8 ms·

I'm a news junkie, and the power and allure of a newspaper's front page have always fascinated me. When I stumbled upon an article written by a Google engineer

I'm a news junkie, and the power and allure of a newspaper's front page have always fascinated me. When I stumbled upon an article written by a Google engineer who had built an e ink device with the front page of his favorite daily newspaper prominently displayed on his wall, I was a bit jealous. So, I worked with a e-ink company called Visionect in Slovenia to build a version that comes shipped ready to put on your wall. The screen isn't cheap ($2500) because it's a huge 32" e-ink display. The beautiful glass screen is connected to wifi and we made it easy to choose your favorite newspaper frontpages to put on display. It's a bit like an ever changing artwork.

Tepix 3y ago
That's pricey. Perhaps using a normal 4k monitor is a better option? It could even display video. You could couple it with a motion sensor to turn it off and save power when noone is around.
- sytheveenje 3y ago
  No. That would become another screen in your house. I think the power of this concept is it begin e-ink.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  That sounds like a very different product from what they're offering here. Eink feels close to paper, regular LCD's or OLED's do not.
- pipo234 3y ago
  There is probably some break even point, as a typical 4k monitor draws considerably more power.
  - ZiiS 3y ago
    If you only update the paper once a day with a new newspaper you can probably run a OLED for about 1 second per day on the same power budget.
shultays 3y ago
Sounds like an interesting project, how/where does it fetch the data from?
- martinclayton 3y ago
  Eg. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/07/07/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/07/07/nytfrontpage/scan...
  - naikrovek 3y ago
    whoa this is awesome. any other examples? I've been wanting to find a source for front pages.
cydmax 3y ago
There are cheaper e-ink displays by Waveshare. e.g. the WaveShare 13.3inch e-Paper e-Ink Display HAT For Raspberry Pi for 500€. You can build a box to house the display and the Raspberry Pi for under 100€… Add some scripts to download and display the news PDF and you can enjoy it for 1/4 of the price…
- lopis 3y ago
  Is that really worth it, though? The 13 inch screen from this company is 899€ and already comes in a proper enclosure, and is wireless which seems important for this product. If your goal is to quickly manufacture reliable devices, partnering with someone that already sells a proper device seems totally worth the extra cost. Not to mention that OP wants a big poster-size screen, so your suggestion comes a few inches short.
  - cydmax 3y ago
    It is absolutely worth it! The Visionect display require a subscription to run properly: https://www.visionect.com/software/ https://www.visionect.com/software/ . 60 Euro / year to run a display that I paid almost 1k for is not for private use. I guess that's why the price for the 32 inch display is so high, the subscription is priced in.
    - alexandernl 3y ago
      We built our own CMS, so no need for a subscription
      - zauguin 3y ago
        Could you give a few more details on this? While the 32'' screen is a bit too expensive for me, I would probably find interesting usecases for he 16'' version if there weren't the subscription requirement. I don't mind writing my own CMS as long as that's possible. What are the requirements to make a system work with these? Do you at the end stream bitmaps to the device? Something else? Is there a documented interface?
Gasp0de 3y ago
For 2500 bucks I can probably pay the person who delivers my daily newspaper to come inside and hang it on the wall for me for at least 10 years.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  No you couldn't.
  - konart 3y ago
    Depends on country we are talking about.
    - Pyramus 3y ago
      Okay, then please propose a concrete example with costs of labor, premium for print subscription etc. Happy to be proven wrong, but USD 2500 seems unrealistic.
      - swores 3y ago
        I've just done that in reply to your previous comment, but will add here: they said "pay the person who delivers my daily newspaper", so it's $2500 on top of an existing delivery, not $2500 including paying for a new subscription & deliveries. edit: oops I noticed the other comment I replied to wasn't you, but anyway - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36629620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36629620
        Pyramus 3y ago
        No worries, appreciate your concrete calculation. I would argue it's just one more convenient assumption that leads us away from a realistic estimation. It seems to me USD 2500 is an idealistic best case scenario.
      - akagr 3y ago
        I live in India. My newspaper costs ₹230 a month. That's ₹2,760 a year and ₹27,600 for a decade (not factoring inflation). At today's conversion rates, that's $333.58 for entire decade. If I pay the remaining amount of $2166.42 to the delivery person over 10 years, that's about ₹1493 per month, which is over 6 times the cost of newspaper subscription. For that amount, yeah, they'll be happy to hang the paper on a wall.
konschubert 3y ago
I make a similar product, with a smaller screen and at a lower price point. It’s very cool what you have done, let’s maybe collaborate or join forces? My product is an e-paper calendar: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-calendar https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
- newhotelowner 3y ago
  Can you just display a random webpage instead of calendar?
- GlacierFox 3y ago
  Looks really cheap too.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    :D It’s a matter of taste I guess
  - shultays 3y ago
    The cable looks cheap indeed, although otherwise you have the trouble of keeping it charged. But other wise "cheap"/simple look imo is a selling point.
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    Hmmmm, trying to see your point of view, what I would do differently.... If one is going to use plywood for the frame, maybe a nice "multi-ply" plywood (Europly, Apple Ply, etc.). The Japanese kids make speakers from plywood and love to show off the "plys" because they use the good multi-ply stuff. Frame could be cut with more CNC precision? (Looking at the inner cut in particular). Maybe the stand should be cut from extruded aluminum of some interesting cross section rather than the Scrabble-tile-holder-like block of wood. Given those changes I would raise the price as well to $199 and think nothing of that. (Also, would like to dial down the refreshes — or at the very least, not refresh if the pixels are unchanged. Unless somehow they are able to do invisible refreshes on the e-ink display — 'cause e-ink refreshes sure can be distracting and ugly.)
JKCalhoun 3y ago
The e-ink newspaper project comes up from time to time and I keep waiting for the prices to come down to Earth. Guess I'm still going to have to wait, ha ha. I did play around with an affordable (smaller) display and liked the result though (but since it was small I did not ry to emulate a newspaper but rather a vintage Mac).
- naikrovek 3y ago
  yeah the displays are where the cost is, here, and until the company that makes these giant panels starts pricing them sanely, there won't be any products built with it which are priced sanely.
westurner 3y ago
Why do larger e-ink screens cost more to produce? Something like this for (e.g. Kanban card-based) project management would be cool, though the contrast at a distance. The PineNote is a 9" eInk development device; 3287cm/3 for $400. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineNote https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineNote But it's not going to look as nice as a 32" e-ink display on the wall. Is there a yellow backlight, or a blueish backlight? Is there a low-cost way to make a solar roof that varies in solar reflectivity? FWIU e-ink only requires voltage to cause the e-ink particles to flip over? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink
- shultays 3y ago
  Smaller market and (I assume) patents and probably some price fixing
- smolder 3y ago
  > Why do larger e-ink screens cost more to produce? Last I knew the bulk of cost for e-ink displays was just due to the patent holders decision to charge a lot, which is disappointing, but can't go on that much longer...
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    This is a myth that people keep repeating. E-ink prices have very little to do with patents. E-ink displays are more expensive because they are utterly niche compared to LCD screens (there are over 6 billion smartphone users in the world right now, and plenty of people own a smartphone, laptop, desktop, TV, tablet, smartwatch, then use a computer at work, interact with a self-checkout kiosk at the supermarket, etc). There are basically two common use-cases for e-ink right now: e-readers (and nowadays 'e-notes', which have stylus input), and smart-pricetags in supermarkets. Neither of these require large e-ink screens, so there's no existing production line to feed these 32" monitors off. The 32" screens are created by hand-fusing 4 16" screens together, IIRC. This isn't automated because there's not enough demand to automate it. The reason there's no demand for e-ink screens is that the technology just isn't very useful - I love e-ink, but it's not particularly flexible and can't be used in general-purpose devices that need to display video. It has its niches, but they're niche. It's lower battery usage is due to low refresh rate, which is inherently incompatible with displaying video -if an e-reader refreshes once per minute and an LCD screen would have to refresh 60 times a second, then the LCD needs to refresh 3600x more often which means e-ink saves power even if the e-ink screen takes 10x or 100x the power per refresh. But if the e-ink screen plays video at 60FPS, then by definition it's refreshing 60 times a second and thus will use 10x or 100x the power of the equivalent LCD screen playing the same video. If we want prices to drop substantially, we need more use-cases for e-ink. There's hope here, as the recent fast-ACEP tech (the Gallery 3) is color-tech that doesn't sacrifice half of your contrast and resolution (like Color Filter Arrays do), but is fast enough for an interactive device and is almost as fast to refresh as a monochrome screen (previous ACEP screens took min 7 seconds to refresh the screen, the new tech is amazing). With some refinement, it might be enough to bring e-notes somewhat into the mainstream. So, all that said: e-ink screens that are 6" or less aren't really any more expensive than an LCD. It's only when you get outside of normal e-reader sizes that the price goes up like crazy. ...not to mention, e-ink isn't the only "e-paper" company - ReInkstone are making their DES screens, which dodge at least some of the patents on microencapsulated electrophoretic displays as their cofferdam tech doesn't use microcapsules at all and instead integrate the seals into the display.
deltarholamda 3y ago
It's kind of sad that the newspaper format--which gradually developed over many many years due to how a human interfaces with the medium--is now so... quaint?... that it has entered the realm of "art." All that inverse-pyramid, "Five Ws and an H," Journalism 101 stuff developed in part because of how newspapers were designed, typeset and printed. Now it's kind of like a Thomas Kincaid print? I feel really old now.
jonathankoren 3y ago
Why is the first sentence of this comment literally a copy paste from the article? This feels bizarre.
kian 3y ago
Is there a way to reach out to you?

Tepix 3y ago

That's pricey. Perhaps using a normal 4k monitor is a better option? It could even display video. You could couple it with a motion sensor to turn it off and save power when noone is around.

sytheveenje 3y ago
No. That would become another screen in your house. I think the power of this concept is it begin e-ink.
TulliusCicero 3y ago
That sounds like a very different product from what they're offering here. Eink feels close to paper, regular LCD's or OLED's do not.
pipo234 3y ago
There is probably some break even point, as a typical 4k monitor draws considerably more power.
- ZiiS 3y ago
  If you only update the paper once a day with a new newspaper you can probably run a OLED for about 1 second per day on the same power budget.

shultays 3y ago

Sounds like an interesting project, how/where does it fetch the data from?

martinclayton 3y ago
Eg. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/07/07/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/07/07/nytfrontpage/scan...
- naikrovek 3y ago
  whoa this is awesome. any other examples? I've been wanting to find a source for front pages.

cydmax 3y ago

There are cheaper e-ink displays by Waveshare. e.g. the WaveShare 13.3inch e-Paper e-Ink Display HAT For Raspberry Pi for 500€. You can build a box to house the display and the Raspberry Pi for under 100€… Add some scripts to download and display the news PDF and you can enjoy it for 1/4 of the price…

lopis 3y ago
Is that really worth it, though? The 13 inch screen from this company is 899€ and already comes in a proper enclosure, and is wireless which seems important for this product. If your goal is to quickly manufacture reliable devices, partnering with someone that already sells a proper device seems totally worth the extra cost. Not to mention that OP wants a big poster-size screen, so your suggestion comes a few inches short.
- cydmax 3y ago
  It is absolutely worth it! The Visionect display require a subscription to run properly: https://www.visionect.com/software/ https://www.visionect.com/software/ . 60 Euro / year to run a display that I paid almost 1k for is not for private use. I guess that's why the price for the 32 inch display is so high, the subscription is priced in.
  - alexandernl 3y ago
    We built our own CMS, so no need for a subscription
    - zauguin 3y ago
      Could you give a few more details on this? While the 32'' screen is a bit too expensive for me, I would probably find interesting usecases for he 16'' version if there weren't the subscription requirement. I don't mind writing my own CMS as long as that's possible. What are the requirements to make a system work with these? Do you at the end stream bitmaps to the device? Something else? Is there a documented interface?

Gasp0de 3y ago

For 2500 bucks I can probably pay the person who delivers my daily newspaper to come inside and hang it on the wall for me for at least 10 years.

TulliusCicero 3y ago
No you couldn't.
- konart 3y ago
  Depends on country we are talking about.
  - Pyramus 3y ago
    Okay, then please propose a concrete example with costs of labor, premium for print subscription etc. Happy to be proven wrong, but USD 2500 seems unrealistic.
    - swores 3y ago
      I've just done that in reply to your previous comment, but will add here: they said "pay the person who delivers my daily newspaper", so it's $2500 on top of an existing delivery, not $2500 including paying for a new subscription & deliveries. edit: oops I noticed the other comment I replied to wasn't you, but anyway - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36629620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36629620
      - Pyramus 3y ago
        No worries, appreciate your concrete calculation. I would argue it's just one more convenient assumption that leads us away from a realistic estimation. It seems to me USD 2500 is an idealistic best case scenario.
    - akagr 3y ago
      I live in India. My newspaper costs ₹230 a month. That's ₹2,760 a year and ₹27,600 for a decade (not factoring inflation). At today's conversion rates, that's $333.58 for entire decade. If I pay the remaining amount of $2166.42 to the delivery person over 10 years, that's about ₹1493 per month, which is over 6 times the cost of newspaper subscription. For that amount, yeah, they'll be happy to hang the paper on a wall.

konschubert 3y ago

I make a similar product, with a smaller screen and at a lower price point. It’s very cool what you have done, let’s maybe collaborate or join forces? My product is an e-paper calendar: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-calendar https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...

newhotelowner 3y ago
Can you just display a random webpage instead of calendar?
GlacierFox 3y ago
Looks really cheap too.
- konschubert 3y ago
  :D It’s a matter of taste I guess
- shultays 3y ago
  The cable looks cheap indeed, although otherwise you have the trouble of keeping it charged. But other wise "cheap"/simple look imo is a selling point.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Hmmmm, trying to see your point of view, what I would do differently.... If one is going to use plywood for the frame, maybe a nice "multi-ply" plywood (Europly, Apple Ply, etc.). The Japanese kids make speakers from plywood and love to show off the "plys" because they use the good multi-ply stuff. Frame could be cut with more CNC precision? (Looking at the inner cut in particular). Maybe the stand should be cut from extruded aluminum of some interesting cross section rather than the Scrabble-tile-holder-like block of wood. Given those changes I would raise the price as well to $199 and think nothing of that. (Also, would like to dial down the refreshes — or at the very least, not refresh if the pixels are unchanged. Unless somehow they are able to do invisible refreshes on the e-ink display — 'cause e-ink refreshes sure can be distracting and ugly.)

JKCalhoun 3y ago

The e-ink newspaper project comes up from time to time and I keep waiting for the prices to come down to Earth. Guess I'm still going to have to wait, ha ha. I did play around with an affordable (smaller) display and liked the result though (but since it was small I did not ry to emulate a newspaper but rather a vintage Mac).

naikrovek 3y ago
yeah the displays are where the cost is, here, and until the company that makes these giant panels starts pricing them sanely, there won't be any products built with it which are priced sanely.

westurner 3y ago

Why do larger e-ink screens cost more to produce? Something like this for (e.g. Kanban card-based) project management would be cool, though the contrast at a distance. The PineNote is a 9" eInk development device; 3287cm/3 for $400. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineNote https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineNote But it's not going to look as nice as a 32" e-ink display on the wall. Is there a yellow backlight, or a blueish backlight? Is there a low-cost way to make a solar roof that varies in solar reflectivity? FWIU e-ink only requires voltage to cause the e-ink particles to flip over? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink

shultays 3y ago
Smaller market and (I assume) patents and probably some price fixing
smolder 3y ago
> Why do larger e-ink screens cost more to produce? Last I knew the bulk of cost for e-ink displays was just due to the patent holders decision to charge a lot, which is disappointing, but can't go on that much longer...
- Qwertious 3y ago
  This is a myth that people keep repeating. E-ink prices have very little to do with patents. E-ink displays are more expensive because they are utterly niche compared to LCD screens (there are over 6 billion smartphone users in the world right now, and plenty of people own a smartphone, laptop, desktop, TV, tablet, smartwatch, then use a computer at work, interact with a self-checkout kiosk at the supermarket, etc). There are basically two common use-cases for e-ink right now: e-readers (and nowadays 'e-notes', which have stylus input), and smart-pricetags in supermarkets. Neither of these require large e-ink screens, so there's no existing production line to feed these 32" monitors off. The 32" screens are created by hand-fusing 4 16" screens together, IIRC. This isn't automated because there's not enough demand to automate it. The reason there's no demand for e-ink screens is that the technology just isn't very useful - I love e-ink, but it's not particularly flexible and can't be used in general-purpose devices that need to display video. It has its niches, but they're niche. It's lower battery usage is due to low refresh rate, which is inherently incompatible with displaying video -if an e-reader refreshes once per minute and an LCD screen would have to refresh 60 times a second, then the LCD needs to refresh 3600x more often which means e-ink saves power even if the e-ink screen takes 10x or 100x the power per refresh. But if the e-ink screen plays video at 60FPS, then by definition it's refreshing 60 times a second and thus will use 10x or 100x the power of the equivalent LCD screen playing the same video. If we want prices to drop substantially, we need more use-cases for e-ink. There's hope here, as the recent fast-ACEP tech (the Gallery 3) is color-tech that doesn't sacrifice half of your contrast and resolution (like Color Filter Arrays do), but is fast enough for an interactive device and is almost as fast to refresh as a monochrome screen (previous ACEP screens took min 7 seconds to refresh the screen, the new tech is amazing). With some refinement, it might be enough to bring e-notes somewhat into the mainstream. So, all that said: e-ink screens that are 6" or less aren't really any more expensive than an LCD. It's only when you get outside of normal e-reader sizes that the price goes up like crazy. ...not to mention, e-ink isn't the only "e-paper" company - ReInkstone are making their DES screens, which dodge at least some of the patents on microencapsulated electrophoretic displays as their cofferdam tech doesn't use microcapsules at all and instead integrate the seals into the display.

deltarholamda 3y ago

It's kind of sad that the newspaper format--which gradually developed over many many years due to how a human interfaces with the medium--is now so... quaint?... that it has entered the realm of "art." All that inverse-pyramid, "Five Ws and an H," Journalism 101 stuff developed in part because of how newspapers were designed, typeset and printed. Now it's kind of like a Thomas Kincaid print? I feel really old now.

jonathankoren 3y ago

Why is the first sentence of this comment literally a copy paste from the article? This feels bizarre.

kian 3y ago

Is there a way to reach out to you?