10 ms·

Vestaboard – A smart display to connect and inspire

128 points by duck 5y ago

stevesearer 5y ago
Oat Foundry is another company which makes split flap displays: https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/ https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Huh, interesting; flip boards like these used to be all over things like train stations, but they had to replace them with screens (big challenge, they deal with extreme weather / temperatures) after the company that made and maintained them went under and they ran out of spare / replacement parts.
- duiker101 5y ago
  I wonder what's the maintenance cost on these, both in terms of time, money and skill required. 8448 flaps is a lot of moving parts.
  - wink 5y ago
    Some years ago our local chapter of the CCC got hold of some old flipdot panels that originally hung over the Autobahn[0] and they've since been repurposed and with the help of other spaces improved for display, pics at [1] and you might have stumbled over them at the Chaos Communication Congress or other events. They're actually pretty robust and most obvious malfunctions can be rejiggered manually and it's just one of the magnets. But yes, the replacement parts are kinda finite unless another stash of old traffic sign hardware is discovered. [0]: https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start#einfuehrung https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start#einfuehrung [1]: https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start
mronetwo 5y ago
Would love to get one. Would love to get one for almost 3kEUR? Ooof, I don't think so. Devices that have some physicality to it are always super cool (flip dots). That also makes them very expensive. Super happy to see products like these though.
- afandian 5y ago
  There's a weird scale thing. Lots of moving parts in a mechanical display? Expensive. Lots of microscopic parts that can only be assembled in a clean room by machines in special locations? Cheap. I guess it's only economy of scale that makes the difference, but still mind blowing.
vander_elst 5y ago
Solari [0] was once one of the leading companies in this sector. Their boards were all over the place. They are struggling now to keep it up with the new technologies. [0] https://www.solari.it/ https://www.solari.it/
- agys 5y ago
  We sourced some Solari alphanumeric split flap elements from the Roma termini train station… they are a beautiful piece of engineering!
tibyat 5y ago
For that price you could glue 8 ipads to your wall and still have enough left over to rent out a giant billboard downtown if all you want is to send someone a cute message.
treyfitty 5y ago
What use case does this try to solve for? “Connect and Inspire” sounds hand wavy, generous, and quite frankly cheesy. There are many ways to connect and inspire, and a board with many flipping pieces doesn’t sound like a solution. This product sounds like it’s just a nostalgic gadget more than anything.
- unstatusthequo 5y ago
  Yes. I plan to put one in our house more as “tech art” than anything else.
- leokennis 5y ago
  Looking at the site, the use case seems mostly "hip and happening company with too much money who want to display some text for all the office to see but think a cheap flatscreen tv looks too cheap".
  - naikrovek 5y ago
    I'm no hipster, and there is a non-zero amount of "charm" (or whatever you want to call it) in a display like this. plat panel LED or LCD displays look like shit in bright environments; these would look amazing.
  - tomtheelder 5y ago
    A less dismissive characterization might be that it's a piece of tech art. I really don't think people are buying these because they have some text they desperately need to display...
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  i would love to have one in my office. We raise money for political campaigns, could show in near real time how much we're raising. Maybe even show top campaigns or staff. But that would buy a laptop, and most of our (relatively few) staff don't even come into our office anymore! A large TV could maybe do both actual real time every second update and maybe splice in some news feed or something. Alas it's just like seeing the amazing Apple monitor. Then look at price and think rationally; it's not worth it by how much money I make.
Gys 5y ago
> “I am always very happy with the team from Vestaboard when we’re in touch.” Wolfgang Flörke, Germany It is meant as a recommendation but I wonder why he in touch with them often? It should just work?
willeh 5y ago
While certainly beautiful, this type of needlessly contrived product is a waste of our natural resources. Buyers need to ask themselves is this a morally defensible use of resources, would and LCD be better would e-Ink be better or should we just go without.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  What natural resources are being wasted, IYHO?
- pdav 5y ago
  Why stop there? Buyers should ask themselves if they need or want anything at all. The responsible course of action would be to buy and use nothing—after all, we wouldn’t want to accidentally pollute more than all the fossil fuel industry or something.
  - kuratkull 5y ago
    Well, this is a toy we are talking about, it's not something you _need_ by any stretch of the imagination.
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      Ultimately, anything above basic necessities (food, shelter, clean drinking water) are toys, or supporting the creation of toys.
      - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
        Sadly we can't see that our want for fancy toys now will make food, clean water and shelter (a place to live not affected by heat, drought, flooding, forest fires, snowmageddon, etc) scarcer in the future.
        DocTomoe 5y ago
        It is a bit of a philosophical question: If the problem is our need for new toys, and stone-age style "bare necessities" living would perpetuate mankind indefinitely (or at least not cause extinction based on actions caused by mankind), would you want to live that kind of lifestyle and doom all future generations to that?
agys 5y ago
We worked on several split-flap art projects: mostly with sourced pieces… We managed to get our hands on the old main display of the Zürich train station (a beast of 7 tonnes). Most of the elements aren’t alphanumeric but larger words with the destination and departure station names written entirely. The readability was excellent as the text was silkscreened on the PVC blades. We reprogrammed it and created a choreography without altering the elements (we just measured the “width” of each word to be used as graphical elements) [1] The new display in the station is now obviously LED based and has many graphical errors and a much sloppier layout (mimicking the old one). The worst part is that now 1/4 of the panel surface is dedicated to advertisement… [2] [1] https://vimeo.com/224913612 https://vimeo.com/224913612 [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zuerich_HB_tabellone_040316.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zuerich_HB_tabellone...
- agys 5y ago
  Assembly time-lapse at the museum [1]. The elements just slide into place… They can be pulled out for maintenance even when the display is running. [1] https://vimeo.com/220072274 https://vimeo.com/220072274
  - itsjloh 5y ago
    Amazing you could hot-swap it even back then. I guess being able to change single rows when new stations get added and other things was a must.
    - agys 5y ago
      That’s not how they work: each row must be able to display the same information as it will slowly shift towards the top of the billboard. To add a new station (not such a frequent event in Switzerland) you need to modify the blades of -each- element.
- xtiansimon 5y ago
  RARARARA.. Brilliant. Such physicality and noise. I wish I could be there to experience it. I live in the NYC metro area and PENN station changed their display in 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/nyregion/penn-station-departure-board.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/nyregion/penn-station-dep... Looking for the date, I found this nice article about an Amtrak sign in Baltimore which was replaced in 2010: https://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-xpm-2010-03-22-bal-md-cm-sign22mar22-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-xpm-2010-03-22-bal-... _“In January, Penn Station said goodbye to the old sign - known as a Solari board after the Italian company that introduced the machines in the 1950s. Like so many other familiar inventions of the Industrial Age, the flip-flapping signboards are going the way of the steam engine in rail stations around the world…”_
Brendinooo 5y ago
The font seems a little thin for what it is, no? It's hard to say for sure without seeing on in person, but I'd have probably picked something bolder.
- ProjectBarks 5y ago
  I own one. No issues with readability. In fact I’d say it’s easier to read than most fonts. Online pictures don’t do it justice.
dcminter 5y ago
I was looking at these the other day - in the process of browsing around the subject I found this maker-project to create custom ones: https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap
- scottbez1 5y ago
  Let me know if you have any questions about the project or split-flaps in general! I built a big one for a City of Palo Alto art festival recently which was a lot of work but really rewarding: https://youtu.be/g9EPabcxBsM https://youtu.be/g9EPabcxBsM There were some comments about the Vestaboard cost elsewhere in this thread so I figured I'd mention, my raw BOM cost for that display (108 modules, 40 characters each) was about $2700, so I actually don't find their pricing that crazy when you consider what's happening mechanically inside the display. (short video from inside mine: https://youtu.be/4rBKxy0gwNI https://youtu.be/4rBKxy0gwNI) They're not completely comparable of course - my display was a one-off build without economies of scale from stamped or injection-molded parts, much larger physically, and I had substantial parts of it manufactured in the US - but generally there's just a lot of pieces that add up quickly in cost.
  - dcminter 5y ago
    For me personally it was mostly idle curiosity of a "what would it take..." kind, but it's a very nice write up!
tjwds 5y ago
Fastmail has one of these in the entryway to our Philadelphia office. It's been a lot of fun playing with the API — so far, we've made an integration with our company's chatbot [1] to manage "board tokens" [2] which allow folks to post to it (without clobbering each other's designs); a web UI to create designs which can be posted using the bot; and a 'vesta show' command, which creates a composite image of each cell of the board to represent the current board state (e.g. [3]) so that our colleagues in Australia and elsewhere can participate. It's a lot of fun! [1] https://github.com/fastmail/synergy https://github.com/fastmail/synergy [2] Token in the "arcade token" sense, not "authorization token" [3] https://dev.joewoods.dev/img/vesta-show-20211124.png https://dev.joewoods.dev/img/vesta-show-20211124.png — note my sloppy normalization of the brightness of the cells
- mmcclimon 5y ago
  Just to second this…Joe has done lots of great work at Fastmail, but ‘vesta show’ might be my favorite.
ProjectBarks 5y ago
I own one and here are my thoughts: So far it has been an extremely reliable product that was fun to get some scripts running on. I use a raspberry pie with a cron job to update the board with the weather and my daily schedule. Board actually looks extremely repairable for each individual character, and have has no issues with reliability in ~6mo. API currently is through a rest interface which they have promised to keep free despite charging for plugins shared through their a subscription model. They had promised a native/local API but I have not heard anything from that. Overall would recommend but it falls in the tech art category for sure.
- alias_neo 5y ago
  At this price, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot barge pole until local API is a reality. If their servers shutdown and it becomes abandonware you want to be sure it's still functional when you're spending a little more than "toy money".
  - ProjectBarks 5y ago
    Agreed it is a solid risk. I want to spend some time with wireshark to see if I can get something of my own going until an official local api is released.
    - alias_neo 5y ago
      I take it the device has WiFi? It would be interesting to see what kind of controller hardware is inside.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Jesus, no kidding. Only a two year warranty, too? For $3,000 USD you might think you'd get a little more for your money...
    - mobilemidget 5y ago
      I was scrolling and thought I want one... now I don't :D
jonnydubowsky 5y ago
This looks beautiful. I love analog tile boards. My favorite greeted the students at NYU ITP every day, a wooden tile "mirror" by Daniel Rozin. https://youtu.be/kV8v2GKC8WA https://youtu.be/kV8v2GKC8WA
im_down_w_otp 5y ago
Blargh. I went to the site, saw what it was, immediately wanted one, clicked the "Shop" button, saw the price, sighed deeply, and closed the tab. I can understand why it's so expensive, it just bums me out that I can't justify said expense.
- nanis 5y ago
  > Order two Vestaboard displays and receive $400 off. I saw that before my eyes located the price and I knew :-)
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  Don't worry, I think terminal would work poorly with it and even then 22x6 only? not too many
djbusby 5y ago
I know three people who have these. They never let the kids near them, complain about the price. How to have fun with it?
tiepoul 5y ago
Is this programmable? Like you're going to change the text for this specific time frame and return to the original text after the programmed schedule?
Kaibeezy 5y ago
The split-flap board by Solari di Udine at the TWA Hotel at JFK is fantastic. The building was designed by the famous architect Eero Saarinen and opened in 1962. http://blog.solarilineadesign.com/en/a-touch-of-italian-design-for-the-new-twa-hotel-at-new-york-s-jfk-airport-en.html http://blog.solarilineadesign.com/en/a-touch-of-italian-desi...
controlweather 5y ago
Stupid crap imo
kensai 5y ago
I like it, but the price is simply too much for most personal uses. Post a news entry again when it is around €500-600, if ever.
- gregoriol 5y ago
  You most likely don't want such a device at home: it likely makes quite a lot of noise, takes quite a lot of space, and is not really useful as an individual. Its use-case is more for a public/semi-public space, for a group of people to see.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    I can see rich people buying this as part of a high-end room decoration. Probably cheaper than a hand-done painting of the same size.
  - kensai 5y ago
    I think you have not watched the presentation video and even the dedicated "use case" for home at their site. They are very much advertising for home use as well. https://www.vestaboard.com/home https://www.vestaboard.com/home
    - gregoriol 5y ago
      They can market it for home, but that doesn't mean it's practical or useful in the real world
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
This is really cool. I saw they emphasized that they were a winner of the "Red Dot Design Award" so I looked up the Red Dot award to find more cool products. However, the Red Dot website shows 16,844 "winners" in the Product Design category over the past 10 years (Source: https://www.red-dot.org/search https://www.red-dot.org/search ). Then I looked at their Fee Structure page, which shows registration costs betweene 300 and 650 Euros. You also have to send them the product (for free, of course). If you "win" you have to buy the 3950 Euro "Winner Package": https://www.red-dot.org/pd/participate https://www.red-dot.org/pd/participate Not a bad business for them. Kind of funny to brag about this pay-to-play award on your website, though.
- DecayingOrganic 5y ago
  According to their website, for the year 2020, only 1.2% of entries won the Red Dot Award. So perhaps, it's not that easy as paying the registration fee and winning one.
- Psillisp 5y ago
  > Kind of funny to brag about this pay-to-play award on your website, though. That is why the award exists.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- stingrae 5y ago
  Unfortunately this is common for awards in Industrial Design.
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. It really put things in perspective.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>“With its feet on the ground but eyes affixed upward, the Vestaboard is a beautiful combination of past and future.” I'm trying to find purchase information for the model with the feet because our walls are not very strong, I would like to have a standing support.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Oh lord, I skimmed the site, that quote confirms it, so much masturbation that turns me off the product. Beer ads where you see people drink the stuff and enjoy life has the message that "if you buy this product your life can be this awesome too!". This website is no different...
Pr0ject217 5y ago
I think the sound would get to me after a while.
nikolay 5y ago
At $2,850, it's a steal. Not!
mrtweetyhack 5y ago
yeah, no

128 points by duck 5y ago

Oat Foundry is another company which makes split flap displays: https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/ https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Huh, interesting; flip boards like these used to be all over things like train stations, but they had to replace them with screens (big challenge, they deal with extreme weather / temperatures) after the company that made and maintained them went under and they ran out of spare / replacement parts.

duiker101 5y ago
I wonder what's the maintenance cost on these, both in terms of time, money and skill required. 8448 flaps is a lot of moving parts.
- wink 5y ago
  Some years ago our local chapter of the CCC got hold of some old flipdot panels that originally hung over the Autobahn[0] and they've since been repurposed and with the help of other spaces improved for display, pics at [1] and you might have stumbled over them at the Chaos Communication Congress or other events. They're actually pretty robust and most obvious malfunctions can be rejiggered manually and it's just one of the magnets. But yes, the replacement parts are kinda finite unless another stash of old traffic sign hardware is discovered. [0]: https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start#einfuehrung https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start#einfuehrung [1]: https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/flipdot:start

mronetwo 5y ago

Would love to get one. Would love to get one for almost 3kEUR? Ooof, I don't think so. Devices that have some physicality to it are always super cool (flip dots). That also makes them very expensive. Super happy to see products like these though.

afandian 5y ago
There's a weird scale thing. Lots of moving parts in a mechanical display? Expensive. Lots of microscopic parts that can only be assembled in a clean room by machines in special locations? Cheap. I guess it's only economy of scale that makes the difference, but still mind blowing.

vander_elst 5y ago

Solari [0] was once one of the leading companies in this sector. Their boards were all over the place. They are struggling now to keep it up with the new technologies. [0] https://www.solari.it/ https://www.solari.it/

agys 5y ago
We sourced some Solari alphanumeric split flap elements from the Roma termini train station… they are a beautiful piece of engineering!

tibyat 5y ago

For that price you could glue 8 ipads to your wall and still have enough left over to rent out a giant billboard downtown if all you want is to send someone a cute message.

treyfitty 5y ago

What use case does this try to solve for? “Connect and Inspire” sounds hand wavy, generous, and quite frankly cheesy. There are many ways to connect and inspire, and a board with many flipping pieces doesn’t sound like a solution. This product sounds like it’s just a nostalgic gadget more than anything.

unstatusthequo 5y ago
Yes. I plan to put one in our house more as “tech art” than anything else.
leokennis 5y ago
Looking at the site, the use case seems mostly "hip and happening company with too much money who want to display some text for all the office to see but think a cheap flatscreen tv looks too cheap".
- naikrovek 5y ago
  I'm no hipster, and there is a non-zero amount of "charm" (or whatever you want to call it) in a display like this. plat panel LED or LCD displays look like shit in bright environments; these would look amazing.
- tomtheelder 5y ago
  A less dismissive characterization might be that it's a piece of tech art. I really don't think people are buying these because they have some text they desperately need to display...
dillondoyle 5y ago
i would love to have one in my office. We raise money for political campaigns, could show in near real time how much we're raising. Maybe even show top campaigns or staff. But that would buy a laptop, and most of our (relatively few) staff don't even come into our office anymore! A large TV could maybe do both actual real time every second update and maybe splice in some news feed or something. Alas it's just like seeing the amazing Apple monitor. Then look at price and think rationally; it's not worth it by how much money I make.

Gys 5y ago

> “I am always very happy with the team from Vestaboard when we’re in touch.” Wolfgang Flörke, Germany It is meant as a recommendation but I wonder why he in touch with them often? It should just work?

willeh 5y ago

While certainly beautiful, this type of needlessly contrived product is a waste of our natural resources. Buyers need to ask themselves is this a morally defensible use of resources, would and LCD be better would e-Ink be better or should we just go without.

Chris2048 5y ago
What natural resources are being wasted, IYHO?
pdav 5y ago
Why stop there? Buyers should ask themselves if they need or want anything at all. The responsible course of action would be to buy and use nothing—after all, we wouldn’t want to accidentally pollute more than all the fossil fuel industry or something.
- kuratkull 5y ago
  Well, this is a toy we are talking about, it's not something you _need_ by any stretch of the imagination.
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    Ultimately, anything above basic necessities (food, shelter, clean drinking water) are toys, or supporting the creation of toys.
    - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
      Sadly we can't see that our want for fancy toys now will make food, clean water and shelter (a place to live not affected by heat, drought, flooding, forest fires, snowmageddon, etc) scarcer in the future.
      - DocTomoe 5y ago
        It is a bit of a philosophical question: If the problem is our need for new toys, and stone-age style "bare necessities" living would perpetuate mankind indefinitely (or at least not cause extinction based on actions caused by mankind), would you want to live that kind of lifestyle and doom all future generations to that?

agys 5y ago

We worked on several split-flap art projects: mostly with sourced pieces… We managed to get our hands on the old main display of the Zürich train station (a beast of 7 tonnes). Most of the elements aren’t alphanumeric but larger words with the destination and departure station names written entirely. The readability was excellent as the text was silkscreened on the PVC blades. We reprogrammed it and created a choreography without altering the elements (we just measured the “width” of each word to be used as graphical elements) [1] The new display in the station is now obviously LED based and has many graphical errors and a much sloppier layout (mimicking the old one). The worst part is that now 1/4 of the panel surface is dedicated to advertisement… [2] [1] https://vimeo.com/224913612 https://vimeo.com/224913612 [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zuerich_HB_tabellone_040316.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zuerich_HB_tabellone...

agys 5y ago
Assembly time-lapse at the museum [1]. The elements just slide into place… They can be pulled out for maintenance even when the display is running. [1] https://vimeo.com/220072274 https://vimeo.com/220072274
- itsjloh 5y ago
  Amazing you could hot-swap it even back then. I guess being able to change single rows when new stations get added and other things was a must.
  - agys 5y ago
    That’s not how they work: each row must be able to display the same information as it will slowly shift towards the top of the billboard. To add a new station (not such a frequent event in Switzerland) you need to modify the blades of -each- element.
xtiansimon 5y ago
RARARARA.. Brilliant. Such physicality and noise. I wish I could be there to experience it. I live in the NYC metro area and PENN station changed their display in 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/nyregion/penn-station-departure-board.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/nyregion/penn-station-dep... Looking for the date, I found this nice article about an Amtrak sign in Baltimore which was replaced in 2010: https://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-xpm-2010-03-22-bal-md-cm-sign22mar22-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-xpm-2010-03-22-bal-... _“In January, Penn Station said goodbye to the old sign - known as a Solari board after the Italian company that introduced the machines in the 1950s. Like so many other familiar inventions of the Industrial Age, the flip-flapping signboards are going the way of the steam engine in rail stations around the world…”_

Brendinooo 5y ago

The font seems a little thin for what it is, no? It's hard to say for sure without seeing on in person, but I'd have probably picked something bolder.

ProjectBarks 5y ago
I own one. No issues with readability. In fact I’d say it’s easier to read than most fonts. Online pictures don’t do it justice.

dcminter 5y ago

I was looking at these the other day - in the process of browsing around the subject I found this maker-project to create custom ones: https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap

scottbez1 5y ago
Let me know if you have any questions about the project or split-flaps in general! I built a big one for a City of Palo Alto art festival recently which was a lot of work but really rewarding: https://youtu.be/g9EPabcxBsM https://youtu.be/g9EPabcxBsM There were some comments about the Vestaboard cost elsewhere in this thread so I figured I'd mention, my raw BOM cost for that display (108 modules, 40 characters each) was about $2700, so I actually don't find their pricing that crazy when you consider what's happening mechanically inside the display. (short video from inside mine: https://youtu.be/4rBKxy0gwNI https://youtu.be/4rBKxy0gwNI) They're not completely comparable of course - my display was a one-off build without economies of scale from stamped or injection-molded parts, much larger physically, and I had substantial parts of it manufactured in the US - but generally there's just a lot of pieces that add up quickly in cost.
- dcminter 5y ago
  For me personally it was mostly idle curiosity of a "what would it take..." kind, but it's a very nice write up!

tjwds 5y ago

Fastmail has one of these in the entryway to our Philadelphia office. It's been a lot of fun playing with the API — so far, we've made an integration with our company's chatbot [1] to manage "board tokens" [2] which allow folks to post to it (without clobbering each other's designs); a web UI to create designs which can be posted using the bot; and a 'vesta show' command, which creates a composite image of each cell of the board to represent the current board state (e.g. [3]) so that our colleagues in Australia and elsewhere can participate. It's a lot of fun! [1] https://github.com/fastmail/synergy https://github.com/fastmail/synergy [2] Token in the "arcade token" sense, not "authorization token" [3] https://dev.joewoods.dev/img/vesta-show-20211124.png https://dev.joewoods.dev/img/vesta-show-20211124.png — note my sloppy normalization of the brightness of the cells

mmcclimon 5y ago
Just to second this…Joe has done lots of great work at Fastmail, but ‘vesta show’ might be my favorite.

ProjectBarks 5y ago

I own one and here are my thoughts: So far it has been an extremely reliable product that was fun to get some scripts running on. I use a raspberry pie with a cron job to update the board with the weather and my daily schedule. Board actually looks extremely repairable for each individual character, and have has no issues with reliability in ~6mo. API currently is through a rest interface which they have promised to keep free despite charging for plugins shared through their a subscription model. They had promised a native/local API but I have not heard anything from that. Overall would recommend but it falls in the tech art category for sure.

alias_neo 5y ago
At this price, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot barge pole until local API is a reality. If their servers shutdown and it becomes abandonware you want to be sure it's still functional when you're spending a little more than "toy money".
- ProjectBarks 5y ago
  Agreed it is a solid risk. I want to spend some time with wireshark to see if I can get something of my own going until an official local api is released.
  - alias_neo 5y ago
    I take it the device has WiFi? It would be interesting to see what kind of controller hardware is inside.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Jesus, no kidding. Only a two year warranty, too? For $3,000 USD you might think you'd get a little more for your money...
  - mobilemidget 5y ago
    I was scrolling and thought I want one... now I don't :D

jonnydubowsky 5y ago

This looks beautiful. I love analog tile boards. My favorite greeted the students at NYU ITP every day, a wooden tile "mirror" by Daniel Rozin. https://youtu.be/kV8v2GKC8WA https://youtu.be/kV8v2GKC8WA

im_down_w_otp 5y ago

Blargh. I went to the site, saw what it was, immediately wanted one, clicked the "Shop" button, saw the price, sighed deeply, and closed the tab. I can understand why it's so expensive, it just bums me out that I can't justify said expense.

nanis 5y ago
> Order two Vestaboard displays and receive $400 off. I saw that before my eyes located the price and I knew :-)
lovelyviking 5y ago
Don't worry, I think terminal would work poorly with it and even then 22x6 only? not too many

djbusby 5y ago

I know three people who have these. They never let the kids near them, complain about the price. How to have fun with it?

tiepoul 5y ago

Is this programmable? Like you're going to change the text for this specific time frame and return to the original text after the programmed schedule?

Kaibeezy 5y ago

The split-flap board by Solari di Udine at the TWA Hotel at JFK is fantastic. The building was designed by the famous architect Eero Saarinen and opened in 1962. http://blog.solarilineadesign.com/en/a-touch-of-italian-design-for-the-new-twa-hotel-at-new-york-s-jfk-airport-en.html http://blog.solarilineadesign.com/en/a-touch-of-italian-desi...

controlweather 5y ago

Stupid crap imo

kensai 5y ago

I like it, but the price is simply too much for most personal uses. Post a news entry again when it is around €500-600, if ever.

gregoriol 5y ago
You most likely don't want such a device at home: it likely makes quite a lot of noise, takes quite a lot of space, and is not really useful as an individual. Its use-case is more for a public/semi-public space, for a group of people to see.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  I can see rich people buying this as part of a high-end room decoration. Probably cheaper than a hand-done painting of the same size.
- kensai 5y ago
  I think you have not watched the presentation video and even the dedicated "use case" for home at their site. They are very much advertising for home use as well. https://www.vestaboard.com/home https://www.vestaboard.com/home
  - gregoriol 5y ago
    They can market it for home, but that doesn't mean it's practical or useful in the real world

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

This is really cool. I saw they emphasized that they were a winner of the "Red Dot Design Award" so I looked up the Red Dot award to find more cool products. However, the Red Dot website shows 16,844 "winners" in the Product Design category over the past 10 years (Source: https://www.red-dot.org/search https://www.red-dot.org/search ). Then I looked at their Fee Structure page, which shows registration costs betweene 300 and 650 Euros. You also have to send them the product (for free, of course). If you "win" you have to buy the 3950 Euro "Winner Package": https://www.red-dot.org/pd/participate https://www.red-dot.org/pd/participate Not a bad business for them. Kind of funny to brag about this pay-to-play award on your website, though.

DecayingOrganic 5y ago
According to their website, for the year 2020, only 1.2% of entries won the Red Dot Award. So perhaps, it's not that easy as paying the registration fee and winning one.
Psillisp 5y ago
> Kind of funny to brag about this pay-to-play award on your website, though. That is why the award exists.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
stingrae 5y ago
Unfortunately this is common for awards in Industrial Design.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this. It really put things in perspective.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>“With its feet on the ground but eyes affixed upward, the Vestaboard is a beautiful combination of past and future.” I'm trying to find purchase information for the model with the feet because our walls are not very strong, I would like to have a standing support.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Oh lord, I skimmed the site, that quote confirms it, so much masturbation that turns me off the product. Beer ads where you see people drink the stuff and enjoy life has the message that "if you buy this product your life can be this awesome too!". This website is no different...

Pr0ject217 5y ago

I think the sound would get to me after a while.

nikolay 5y ago

At $2,850, it's a steal. Not!

mrtweetyhack 5y ago

yeah, no