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Show HN: Trading cards made with e-ink displays
I made a thing!
In 2014, I was holding a stack of iPhones and thought to myself:
"Hey, if I had each phone display a playing card, I could click a button and they'd shuffle themselves"
I pared that idea all the way down to this: trading cards made of e-ink displays.
Right now, each card costs me about $20 each, but with only a bit more scale, I think I can get that down to $10.
In doing this project, I learned how to design electronics and circuit boards. I learned Rust and wrote my first driver, I upped my CAD skills, 3D printed, and did my first resin casting. I generated the images on the cards using stable-diffusion.
HN always seems to appreciate new uses for e-ink. Thought I'd share :)
- rychco 4y agoThis is incredibly cool & inspiring. How familiar were you with Rust before starting? Any resources you can share for programming the circuit boards you use? I've had some embedded Rust ideas myself but am not sure where to start!
- jonahss 4y agoThanks! I knew no Rust at all before starting. Yikes was it frustrating to learn a completely new language. I had to go through the whole rust book, not skipping any basics, in order to get there. I also assigned myself a homework assignment to get used to the concepts. See the other blog post on wyldcard.io/blog Honestly, by the time I got to the finished prototype, I could have just done the whole thing with Javascript. Although intending to use an SDM32F7 for the finished project, it was really convenient to use a raspberry pi for development. Using VS Code, I could program remotely on the pi from my Mac and iterate really quickly. the awesome-embedded-rust[1] repo was very helpful. TBH, embedded rust really feels like it's not ready for hobbysists who aren't embedded experts already. [1] https://github.com/rust-embedded/awesome-embedded-rust https://github.com/rust-embedded/awesome-embedded-rust
- Aminatt 4y agoThat's actually interesting, and it's great that you decided to develop yourself in that field! Do you already have an insurance to protect your business? I can tell you that this type of policy is essential for running any type of business, and there are many sources of info like small business insurance twitter https://twitter.com/smallbizinsures https://twitter.com/smallbizinsures acc that can help you with that. So I hope your business will flourish, good luck!
- netman21 4y agoLooks awesome. I just want to use it to play three card monte.
- jonahss 4y agoOh hey, I've been looking for small demo games to implement on it, before jumping into a massive RPG or something. I can try implementing that.
- heleninboodler 4y agoAdd an accelerometer to the card so it can wait until it's face down to swap the picture. :)
- jonahss 4y agoHm, that'd work with the other comment about putting contacts on both sides. The cards themselves are completely passive and unpowered. Base does everything.
- HardwareLust 4y agoThat is a really cool idea! I really want to see what kind of new games that can be created from this.
- jonahss 4y agoThanks! Yeah me too! I've got an idea for a game, but I'm not an experienced game designer. If others want to try to design a game for it, I'd be open to sharing with them :D Mostly wanted to inspire something new.
- an_aparallel 4y agoha! these are rad. But tbh they look more like electronic dominos. The docking station makes them less card like too (but love the way you've arranged the contacts)
- jonahss 4y agoAh thanks, I worked hard on the contacts. There's a thin and flexible e-ink display I could use instead, but they're $20 each instead of $4. I agree they're a bit chunky in this form :) I agree the docking station detracts a bit from the naturalness of just playing on a table. I decided to build what middle-school-me would have wanted to play with. I took a lot of inspiration from Yu-Gi-Oh which has the same docking station concept (just executed much better, where you wear it on your wrist).
- an_aparallel 4y agoit looks great - its not often the electronics portion of a project is executed with aesthetics in mind.
- retendo 4y agoFinally, a way to play physical Sabacc[1] in real life. [1]: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sabacc https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sabacc
- jonahss 4y agoI'll add that to my list of fictional card games! I took inspiration from Yu-Gi-Oh, Card Captors, Angelic Layer...
- JetAlone 4y agoYes, your docking station is effectively a primitive duel disc. The write-able cards are new, though.
- jonahss 4y agoI'll totally start a new project once holograms get good and cheap enough ;)
- mensetmanusman 4y agoHow thick would the e-ink version of this deck be: https://i.redd.it/wufrxonvm0t41.jpg https://i.redd.it/wufrxonvm0t41.jpg
- connicpu 4y agoI think the more troubling concern would be how much it would cost to manufacture that many of the e-ink cards, 5 figures easily
- kevinmhickey 4y agoScrolled to find this comment and was not disappointed.
- ratioprosperous 4y agoI would like the word "skifter" to appear somewhere in this thread, in case anyone was looking for it as I was
- bckr 4y agoI really like this and look forward to future iterations. For anyone curious, the symbol made by the contacts is the Tree of Life from the kabbalah
- jonahss 4y agoYeah, I'm going for an occult/mysticism/witchy vibe. Magic the Gathering has a monopoly on fantasy, and the cyberpunk genre is played out. Plus I want the inner-workings to be somewhat mysterious. I had a lot of fun thematically laying out the contacts. For example: Keter is VCC and Malchut is GND
- bckr 4y ago> Keter is VCC and Malchut is GND Beautiful
- cwkoss 4y agoVery cool! In terms of making a game with them, I think a design where the pins are on the face of the card may be useful. I want to be able to 'draw' a card without knowing what is on it. Certainly can be useful with pins on the back (and I totally get how this orientation is probably more size-efficient), but I think front pins would be more 'playable'. Maybe a design could be achieved with holes that pass through all the way so it can be written with either orientation? Being able to 'power up' an existing card in the upwards orientation could be really cool for situations where you kind of want 'counters' applied to a portable card. Could have a base-station that allows you to 'add' the qualities of one card to another target card, or 'evolve' a pokemon, etc.
- jonahss 4y agoAh yeah, originally I wanted the contacts to wrap around the edges of the card, so then you can stack them and address whichever one in the stack you want. Maybe I should raise the priority on that. Definitely I'm into the idea of evolving, or breeding cards like pokemon. Powerup or 'combine' would be cool too.
- aardvark179 4y agoDid you ever see a game called Drop Mix? It didn’t have displays in the cards but did sense their position on a mat and react accordingly, and I think that might be a better interaction model. It would require that everything is really low power so you only need to supply power when changing the display.
- jonahss 4y agoOoh thanks, I'll check it out!
- eru 4y ago> In terms of making a game with them, I think a design where the pins are on the face of the card may be useful. I want to be able to 'draw' a card without knowing what is on it. That would work. But you can also make that work with current hardware (I think): you just need a delay between pressing the button and the screen changing? So that the player can press the button, pick up the card, and five seconds later, it's revealed.
- chasebank 4y agoSweet product! I always thought pet name tags would be a fantastic application for this!
- TylerE 4y agoI'm confused. Do you rename your dog every week?
- kurisufag 4y agoperhaps he has a high turnover rate?
- dllthomas 4y agoI have to go cry now.
- chasebank 4y agoHa! No, but you can imagine people like to personalize everything. MLB season, perhaps you'd like to have a Dodgers themed tag, NFL switch to the... Raiders? Change of address? Phone number changes? People are creative. I'm sure they'd use it in ways you can't imagine.
- nixpulvis 4y agoCan I make a pet tag for my NTF charizard?
- Euphorbium 4y agoThis could actually replace mtg, which has run its course, jumped the shark and is on its deathbed.
- jonahss 4y agoI so agree! MTG is desperately scraping the bottom of barrel for new mechanics. That's why I wanted to get this concept out there, to inspire the next thing.
- JetAlone 4y agoI haven't played MTG in ages, and decided to check out their website to see what the new cards are like. Aoparently there's a new mechanic "More than meets the eye" letting you cast Optimus Prime for one less mana...? Apparently it's just, part of the Brothers' War set now. It's like those fortnite ads I see for Naruto or Goku being in the game now. Games just aren't allowed to have their own aesthetic anymore because crossover deals are apparently too profitable. Totally felt off.
- jonahss 4y agoI feel ya.
- CrypticShift 4y agoI love it ! you should make a color version [1] ! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31191850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31191850
- jonahss 4y agoHa! I'm really trying to keep the price down, these are the cheapest screens I could find and they're still ~$4. If they took off and were produced at scale, we could definitely do color, and make them thinner and flexible as well!
- ranting-moth 4y agoWhere do you get the screens from? Brand/type?
- jonahss 4y agoBought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags. Good Display GDEW029T5D
- vegasje 4y agoThis is incredible! I'm so excited to see what you do with this in the future. May I ask what e-ink displays you're using?
- jonahss 4y agoBought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags. Good Display GDEW029T5D
- lightedman 4y agoDigital Tarot readings would be a possible use for this. You'd need to program the thing to randomly turn cards 180 degrees.
- jonahss 4y agoYeah! I was going for a Tarot/Occult vibe. Turning 90 degrees... maybe I could do some magic with magnets.....
- lightedman 4y agoI meant more that when you put the 'card' into the slot, at random the image displayed is rotated 180 degrees (like it could be in a real deck of cards) so that the image is upside-down. A simple transform function.
- 999900000999 4y agoAnyway to add NFC. I imagine a special gameboard which sends data to the cards based on game state. Very impressive!
- jonahss 4y agoHeh heh, that's like phase 4 ;) I want kids to be able to play at school or at camp, so didn't add any connectivity. Plus I'm trying to stay cheap. But I can imagine adding bluetooth to the base or to your phone or something. Then I can go all "BILLS PC" and let you store your spirits on the cloud, let you load them in and out of cards, etc etc. Except I don't want to turn it into an online game. Computer games are awesome, I think it's lame to emulate physical cards with a computer, a'la' Hearthstone.
- nextaccountic 4y agoI think that NFC ends up cheaper than Bluetooth. For one thing, you don't need a battery. (And you shouldn't need a battery on your current design either, since you are changing the screen while connected to a dock which can have power)
- jonahss 4y agoAh yeah, the current cards do not have batteries.
- bashmelek 4y agoThis is amazing! I’ve fantasized about doing something similar—-what resources did you use to pick up all of those skills?
- jonahss 4y agoI come from a web dev background, and spent the last 3 years running the cloud and embedded firmware teams for a 3D printer startup. I learned that hardware isn't so hard, once you get past all the mystery. My coworkers gave me tips on which tools to use, and helped me when I got stuck. The best advice I got was "Read the datasheet" The biggest step for me was deciding to spend money on experimenting. With a budget, suddenly it was fun to order stuff, buy tools, try things out. Rust Book was the best for learning Rust.
- polishdude20 4y agoI've got the same mindset with a hardware project I worked on. I gave myself more free rein to just buy equipment and tools all in the name of "the project".
- jonahss 4y agoI spent about $5000 over two years. Not bad at all, really. A lot of that was registering an LLC and a Fusion360 license.
- qup 4y agoThis is a really impressive project. That's an assload of new stuff to learn. Congrats on shipping.
- JetAlone 4y agoWhy are the ports for the card bays Sephirot shaped? Does this game's lore have some Talmudic angelology inspiration?
- jonahss 4y agoYes! Going for a mysterious witchy/occult vibe.
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
- jdhn 4y agoThis looks pretty cool! I know that HN is very bearish on crypto, but I could see this or something like it be used by a crypto company to promote NFTs in conjunction with a card game or something like that.
- polishdude20 4y agoWoah that's really impressive! What sort of microcontroller are they running? Why Rust?
- jonahss 4y agoSee my other comment. I wanted to learn rust, but by the end, once I knew it, I wouldn't have chosen rust for a prototype if I started again. These prototypes are running on a raspberry pi, though I wouldn't want to put them into production like that.
- polishdude20 4y agoAh so the docking board uses a raspberry Pi eh? You could probably implement the same using an esp32 (if u want wifi/Bluetooth) or even an stm32 chip, you can definitely find a good chip for under $5 each that can do what you need. That's another way to take your learning to the next level while reducing costs. Also not as difficult as it looks!
- jonahss 4y agoYeah, I can run it on an stm32, which is what I'd do for an early Kickstarter where I only have to make <100. Since I only made two, it was easier just to keep it on the raspi for now.
- yumraj 4y agoA very simple game could be Rock-Paper-Scissors if you can add a gyroscope or something to detect shaking and then show Rock, Paper or Scissor at random. Sorry for adding more work. :)
- selcuka 4y agoI believe they don't have any batteries in them but only powered when connected to the dock. E-ink only requires power when changing the image, not for displaying it.
- cableshaft 4y agoThis is very cool. I think you'll have a hard time finding a traditional board game publisher willing to put money into this (there might be one or two out there, but most will see this as prohibitively expensive for them), but you might be able to pull off a successful Kickstarter for them on your own. Kind of like the Blinks game system, these little hexes with colored lights in them that each have a separate game in them and can 'teach' the other hexes they connect to. One of the Blinks Kickstarters: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/move38/blinks-smart-board-game-system-epic-adventure-expansion https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/move38/blinks-smart-boa...
- jonahss 4y agoThanks! Yeah, it's a weird in-between. I don't think a game publisher would take a risk on it, but neither would silicon valley VCs. Kickstarter would be my bet too. I was going to put this project down for a little while and start a "real" startup though.....
- eru 4y ago> I don't think a game publisher would take a risk on it, but neither would silicon valley VCs. You might still try for the latter. Especially if you can think of ways to make the business bigger.
- jonahss 4y agoReally? Any specific funds you think I should talk to? Can intro me to anyone? email me: jonah@wyldcard.io I was thinking, very possibly, if I found some angel investors who also love boardgames.....
- conorcleary 4y agoGameStop NFT. Legacy company and progressive structure meets the very future everyone except Wall Street and their bought media wants. I'm strongly advising you at least leave an on-ramp and off-ramp section for their blockchain integration in your long-term designs.
- crote 4y agoOoooh, I love this! Are the design file available somewhere?
- cwkoss 4y agoSuper cool. Taking a crack at rules for a game using this. --- Sample game idea: CAKE DECORATION game - players have to try to decorate as many cakes as possible. Requires 10 cards. One card is the 'design recipe' card and never leaves the base station. It shows an amount of ingredients, ex. "1 cup of buttercream, 3 shakes of sprinkles, 4 squirts of whipped cream". Players start with either 3 blank cards or 3 random low-amount ingredient cards. On a players turn, they select from three cards: each card is an ingredient, an amount, and a modifier. So cards could be "1 shake of sprinkles (2x)" "2 squirts of whipped cream (+1)" "1/4 cup of buttercream (+1/4)" (could make variations or add other kinds of things that might go on a cake) The player draws a card, base station detects which card is missing, and the other two ingredient cards increase in amount based on the modifier value displayed on the card. ex. "1 shake of sprinkles with a 2x" will fully complete the recipe if not drawn for two turns (because 1 x2 x2 = 4 shakes, which is enough for the recipe) With 4 cards in their hand, if the player can pay for the whole recipe, they win the round and get a point. On win, new recipe appears and all cards in the winning players hand and on the base station get rerolled to new low-amount ingredient cards. Score could be displayed on the margins of the recipe card. If they cannot pay for the recipe, the player places a card back on the base station. And their turn is over. (Should ingredients be re-randomized when replaced on base station? Should that be a player decision whether to reroll it?) First player to decorate N cakes wins the game. --- I think something like this could make for a viable game with a low number of cards, but could be more fun with a greater number (17 ideally?) which would allow for 3 active recipe targets (+2), using the 4th slot for another ingredient and displaying recipe as a disconnected piece(s) (+1), and larger hand sizes (5 -> +4) to allow for more complex recipes An interesting game design question is how random you want the cards to be? Fair random would probably be viable, but since the 'deck' can know and make decisions based on the state of cards not connected to the base station, you could deal unfairly if less randomness would make the game more interesting or fun.
- jonahss 4y agooh my gosh, I love it! Thanks! I'm glad you kept the total card count low, that's a limiting factor because of their price and size. I'll try it out!
- O__________O 4y agoEasily see game being game of something like these — or drumroll, NFTs.
- culanuchachamim 4y agoVery nice! Congratulations! From a long time ago I'm trying to build a e-ink magnet for the fridge with relevant updated relevant information about some school programs. But I haven't really found a cheap e-ink display. Edit: I see that you answered it: >Bought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags. Good Display GDEW029T5D Where do you get yours for $20?
- realslimjd 4y agoYou can get displays from Adafruit for $22 [0] or from Waveshare [1] even cheaper if you're willing to do a little more work. I've used both and they're both pretty nice. [0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/4777 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4777 [1] https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper.htm https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper.htm
- jonahss 4y agoOh the display is only like $4-6 on Alibaba. After you add the resin and my custom PCB it's like $20 at the low scale I'm purchasing.
- jonahss 4y agoActually, the cards already have magnets in em, so these would work on your fridge already. But you need a base station to update them, and a way to connect to your network to upload images/text..... If you email me your address, I'd be happy to send you one for your fridge :D
- xrd 4y agoThis is really cool. When the pandemic started, it seemed like there was an opportunity to build games where you still are participating in physical space, but certain aspects of the game are shared across a network and then transform back into something that occupies physical space. I thought that could be something like AR but your cards open up other doors. It would be fascinating to have a deck that shares cards in multiple distant places, with people playing the game from far away but connected through your cards. Adding an element of time delay to the synchronization of the deck would be fun too. Please provide a way to follow along on your progress, like a mailing list! Such a great project.
- jonahss 4y agoOh! I've got a mailing list signup on wyldcard.io ! Should have added that call-to-action to my post; *facepalm Your idea is kind of like the hologram chess that Ed plays in Cowboy Bebop
- jonahss 4y agoadded mailing list signup to the bottom of that post, thanks.
- 8note 4y agoMy friends and I did that with gloomhaven. You have your local deck and player, and then the actual board is on TTS
- jrpt 4y agoWhat would a board game made with these cost, $100?
- jonahss 4y agoI'm trying to target $80 for a "starter set" of the base and 3 cards. I think this is doable at real scale.
- worldmerge 4y agoThis is incredible! Nice job!!!
- newsclues 4y agoI never got into it, but I could see this having some use for AR D&D, and while it enables new games, show how it could be used in existing popular games today so that people can understand it and how it could enable/change existing games in new ways.
- bee_rider 4y agoEchoing everybody else here, really neat! Questions: Do the cards contain any battery? I’m wondering if they have always-running CPUs in there, or if all the compute happens in the base (and then it just writes to the screen). I guess color eInk would probably be cost-prohibitive, huh?
- jonahss 4y agoThanks! Yup, you called it. The cards are totally passive. Just the screen and an eeprom memory chip, no battery. All the compute happens in the base. Color e-ink way too expensive for now, but if Wizards of the Coast wants to invest 100MM we can make em in color, thinner, and flexible!
- bee_rider 4y ago> Color e-ink way too expensive for now, but if Wizards of the Coast wants to invest 100MM we can make em in color, thinner, and flexible! 100% makes sense. eInk is so frustrating sometimes, I wish somebody had an application that used a bazillion of the things so they’d get some economy of scale going. You are just going to have to make these things the next Magic to solve the scaling issue. > Yup, you called it. The cards are totally passive. Just the screen and an eeprom memory chip, no battery. Sensible way of doing it. For a game like Talisman, your player token could the the card. It would be nice to have the pins inside the game board, though, so that you could just place your token on a special location, and an event happens. This would require a powered board, though, which kind of detracts from the idea that the games could be played disconnected.
- jonahss 4y agoThat'd be cool! Talisman is an entertaining game. I think the reason I was able to buy these e-innk displays so cheap is that they're the exact size of grocery store shelf price tags.
- blindseer 4y agoIf you could put even a single button on the "card" itself, then it'll open up a whole layer of game design. This isn't an actual game, but I'm thinking it would be great to pick a card face up that's "red" and be able to make a decision to turn it into "cyan". Others could pick "green" and "blue" face up, but can click a button to turn it to something else, and then the game resolves itself when everyone reveals it. Like if everyone can discuss and if everyone reveals the primary colors everyone wins. I'm sure there's interesting game mechanics you can come up with when you give a decision to the player. Additionally, I think this could make an interesting programmable suite of games. You don't have to sell just one game.
- jonahss 4y agoAgree on the suite of games, just like a deck of cards :) Ah, the cards have buttons next to them on the base. I figured they could display icons on the card next to each button (each spot on the base has 3 right now). I call it the 'ATM' style UX.
- Cerium 4y agoThose are commonly called "soft keys" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key
- jonahss 4y agoAh! Finally, I have a word for it!
- bee_rider 4y agoA little switch on the card might be useful though. Especially if it can be set/unset by the base station (might be getting mechanically complicated). For example, perhaps a game that has a general flow of: players have their cards, there’s a central base station, but most play is not digital. Maybe they somehow battle their cards, they can go around and battle people as much as they want, but their “moves” are tied to the switches and when they use a move, they flick the switch off (wonder if it could be made to actually get stuck in position, to provide physical feedback indicating that the moves are “used up.”) Then, when they want, they go back to the Pokécenter — I mean, oops, base station. It recharges their abilities (unflips the switches), maybe runs some “level up” logic, etc etc. I mean, this quickly started to stretch credibility as far as the mechanism goes, but the idea of giving the players/game designers a couple bits of state that they can toggle away from the base station might allow more asynchronous type games.
- felipelalli 4y agoVery nice!
- CamperBob2 4y agoYou should probably start talking to a patent attorney right about now. 99% chance this goes nowhere, 1% chance you're the next Gary Gygax.
- jonahss 4y agoI'd settle for Richard Garfield ;) You think I should patent? Isn't that going to cost me like 20 grand? Plus if Wizards of the Coast really wants to, they can work around my patents somehow. If I could patent for only a couple thousand dollars maybe I would..... But I WANT other game developers to use this idea. Just, if they want to skip ahead, they can work with me, I'd be happy to share.
- CamperBob2 4y agoI think it's a cool idea, but couldn't begin to guesstimate what the underlying IP might be worth if anything. It may already be pretty well covered by other patent claims, for that matter. I do think it's cool enough to be worth spending a few $K to consult with an attorney, though, especially since you've taken it this far. Mistakes made early in the process of commercializing something can have disproportionate effects later on. If it does turn out to be patentable, you have up to 1 year to file after first public disclosure (IIRC), and that clock is now ticking, for better or worse.
- jonahss 4y agoThanks, I've got a patent attorney in the family; I'll see if I can get a discount ;)
- cbreynoldson 4y agoThis is huge. Are you going to sell these as kits?
- jonahss 4y agoOh, that's not a bad idea. I could do a kickstarter, sell kits or fully-assembled ones that way. It would be about $300-$400 for 3 cards and a base in this iteration and at low volumes. Think I should do it?
- nextaccountic 4y agoThis is too expensive though :( and more importantly, 3 cards is too few cards. How low you think the cost per card can go? edit: elsewhere you quoted $80 for the base and 3 cards so if that's your target it seems more reasonable. but 3 cards is also too little, maybe a kit with 5 cards is better
- metaloha 4y agoTrading or collectible card games that have cards that modify themselves with play would be great here. SolForge is the example I'm thinking of, but I'm sure other games do it too.
- jonahss 4y agoYeah! I'm thinking a mixture of Magic the Gathering and Tamagotchi. Where the cards can level and grow like an RPG.
- bonestamp2 4y agoI'm imagining someone casting a spell on another player and the cards in their hand change without them realizing right away. That would really add to the magical feeling of the game.
- jonahss 4y agoSo cool! I love it!
- eru 4y agoHave a look at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194607/mystic-vale https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194607/mystic-vale where cards grow during the game. It's implemented physically. > Mystic Vale uses the innovative "Card Crafting System", which lets you not only build your deck, but build the individual cards in your deck, customizing each card's abilities to exactly the strategy you want to follow. You would probably want to go with fewer cards. But something like a deck builder could work.
- spoils19 4y agoI have a few qualms with this project: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting a 3D printer, designing and printing your own cards, and making your own circuit boards. From Windows or Mac, you can then just use whatever you made on Linux. 2. It doesn't actually replace physical cards. Most people I know e-mail cards to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to play games, but they still carry physical cards in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service (not buying, but also playing with the cards), is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
- redorb 4y agoHonestly 2 of these per person and 5 for the turn,flop,river - and we have a texas holdem game without cards and shuffling - just chips... so a 6 person game, 12 of these + 5 ~ 17 of these ~ $450 ~ about the cost of real nice chips and cards...
- eru 4y agoWell, you could also 'just' put an iPad in the middle of the table for public game state (like turn, flop river in Poker), and everyone has their smartphone for private game state (like your hand in Poker) and you can play most boardgames quite nicely. Instead of the iPad in the middle you could use a TV screen, too, but then you can't directly interact with that via touch screen.
- jonahss 4y agohey, yeah! The commenter about the iPad is also right, but, there's something satisfying about the physicality. That said, you can play poker with a deck of cards and a pile of beans. But yeah, I'm looking for something somewhere between Poker and an iPad. See my other comment, a lot of interesting mechanics are available. I'd sell you a poker set if you want to impress your friends :D Email me: jonah@wyldcard.io
- dalbasal 4y agoOne card pp might be adequate for the hold cards. It's easy enough to represent two cards on one little screen. Feels tidier to me. For holdem, you ideally need a plinth that can "deal" cards upside down. Maybe it's more general to have a plinth that can update cards in either orientation. Congrants jonahss on your art. Thanks for sharing.
- JonSchneider 4y agoHello Sabacc.
- Perez418 4y agoGreat work, this is awesome. I’d love to connect and hear about your journey. I’ve always wanted to make a board game.
- jonahss 4y agoLove to! Email me? jonah@wyldcard.io
- hifikuno 4y agoI haven't read all the comments here yet, but I reckon this would be cool to use as a dungeon exploration game. Each card is a room and you can lay them out as you explore new rooms. When certain events are triggered you put the card back on the machine to be shuffled then placed back where it was. Get in, get as much loot as you can and get out without dying.
- jonahss 4y agoOh cool, good idea!
- AndrewDucker 4y agoIf you haven't encountered it you should check out Legends Untold https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendsuntold/legends-untold-the-illumination-of-deepsorrow https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendsuntold/legends-u... Obviously not eink, but exactly that kind of card game exploration.
- jonahss 4y agoHadn't seen that one! Will check it out.
- yurikoval 4y agothe big question is can it display NFTs?
- jonahss 4y agosure
- Animats 4y ago"Based on an idea I had in 2014, built in my spare time over the past two years, I’ve finally completed my first physical prototypes." Too late! He completely missed the NFT boom. These could have been the definitive way to deliver NFTs. The device would check in with the blockchain, and only if the owner of the device and the owner of the NFT matches would it display.
- dankwizard 4y agoMy first thought is card battler You could actually have a characters 'hitpoints' accurately reflected instead of having to keep track of, ala Hearthstone.
- jonahss 4y agoyeah!
- 5900nnmmmmm 4y agoFrefire
- Scalene2 4y agoI think marketing this more like a console and less like a game might be the way to go.
- jonahss 4y agoYou may be right, a few other commenters said something similar.
- squokko 4y agoI know you probably have nothing besides the display in the card to keep it small, but that probably increases the number of Pogo pins you need if you need to run the entire display protocol over Pogo. If you had a demultiplexer in the card you could use only 3 Pogo pins.
- jonahss 4y agoI wish it were pogo pins, but they're so expensive. I'm using spring fingers and they're surprisingly reliably and durable (so far). I'll look into using a demultiplexer, because maybe then I could afford the pogo pins.
- squokko 4y agoLook into Dallas Semiconductor 1-Wire. Could do it with 2 pogos.
- Benjamin_Dobell 4y agoThis is absolutely awesome! I've had (terrible quality) 3-color e-ink displays and some associated electronics sitting in my office cupboard for a few years because I wanted to prototype this project, but I never did. I'm so glad you did this! Since I just want this to come to fruition, I'll explain what my intended launch strategy was. I'm a developer (just a contractor, not owner) of Tabletop Simulator and do some stuff in that community where there's an overlap between physical tabletop and digital. My plan was to launch a card game (largely designed) and the e-ink cards simultaneously via Kickstarter. However, before that, a digital implementation of the game on TTS. Basically as much as I love this idea, I couldn't see it being monetisable on its own unless you can bring the cost down significantly. It also didn't seem like a defensible business on its own. But if the product is a game that uses said functionality, well, that'd be just swell. Anyway, congrats, this is awesome!
- jonahss 4y agoThanks! And thanks for the tip! I may reach out to continue the conversation and shoot ideas back and forth if that's okay :)
- Benjamin_Dobell 4y agoSure. Go for it. Can grab my contact a variety of ways, otherwise. hn@b.dobell.email
- Garlef 4y agoMaybe make it an NFT based CCG and hardcode a transaction fee of 5% to make money on the secondary market.
- riatin 4y agoAmazing project - I love the art on the "cards"! Who was your artist or where did you source it from?
- jonahss 4y agoAhh... I used Stable Diffusion!
- joshvm 4y agoI think this is one of the most impressive parts to me. I would be comfortable approaching the embedded and mechanical aspects of this project, but I don't have the drawing skills. Being able to generate decent card designs for a demo deck is awesome.
- jonahss 4y agoThe whole game development community is embracing ai image synthesis, especially for prototyping.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zumu 4y agoCan I load up whatever images I want? The dream would be proxying Magic cards for playtesting. If you could load net-decks and shuffle via an app over NFC somehow, that'd be amazing as well! Lots of possibilities here!
- jonahss 4y agoPretty much any image you want, but it's only 4-color greyscale and pretty low resolution. I'd have to make a nicer UX than the current "scp the images onto the raspberry pi" setup I have now.
- zumu 4y agoMost proxies are crudely sharpied words over other cards, so the low-res 4-color greyscale is a huge improvement haha
- datene 4y agoCould be a really cool way to play complex "choose your own adventure" games. Like "Hand of Fate" for example, you'd only need three or four cards. Could even do it with two. A game like "Reigns" you could even play with a single card
- upwardbound 4y agoAmazing!! Are you taking orders? Have you considered setting up an Etsy where you can sell a few of them for $100 per tile when you feel like making a couple now and then?
- jonahss 4y agooh dang! I'd totally sell the cards, for less than that even. Sign up for the mailing list on wyldcard.io and if you shoot me an email I'll totally sell you cards, and even a base station (though those are pricier) jonah@wyldcard.io
- GenericDev 4y agoThis is so cool. I'm a sucker for card games and e-ink, so to get both in one serving is VERY exciting. Thanks for being an innovator :)
- ShredKazoo 4y agoI guess the advantage of this setup, relative to playing a board game on an iPad, is that keeping info hidden from your opponent is more natural with cards. I suggest to exploit this, you either make the cards thin enough to hold in a hidden 'hand' the way someone might do in magic the gathering, or (much easier) have your plinth include a hidden hand prop section ala Scrabble. In terms of product development, I think the best path would probably be to create or find an opensource game engine for cardgames and have a nice development environment plus API where a dev can write a game for the engine that either runs on a PC or runs on the cards, with no code changes required. (PC support makes debugging and iterating on game design much faster.)
- jonahss 4y agoI hadn't thought of a Scrabble style card holder, good idea. Ah yeah, I think the game design community mostly uses tabletop simulator and one other such program for testing out ideas. Being able to deploy to both is a good idea.
- ShredKazoo 4y agoI suppose the simplest path to success is just to integrate with tabletop simulator so that any card game playable on tabletop simulator can be played with your thing too. You could even aim to get acquired by them. Product name: "Tabletop Simulator Simulator"
- gigel82 4y agoThere are a lot of "electronic price tags" which are basically the same form factor as your trading cards, except they mass produce them (have nice plastic cases) and they usually include a 3-color eink (black-white-red or black-white-yellow) plus a wireless transmitter (usually proprietary protocol, but sometimes plain Bluetooth and/or NFC) for OTA updates and a 10-year battery (sometimes replaceable CR2032). Also, if you can grab them at $6 / piece, I imagine they're being produced for a lot less than that (random AliExpress link: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803094207083.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803094207083.html). If you're thinking of mass-production might be worth reaching out to one of those manufacturers; you can buy in bulk if nothing else (but I'm sure they'd be open to customizing it a bit - maybe some branding on the plastic molding and whatnot).
- jonahss 4y agoHeh, the screens I use are exactly the ones contained in those products. Huh, the battery lasts for ten years? I wonder how many refreshes you get for that. Maybe I should just be using those.....
- woodleader 4y agoI've worked in retail for an electronics store where we gradually changed over to those. They were from https://www.ses-imagotag.com/products/electronic-shelf-labels/ https://www.ses-imagotag.com/products/electronic-shelf-label... They even calimed to us 13 years batery life at an average of 1 refresh per day. They are pretty power efficient and we've had many devices that ran for years without an issue.
- adamredwoods 4y agoNo need to physically shuffle.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoThis is amazing - but don't just limit yourself to table top games. While the killer app has not popped into my head I am sure there are business uses as well - from name tags to ... err - but just the very existence of these things means people will find new uses. fantastic
- jonahss 4y agoThe trick then, would be making an easy way to write images to them. Maybe a phone attachment...
- reportgunner 4y agoReverse wireless charging and NFC or usb-c to usb-c cable
- nathias 4y agoThis is really cool! I had the same idea but dismissed it because e-inks were so expensive, it's really impressive you can get them down to $10. This enables you to make games that are digital and analog at the same time, which is in itself interesting. I think this tech combines well with NFTs to extend this functionality (if you need unique cards, unforgable etc.).
- zozbot234 4y agoIf this was a fully hackable product, it could be used for so much more than just playing games. Think the stuff that e-ink price tags are already used for, e.g. in product retail, plus so many uses in the office; no need to awkwardly write things down on post-its or simple slips of paper, when they can instead be shown on a trading card with information being reliably drawn from a single source of truth.
- jonahss 4y agoI'm down to make it fully hackable. The trick would be an easy interface for writing to them. They don't have batteries, so you need to send all the power to them along with information.
- __dundernull__ 4y agoMaybe you could use a handheld scanner type device to load the next image and send power to each card, or an electronic Rolodex where you stack the cards and it flips through a set amount reconfiguring them. Both of those ideas would require some hardware development though. I forgot to add: very interesting project and amazing to see the fruition of your efforts!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- YetAnotherNick 4y agoOff topic, but where are you getting e-ink display from. I could think of lot of usage for them if they don't require any refresh or power and is available for $10.
- jonahss 4y agoOh, the screen alone is less than $10. Bought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags. Good Display GDEW029T5D
- pjerem 4y agoe-Ink is the coolest tech, edition 789 237 Btw that’s a great project OP. I really love it.
- tomcam 4y agoDude, that’s a whole lot of accomplishments. Super impressive.
- Tworthers 4y agoSeems like a bit of a solution waiting for a problem. Given the current limitations in the system I would go with a monster battler game with a starter set of just 2 cards which would be yours and your opponents monster and then add a selection of power-ups/abilities these could be much cheaper components that could be played on the base station for an effect. These could be swipe cards or even just resistors basically anything that can be measured by the base station. With this hybrid system you could get the cool evolving over time monsters as well as lots of pieces to play with. Lots of scope for cool and hidden interactions. (Ideas taken from digimon tamers)
- jonahss 4y agoOoh yes!!
- unsupp0rted 4y agoI applaud that you made a thing, and it's cool that you learned Rust, wrote a driver, did CAD, 3D printed... the works! It's far more than I can do. But let's say all trading cards in the world were like the e-ink ones you invented, and then somebody came along and said, "I printed 52 trading cards on glossy card paper, in vibrant color. They are 1 millimeter thick, weigh practically nothing, and cost about a penny each to produce. The drawback is you have to shuffle them in your hands". The paper version would be a massive upgrade in almost every sense.
- voiper1 4y agoThe e-ink screen changes much more than that: >The cards also contain a memory chip, so they can store stats, moves, and keep changes and status effects from one game to the next. ... >I think these cards have the potential to unlock a new paradigm of tabletop gaming. They are rooted in the physical world, but can implement complex game mechanics run by a computer. e.g. Magic The Gathering has a TON of modifiers - +1/1 counters, etc - and this could live-update and keep track of those in a physical/offline setting.
- mdrzn 4y agoThis is insanely cool.
- muhehe 4y agoCan someone recommend some cheap ESL (as mentioned by other comments), that's easily hackable (as in a push an image to it without much troubles)? Many need proprietary base stations, some use NFC, but I'm looking for something with Bluetooth or ZigBee (or similar). Basically I want simple frame that would update with calendar events (or something), so NFC is not suitable and I don't want to buy expensive base station with lots of extra cruft (especially for one tag)
- knlje 4y agoReally interesting idea and I can see many game mechanics that benefit. What do you think is the minimum thickness using any technology available?
- jonahss 4y agoOh, if you were willing to spend $50 a card, I think you can get them down to the thickness of a credit card. If you are willing to spend even more, you could bundle the card circuitry with the silicon embedded in the e-ink display already, and there are FPC e-ink displays. So it'd be about half the thickness of a credit card and flexible! (at that point, we'd need to change the plinth interface, probably go for NFC like people are mentioning in these comments)
- ngcc_hk 4y agoAmazing and so many possibilities. Good luck for your future. Many good ideas here ...
- mmkos 4y agoI can see this unlocking a new class of card games. Instead of buying a different set of cards, players would only need to buy one set of these e-ink cards, which could be used across a completely new marketplace of card games. They have the benefit of being more interactive and thus more immersive/engaging, albeit they seem a little unwieldy (the form factor could improve to make them thinner). Can you file a patent for something like this? If you can, then I would explore that option.
- Folcon 4y agoThis is really interesting jonahss, well done for completing it! Have you looked at the physical games and convention spaces? Things like DnD roleplaying games or Megagames could both use something like this. I'd personally be interested in both those applications, what kind of wireless communication can they do?
- jonahss 4y agoOh for sure, I'm hoping to inspire the game developer community. I know a lot of things using electronics have been tried in the past and it usually comes out as a gimmick, but I tried to design these to hide their electronic nature, hoping to enter the same spot that dice and counters inhabit. I was going to post about it on some game dev forums next, any suggestions of where I should post? They don't do wireless as of now, they have to sit on the plinth to get an update. There are options for how to add some form of wireless connectivity. I'd be interested in continuing the conversation, I'll send you an email, or email me: jonah@wyldcard.io
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoOut of curiosity what connectors did you use between the card and the plinth? Are they some sort of pogo pins?
- jonahss 4y agoPogo pins were too expensive, I'm (totally mis)using spring fingers.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoResourceful, I like it.
- jlpom 4y agoThis may be useful to generate random charactersistics / powers / hit's health cost (in case of a character card) or text for event based cards.
- junon 4y agoDamn, impressive OP. This looks really nice. The design of everything is awesome.
- jonahss 4y agoThanks!
- riskycodes 4y agoThis is absolutely incredible. Love this technology.
- jojo259 4y agoI REALLY love this idea. The way that this could combine the tactile nature of physical games with the benefits of digitization is awesome. The example you gave somewhere of the vampire card is so cool.
- jonahss 4y agoThanks! You get it!
- Schroedingersat 4y agoDoes it needthe power source and logic? Could you have some kind of pogo pin or contact on the base and make them thinner/cheaper?
- k_sze 4y agoSomehow this makes me think of the “Deck of Dragons” in “Malazan” because the faces can change.
- jonahss 4y agoAdding to my list of fictional card games, thanks!
- amelius 4y agoI bet magicians would love such cards.
- _osorin_ 4y agoLove it! I suppose it's possible to display animations right? If so it'd be very cool to play Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic with animated cards. Endless possibilities.
- schwartzworld 4y agoUpdate speeds are going to be too slow for meaningful animations. Also, the lifecycle of the display is measured in screen refreshes, so having to flash through the animation frames would shorten the life for sure.
- jonahss 4y agoAnimations seem to be a tricky prospect for e-ink displays. Definitely possible, but may require more expensive hardware? I've seen pebble watches and remarkable tablets which can do it amazingly well, maybe I just need better firmware...
- ihappentobe 4y agoThere are so many wonderful applications of this! I am always interested in tabletop card games, but I don’t want to manage running calculations for things like my hp, or current stat buffs. Something like this could open up complex interactions and game state, without burdening the player.
- riskable 4y agoI read a lot of these comments and people are thinking about traditional card games and electronic games of the past that are kinda sorta similar (but not really). They're missing the ONE HUGE ADVANTAGE of epaper displays: They don't need power. It seems the big assumption everyone's making in the comments is that the displays will just stay there on the electronics box. The reality is that you can refresh the display and then take it back into your hand. You could even trade it with other players while disconnected. Furthermore, these displays can be refreshed hundreds of thousands of times (some can do millions) and therefore can last a lot longer than regular cards. They're also stupidly cheap in bulk! Example of a cheap NFC-powered one: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803070283516.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803070283516.html (not the best example since it's kinda thick but you can get much thinner ones around the same price). You just need to come up with some example games that take advantage of the trading dynamic. Also, if you're up to the engineering it would be neat if you could use one epaper "card" to modify another one. Much like how in many card games you can add an "enchantment" or "modifier" style card on top of another to give it additional capabilities. I also recommend adding a cover or shutter to the cards so that they can be refreshed without the other players seeing what it is. Once the card is back in your hand you can move the cover out of the way and see what you got. Alternatively, you could make it so that the cards refresh their displays upside down. That way you can refresh it without anyone seeing what's there.
- jonahss 4y agoYeah! A few comments have mentioned being able to refresh the cards while upside down, or covered by another. Maybe my next prototype can put the contacts on the edges and have them wrap around or pass through, so they work on both sides. That will be a bit more complexity for fabrication, but sounds like a fun project.
- gigaflop 4y agoWould some kind of toaster-slot mechanism work? Contacts could be on the bottom edge, and with the right shape, you could have them extend a few millimeters onto the front and back, to get contacts on 3 sides.
- elliotpage 4y agoWas it intentional to have the pin layout be in the shape of the Sefirot? Either way, spooky!
- Ertimbrang94 4y agoI'm no expert on the subject, but wouldn't this be awesome as an addition to DnD or other tabletop RPGs? Like the card could be a great way to display and update player characters stats and information.
- trynewideas 4y agoThe tray interface immediately reminded me of Harmonix's Dropmix.[1] A Dropmix-alike where you can program your own "cards" to store and play, or even just trigger, short loops on a playback device would be incredible. Adventure card games,[2][3] which blend tabletop RPG and card game mechanics to play through a story and often rely on mutable and custom third-party or player-created cards, are another niche that could rock programmable cards. They don't rely on collectability or random card packs - everything to play comes in a base set, and expansions take the forms of additional classes or adventures. But they can be tedious to set up, card mutability means marking and smudging cards or sleeving them, and using third-party or player-made cards usually requires getting them printed to fit into the deck seamlessly - programmable cards can dodge all of those issues. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZLXSmq9s1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZLXSmq9s1A 2: https://www.strangeassembly.com/2019/review-pathfinder-adventure-card-game-core-set https://www.strangeassembly.com/2019/review-pathfinder-adven... 3: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.obsidian.pacg1&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.obsidian.p...
- vmatsiiako 4y agoWow! Very cool! Love the idea
- zethus 4y agoKind of perfect for a travel mahjong set where you don't have a table to shuffle a bunch of tiles on!
- isthisthingon99 4y agoWhy not just use the phone as a virtual hand of cards?
- jonahss 4y agoFor anyone checking back here: Someone suggested I start a Discord server. Feel free to join: https://discord.gg/DXr2eWPk https://discord.gg/DXr2eWPk
- infinite8s 4y agoThis looks really great! Do you have any blog posts talking about the hardware design of the cards?
- jtolmar 4y agoThis is very neat! I don't think traditional board games would be interested unless you got the price down very very low ($2/unit or less). I think you could make something happen if you marketed and packaged it as a "board game console" though. Like a fixed number of cards and larger boards, plus some sort of base station or phone app that'll flash everything to the starting state of a game of your choice. Then people buy new games digitally from you, same as a modern video game console. (I'd be interested in the game dev facing API and writing some games for such a thing, so let me know if you're pursuing it and we can swap contact info.)
- stefanmichael 4y agoI think this is a really good idea. Just imagine being able to open source rulesets and cards and being able to load them into your deck on a moments notice, and your friends being able to do the same. I hope that you make this work, I would easily pay 200$ for a deck if there were a few games to choose from and a platform to build my own rulesets and cards and load them into the physical cards.
- bovermyer 4y agoMy very first thought on seeing this was - hey, we could finally implement Sabaac as it's described in the Star Wars novels, with the morphing card mechanics and everything.
- Acceptance 4y agoThe tree of life shaped connector is pretty awesome. It is very fitting with the tarot aesthetic.
- suilied 4y agoI love this. I dabble a bit in electronics as well as tabletop wargames and have always dreamed of having an interactive table with "moving" terrain, doors that open/close, LED's indicating some status of an objective, rotating walkways, that sort of thing. I think if you're plynth interface can be opensourced or licensed even, that you can do more than just play card games. How about track your games that support said interface? Wins, losses, draws, rewards. Not sure what the storage capacity is of the cards, but I see possibilities more in the form of combining Amiibo's with Steam's social features like achievements and the workshop.
- telcal 4y agoI just noticed this project, Inkplate 2. Definitely more expensive but maybe some useful ideas there. https://www.hackster.io/news/the-inkplate-2-is-a-tiny-self-contained-espressif-esp32-based-arduino-compatible-iot-epaper-display-d1bfb142cf28 https://www.hackster.io/news/the-inkplate-2-is-a-tiny-self-c...