cheap eReader. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/turn-an-old-ereader-into-an-information-screen-nook-str/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/turn-an-old-ereader-into-an...

anigbrowl 6y ago

It's very cool that this is catching on. $2500 is expensive but if demand can be spread outside of the existing commercial market then a virtuous circle may result - falling product prices combined with lowered energy use and increased utility. This could pair very well with a simple voice-controlled interface; besides newspapers it seems like it could be great for maps and dashboards/instrumentation displays. I really hope this follows the same track as 'digital photo frames' that preceded LEDs becoming cheap, ubiquitous, and of excellent quality. Great as they are, I also like E-ink for its lower power use and lack of luminance. Re the blog page, I would have liked larger photos including close-ups; it looks great in the video but with a cut every few seconds it's hard to really study the quality.

varispeed 6y ago
It's about the cost of a two year subscription of a reputable newspaper. It would be nice if one of them cut a deal e.g. subscription and a tablet and make PR about being eco-friendly as it will not use paper etc.
- kortilla 6y ago
  What reputable newspaper costs $1250 a year?
  - varispeed 6y ago
    I messed up. Telegraph costs about ~$600 per year, The Times is about similar price, so both could get you in the $1200 area (It's good to see different sides to find truth somewhere in the middle, so having just one subscription is not a great idea).

xiii1408 6y ago

Very cool! This reminds me a bit of the installation outside UC Berkeley's Free Speech Cafe, where they display the day's issue of about a dozen world newspapers, including one from exactly 100 years ago to the day [1]. (They stopped updating during the pandemic.) Your project sounds like the perfect piece of technology to add to an installation like this (or to essentially create a new version of it). [1] https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/08/07/stop-the-presses-theres-a-place-in-berkeley-where-time-and-the-pandemic-stood-still https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/08/07/stop-the-presses-the...

jacobmischka 6y ago

I'm probably missing something, but it seems wasteful to convert PDFs to HTML just to convert them to images in a separate stage immediately afterward?

napsy 6y ago
It is possible to use the HTTP backend where you manually convert PDF to images and then push images directly to the server and the device.
graiz 6y ago
Someone else mentioned a way to push images directly to the display but I didn't find an API to make this work. Also using HTML allows my to inject other dynamic content, not just PDF's such as a dashboard, weather, widgets, etc. It also makes it easier to display error messages if the newspaper server is down without needing to render images for errors.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

Couldn't the HTML rendering be done on a smartphone, and then sent wirelessly to the display? So, essentially making the display a "dumb" one?

jetgirl 6y ago

You could start a (tiny) newspaper for the cost of this.

rmason 6y ago

I've always thought the future of newspapers was an iPad sized e-ink reader. One cheap enough for papers to give away to their subscribers. Yet it hasn't happened and I'm left wondering why? I think it's because the newspaper industry has tunnel vision. You might ask what about newspaper apps on phones? First it isn't an ideal screen size for a newspaper. Second they only show a fraction of the articles. They also keep articles on their scroll for days and days. I don't know about you but I don't chose a digital delivery to get days old stories. I think the industry needs a well funded disruptor. Living in Michigan I can tell you that without Elon Musk we'd never be moving toward battery powered automobiles. I've dealt with Gannett's customer service and I have come away convinced that they hate their customers.

BossingAround 6y ago
> Yet it hasn't happened and I'm left wondering why? I thought it had to do more with the patents on a lot of the e-ink technology? I've been waiting for a proper e-ink monitor that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg for years.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  You and me both. Maybe it's demand that will drive down the price. Now, if you and I each buy one ... I will if you will. ;-)
nafizh 6y ago
It’s the e-ink patent problem. Nothing innovative is happening because of the e-ink parent company.
- AshamedCaptain 6y ago
  Please don't start with this BS again. Every time e-ink is mentioned in this forum, the same. There is absolutely no proof that e-Ink is boycotting their own business, much less using patents. There are eInk devices and manufacturers to spare. eInk is just expensive to manufacture. Personally I think there is just no demand. You could build a large reflective LCD for a fraction of the price; you would have none of the problems of eInk -- such as the bad refresh rate -- and users have a hard time distinguishing an eInk panel from a reflective-LCD panel anyway (see the Pebble). Even accounting for the energy consumption it would probably be a close call in cost, unless you plan on updating the panel only a couple times per week. The fact that no one of the LCD panel manufacturers are doing this even with leftovers from other production lines just shows how little demand there is, outside of HN-welcome hobbyist projects and other low-power areas such as smartwatches.

BeetleB 6y ago

Slight tangent, but Calibre has a feature that lets you download articles from various sites (including news sites) and producing ebooks out of each (daily). When I first bought an ebook reader, this became my primary way of consuming news. I'd connect my ereader to the PC, and download the news. One ebook per newspaper. It was so much better than reading on the PC. And it looked a lot like a traditional newspaper. No banner ads and pointless links. Just the story with relevant photos in B/W. Then I stopped reading news. Still have fond memories of reading the news on eInk, though.

jamiek88 6y ago
Hmmm this seems right up my street. Do you manually add the pages or can it auto scrape?
- BeetleB 6y ago
  The details are here.[1] A third party HOWTO is here.[2] Calibre has a bunch of "recipes" for some popular news sites. I know I added some of my own. It was not particularly hard, but of course, it breaks when the source makes changes to their site. You specify the recipes you want and it downloads them periodically. This link[3] has examples of how it would look on an ereader (it's quite old so it may look different now): [1] https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html [2] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-news-updates-kindle-calibre/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-news-updates-kindle-calibr... [3] https://michaeltalbotuk.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/how-to-use-calibre-to-read-newspapers-magazines-for-free/ https://michaeltalbotuk.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/how-to-use-...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

http://johnnylee.net/projects/thesis/ http://johnnylee.net/projects/thesis/ from which foldable displays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSR_6-Y5Kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSR_6-Y5Kg

fortran77 6y ago

> The display is 99% more power efficient than a traditional LCD, so the display can run for months without being charged. Wow! It's not even twice as power efficient as an LCD! I would have thought it would be much more power efficient than that. The manufacture's web page makes the same claim: https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ How does it run for months on a battery if it's only 99% more efficient than an LCD panel?

Tarsul 6y ago
now that you're saying it, it does read like you say. I and probably 99% of people read it the way it's meant: it uses just 1% of the energy needed for an equally big LCD, which means it can stay on 100 times as long. They should've used a better wording, yes.

nullify88 6y ago

After seeing the one with the new york times, I thought about having a colour eink display that would display related album or artist art as I played music from my chromecast audio plugged in my hifi. Just finding a high quality source of images is hard but Apple iTunes has a decent selection. Other opportunities could be displaying the days RSS feeds or HN posts.

SilverRed 6y ago
As far as I have seen, color eink is just an lcd with an extra matte plastic layer over the top. You can get 3 color real e paper displays but thats really pushing the tech and it takes ages to refresh.

denysvitali 6y ago

Oh cool! > €2,300.00 Uhm

dmje 6y ago

Looks great until you see the price of the display. €2,300 buys you a daily newspaper every day for 5 years...

YeBanKo 6y ago

It’s just way too expensive. PLACE & PLAY 32″ – $2,576.00 eInk tech is great, it’s been around for a long time and the adoption is very slow. For this pri e you can get very thing lg oled hdr tv 60-70”.

danellis 6y ago

In case anyone's wondering, the display costs over $2500.

mcdevilkiller 6y ago

Only for $2.5k, though.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Lol his previous post was from 2006 ("CSS Still sucks" - about which I partly agree with some of his points but not overall - I think it did wonders for the web and I use it a lot to customise sites so they don't piss me off with their bloated designs). Nice project, but reading a paper from the wall doesn't seem very comfortable. PS: This screen is ridiculously expensive but you can get pretty nice 12" ones for 200 bucks from waveshare. Even with a 3-color option (black/white/red). Someone also did this with a 7" full colour one recently. Which looked amazing, if you have very good eyes :P Those full colour ones cost only 70 bucks by the way, though getting one is a problem in itself.

generj 6y ago
The 12” ones from Waveshare are unfortunately 1-bit grayscale (e.g. on/off, black/white) so any of the pictures will require quite a bit of dithering and the text isn’t as crisp as I’d like even at the large resolution. Probably resolvable with an algorithm, but I gave up and finished the project. I would get the largest display that offers 4-but grayscale from Waveshare and go with it.

louwrentius 6y ago

For those of us who: 1. Don't have $2300 to spend on a hobby 2. Can live with very slow refresh-rates I've found an epaper / eInk display on Waveshare that might be interesting. https://louwrentius.com/a-1248-inch-1304x984-three-color-e-paper-display-by-waveshare.html https://louwrentius.com/a-1248-inch-1304x984-three-color-e-p...

davidhariri 6y ago

Credit where credit is due. I'm pretty sure Max Braun did this first. Check out all of his other projects: https://braun.design https://braun.design

smcleod 6y ago

$3,549.65 AUD for that 32" panel is... astounding!

system2 6y ago
One powerful computer and 6 very nice monitors can be purchased with that money...

interestica 6y ago

You can add javascript as a bookmark in chrome to bring up the current New York Times front page: 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";

nudpiedo 6y ago

I wish there was a way to add touch such screens a touch panel. I've search long time how to do it but I only could find prebuilt panels for ratios different than the eink screen I was interested. If anyone knows how to build one it will be very helpful to me as I want to build my custom reader/notetaker from scratch.

m463 6y ago

I did something similar with the new york times home page .pdf they provide: https://static01.nyt.com/images/<year>/<month>/<day>/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf (I just emailed it to myself each morning) It got old pretty quickly. What I found was that the New York Times has great articles that get posted here on HN. However with the front page with subjects I didn't really care about, I noticed a definite bias. I don't really care about subjects related to trump or biden, but their stories were pretty overtly subjective. I learned a bit about media bias that I wouldn't have picked up reading just tech articles (being so close to the subject). now I email myself wikipedia current events: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Current_ev...

swebs 6y ago
>now I email myself wikipedia current events Same (except the email part). Its also useful to check the page history for each day too since it can often be a political battleground.

bfrye 6y ago

Not going to lie, this is sort of bad ass!

m-p-3 6y ago

Why is that so expensive?! https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/

Animats 6y ago

The 32 inch e-Ink display costs $2,576. For which you can get an 86 inch 4K HDTV at Costco. The e-Ink people have got to get their costs down.

robinsoh 6y ago
> The e-Ink people have got to get their costs down. I work in the display industry. No vendor can get their cost down unless they're able to get their volumes up to millions of units per quarter. It's a power scaling law. I doubt E-Ink even manages to sell 10,000 32 inch displays per quarter and if I'm not mistaken these backplanes and laminate material are kerfed by hand! Notice that small sized displays on the other hand are much cheaper. As long as there's nobody willing to pony up an order for a million 32 inch displays, the status quo will likely remain the same.
- 1-6 6y ago
  It’s amazing to think about how much everything we use around us may actually cost without volume. Free trade is good stuff but hope we can keep it going for a long time.
- naravara 6y ago
  Honestly I'm surprised I don't see more instances of the technology being used for things like windows or sunglasses with controllable opacity/tinting. It's a much less price sensitive market at least. I've seen them in practice but it's rare and generally in contexts where I assume it is super duper expensive (like in hotels in Dubai sorts of places).
  - zanecodes 6y ago
    As far as E-Ink goes, my understanding is that it works by moving charged ink particles from one end of a microscopic capsule to the other, so that white and black particles switch places, resulting in a visible color change. All this is to say that the display surface isn't exactly changing color or opacity, it's just moving it around, so I doubt it could be used to create a surface that goes from transparent to opaque and vice versa. On the other hand, LCD could be used to create an opacity-changing window, but LCD panels block a lot of light even when they're fully "transparent," which is why they consume so much power (their backlights have to be very bright).

rcarmo 6y ago

I love this and would buy one instantly if it wasn’t this horrendously expensive. I suppose we’ll just have to wait for the IKEA WOLLPAPERR edition... Edit: there seem to be smaller, hackable displays around as surplus, but still, nothing as big: https://hackaday.com/2020/11/27/repurposing-large-electronic-price-tags/ https://hackaday.com/2020/11/27/repurposing-large-electronic...

roberthahn 6y ago

I would love to have one of these eInk displays in my woodworking shop for displaying project plans while I work! I hope this product becomes commoditized soon!

ocbyc 6y ago

Not bad for $2,576.00

generj 6y ago

I did something similar with a much smaller (and much less expensive) 12.48” screen from Waveshare. Cost about $200 all in. Guests are frequently confused why I’ve printed out today’s New York Times. One downside is the aspect ratio not aligning so the newspaper must be cropped. I’ve chosen to show the top 60% or so of the paper. Another is that the display I chose is 1-but and dithering uses up quite a bit of the useful resolution. If I were starting over again I’d get a display with 4-but grayscale.