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Show HN: Building a 42-inch E-Ink frame for generative art
- archontes 3y agoCasey Muratori has a decent blog post on the topic of blue noise dithering. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0010 https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0010
- 1-6 3y agoE-Ink is a classic example of an artificially constrained supply chain designed to compete with far more advanced technologies.
- Aeolun 3y agoYou can hardly manufacture 1000 if only 20 will ever be sold.
- Dave_Rosenthal 3y agoI've looked, and it doesn't seem to exist, but I still can't believe there isn't an emissive display on the market that can just emulate the look of a passive display. (i.e. match the 'white' of the display to inbound light) All you need is a high quality RGB light sensor or three and an accurate way to dim a backlight. None of this seems very hard. Sure, it wouldn't show the shape of shadows or whatever, but it would still be highly effective. Why can't the image just go black when I turn the lights off?
- ggm 3y agoThe Samsung art series TV has fooled me in an AirBnB. It took me quite a while to realise it wasn't an expensive framed print. It was daylight in a well lit bright room. The frame and background were just right to look like modern simple poster framing. The minute sun set, of course it stopped looking right. Thats when I realized we had a TV after all. My partner pointed out the art had changed at least two times across daylight hours. I had just blanked that out.
- scotty79 3y agoCool thing would be to listen to the speech in the room and use it as a prompt
- worldmerge 3y agoYour company seems really cool! I love the maker spirit! Sick flip dot display, I have some from AlfaZeta, would love to get a bus one but they seem rare in the US. Photoroom seems like a fun place to work.
- dsp_person 3y agoI remember seeing those Thinkpad X230 mods with an eink display and how a challenge was availability of the specific discontinued e-ink screen of the right size. The mfg from the article has a 13.3" screen that would be fun to try a mod with: https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/13.3''ePaperDisplay(VB3300-NCB) https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/13.3''ePaperDisp... and impressive 1600 x 1200 pixels
- moroark 3y agoI love it. 2 Ideas: You should upload a massively complicated where's waldo like scene and have waldo appear in different places each hour. Have a portrait with lots of subtle details but they change slowly over time. Ex. girl goes from earing-less to small earings to big earings. Just have lots of small details subtly change but at a rate which makes them hard to detect.
- levi0214 3y agoThis is cool!
- Charon77 3y ago> We found that running 2 full white images did a good enough job, without disrupting the experience too much Some devices actually clear by outputting the invert of the image. Maybe this will be faster
- kevinpiac 3y agoWell done!
- clash 3y agoShameless plug: I build devices like that and sell them. Battery powered. https://framelabs.eu/en/product/artframe-31/ https://framelabs.eu/en/product/artframe-31/ I use the 31.2" panel because it is 40% cheaper and has higher DPI, but the 42" panel is also possible.
- itsTyrion 3y agoanything to not ask artists for display permission or pay a dime
- robszumski 3y agoThis is great! I would love to see a sample of the color input images and the resulting image on the display.
- itishappy 3y agoIt's monochrome.
- robszumski 3y agoThe video has a lot of glare and the dithering seems like an important part. I wanted to contrast that process with the original.
- ea016 3y agoOP here. Here's a comparison with an input image vs gray levels vs dithered: https://imgur.com/a/osE57eh https://imgur.com/a/osE57eh When displayed on the frame you can barely see the dithering. Interestingly you see the jpeg compression artifacts a lot more
- freedomben 3y agoWhen are we going to have cheaper e-ink screens available? Anyone know if the situation has changed in the last couple of years? See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
- grawlinson 3y agoRealistically, it’ll be when the patents expire.
- GaggiX 3y agoWhich patents need to expire to have cheaper e-ink displays?
- eli 3y agoMy understanding is it's much more about demand than patents. LED panels got cheap because we built factories that pump out a lot of them.
- lrem 3y agoI just glanced, they still want about 500 bucks for the 13" screen and half of that for the board to drive it. While I have no clue what making the screen at a low scale might cost, the board cannot possibly be five times more expensive than a Raspberry Pi, can it?
- tonoto 3y agoFantastic project, thanks for sharing! Prohibitive pricing for home use, but I would really love to have that as a picture frame on the wall. One can dream for the future..
- lionkor 3y agoThat's a very neat project. The only issue I have with it is that it's basically a passive energy waster. It produces images by burning GPU power, when it could instead curate art from an existing amount of art (of which there is more to ever go through, almost in any category). Some projects that use AI could be replaced with other tech and be much more efficient.
- 93po 3y agoHow is this any different than using a GPU to play games? They're both something people enjoy. Should I go play with sticks in the yard instead?
- GaggiX 3y agoI think it simply uses some API to generate the images.
- evrimoztamur 3y agoHow does the API generate the images then?
- dheera 3y agoIt doesn't take a lot of GPU to produce one image, and you could always just keep a single image on the wall for a longer time if you want to reduce that impact. You can also have it not produce images at night or when you are not around the house. Lots of ways to save energy. The impact of an image every few hours or whatever is nanoscule compared to your transportation and heating needs. (Also if your apartment uses electric resistive heating, fire away with your GPU, you're just producing images in the process of producing heat instead of passing it through a resistor. It's no less efficient.)
- sho_hn 3y agoPosh frames e-ink friends! Here's my generative newspaper: https://i.imgur.com/tD1t9u3.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/tD1t9u3.jpeg My wallet stopped at 13.3" though :) Update for those who saw me post it before: I recently charged the battery for the first time since hanging it in March, which met my expectations. Shout-out also to the people at Halbe Rahmen, the best picture frames in the world.
- dheera 3y agoWondering if you have by any chance shared code and plans for the long battery life setup? Mine is still wired but I'm thinking of using ESP32 + deep sleep.
- sho_hn 3y agoI _still_ haven't set the GitHub repo to public :( Real-life intruded in a major way (first baby). esp32 + deep sleep + external RTC is what this is using. I posted some of my experiences with getting it as low as I could here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37663913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37663913 Here's a few more pics: https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX I found the mention of Blue Noise Dithering in this project quite interesting! I've not put a lot of effort into picking the nicest possible dithering method (just a basic Floyd-Steinberg) for the embedded article photos, partly because the whole newspaper look didn't seem to warrant it, but it might be worth taking stock of what the latest on dithering is.
- yohannparis 3y agoWhere is the information on how you built it?
- sho_hn 3y agoThere's some info on my Hackaday project listing: https://hackaday.io/project/190478-hyepaper https://hackaday.io/project/190478-hyepaper Also the album link in the other comment.
- adolph 3y agoIn terms of battery powering it, I wonder how many amps it takes to power a refresh. The Salt driver is 12v, which I guess can be shut down between refreshes.
- sho_hn 3y agoIn my e-ink newspaper, I have the driver board behind a relay (because it had an annoying idle current draw even when you tell the driver chip to go to standby, and they even added an annoying power LED ...) and do just fully shut it off between refreshes. There's some projects that forego a driver ASIC entirely and drive the waveforms directly from a MCU, although I guess this large panel has a different voltage domain.
- xnx 3y agoWell done. There would be so many more cool applications of e-ink if it wasn't $2,500 for a 42" display: https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/42''MonochromeePaperDisplay(VB3300-RBA) https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/42''MonochromeeP... (minimum order 3) For comparison a 42" full-color 60fps TV with remote, speakers, wifi, etc. etc. is $140. It seems like the patent holder could be making a lot more money if they dropped the price.
- slg 3y agoWho is going to do the math and figure out how long you need to hypothetically have these screens on before the power costs of the TV actually make up the $2360 difference in price?
- mrd3v0 3y agoThe E-ink patent holder is one of the most egregious cases of patent trolls. They won't lower the prices.
- mahdi7d1 3y agoI guess people only care and notice theire own prefrences. I never thought about 42" eink display but I'm constantly wishing for the price of 10" and 13" modules to drop cause that's the usecase I'm interested in. I think their demand would be much much more compared to a 42" panel (what even is the use of such thing) so they can benefit from scale.
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- semi-extrinsic 3y agoReally cool project! If you're into looking at different dithering techniques, there are a few interesting ones compared in this old CodeGolf question (disclaimer: I'm the one with the Fortran answer) https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/26554/dither-a-grayscale-image https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/26554/dither-a-...
- landgenoot 3y agoLove it. But way too expensive, especially because we don't know what the quality / price will do in the future when the patents expire. For that price, you can buy a 42" color printer.
- xnx 3y agoI thought I'd heard of all the dithering options from https://tannerhelland.com/2012/12/28/dithering-eleven-algorithms-source-code.html https://tannerhelland.com/2012/12/28/dithering-eleven-algori..., but surprised to read there's another one (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/3288 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/3288) that was used in this project.
- datene 3y agoThis excellent article on dithering also explains blue noise in a simple way https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/ https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/
- cubefox 3y agoBlue noise dithering seems to be a form of ordered dithering which is better than other forms of ordered dithering, but in terms of quality it is not as good as error diffusion dithering (look up the Wikipedia comparison on the statue of David). But blue noise dithering has the advantage that it can be implemented as a pixel shader, unlike error diffusion. So it can e.g. be used for video games. So I think for the picture frame error diffusion would have been a bit better.
- vanderZwan 3y agoIt's called blue noise dithering because it's not ordered. Error diffusion dithering approximates blue noise dithering (poorly, I might add). What error diffusion has going for it is very low overhead, and built-in edge-enhancement if you pick your kernels right.
- cubefox 3y agoWikipedia calls blue noise dithering a form of ordered dithering. Error diffusion indeed looks similar to blue noise dithering, but the amount of preserved detail of blue noise dithering is more like that of Ordered Bayer, lower than error diffusion. At least in the example images on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
- esafak 3y agoSamsung sells an LED TV specifically for this use case. Currently only at 4K. https://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/the-frame/highlights/ https://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/the-frame/highlights/
- renewiltord 3y agoA friend has the Samsung Frame and I think you can only interface with it via the Samsung SmartThings app. It's quite closed. So you need an online thing for the TV and then you upload it into their app.
- rjvs 3y agoThey make it superficially closed but it's pretty simple to get around it with a USB drive. Really all you have to do is ignore their subscription system and size your images to match the screen.
- xd1936 3y agoOr a Pi
- mholm 3y agoYep, it's very locked down, and Art Mode behavior is often anti-user to promote their $10/month Art Store subscription. There are limited matting options and I believe it intentionally crops photos incorrectly, even if you upload in the correct aspect ratio. It also takes about a minute to scroll down to 'User Art' sections with how slow their UI is.
- rjvs 3y agoTheir Art Store promotion is annoying persistent but not actually required if you put images onto a USB and have it slurp them up; all you need to do is ignore their requests for subscription when setting it up. All that's required is to resize them to full screen with your own matte, or you can just crop the images to the right aspect ratio. Depending upon your desire for fidelity, you could also use ML image extension to get the right aspect ratio. This doesn't get around all the other annoying bugs in the firmware of course.
- chromakode 3y agoAwesome project! I'd strongly recommend swapping in some antireflective glass. There's a couple affordable options with less than 1% reflection [1][2]. Made a huge difference vs. stock acrylic on my frames that get lots of environmental light. [1] https://www.groglass.com/product/artglass-ar-70/ https://www.groglass.com/product/artglass-ar-70/ [2] https://www.framedestination.com/prod/sh/ultravue-uv70-picture-frame-glass.html https://www.framedestination.com/prod/sh/ultravue-uv70-pictu...
- sho_hn 3y agoI second this recommendation! Frame manufacturers sometimes call these products "museum glass", which combines anti-reflective properties with UV filters, usually with price points at 70% and 92% filters. Some E-ink panels can be somewhat susceptible to UV light and perform better under a filter. You will sometimes find warnings in data sheets about refresh performance in direct sunlight, and danger of long-term permanent damage. Some of E-ink's signage products have, I think, filter layers built-in. But also if you're using a passepartout like in this project, and the frame will hang in sunlight and you're not sure how the paper will perform, it's worth springing for the UV protection to avoid yellowing over time.
- imnotdang 3y ago[flagged]
- andrewstuart 3y agoI would love two wall mounted e-ink displays showing chess boards so my 14 year old son could play chess with his grandfather. I imagine the game keeping track of whose turn it is and being able to give voice commands to make moves. Then they could play games over a longer period of time, maybe make one move per day.
- 93po 3y ago10 inch is probably workable and is also $2800 more affordable: https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-10#products https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-10#products
- jareklupinski 3y agowhat's your budget :) the Lilygo T5 with Touch screen + a lipo battery would have all the hardware you need just need to port chess to the platform after that https://www.hackster.io/Sergey_Urusov/arduino-mega-chess-d54383 https://www.hackster.io/Sergey_Urusov/arduino-mega-chess-d54... figuring out NAT traversal to get them talking to each other from each other's homes might be tricky/fun, but there may be ways around that...
- andrewstuart 3y agoPretty cool at $36.36 USD https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t5-4-7-inch-e-paper-v2-3 https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t5-4-7-inch-e-paper-v2-3 It would be great to be able to buy this in a size that would mount easily into common photo frame formats. Ideally with a battery that could last months and optional power. If I was retired it's the sort of project I'd happily waste time on.
- konschubert 3y agoI am making these displays that come in a wooden frame: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-calendar https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale... You could render the current state of the chess game to an image and serve that image on a URL on the internet. Then you can connect the display to that image: https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-calendar/image-url-manual.html https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-calendar/image... Admittedly that's still a lot of work from your side, and a little applet to keep running...
- schlarpc 3y agoI have a similar display, and also use blue noise dithering. Mine is driven in the backend by a web browser, which means I was able to abuse CSS and mix-blend-mode to do the dithering for me: ha-card::after { content: ""; background-image: url(/local/visionect-dither.png); background-repeat: repeat; position: absolute; height: 100%; width: 100%; display: block; mix-blend-mode: multiply; } The dithering texture used is 128_128/LDR_LLL1_10.png from https://github.com/Calinou/free-blue-noise-textures https://github.com/Calinou/free-blue-noise-textures
- ghusbands 3y agoLooking at the example image in the article for the dithering, it does unnecessarily reduce the quality in some areas, like the water on the left, the buildings in the bottom left and the background on the right.
- lawlessone 3y agowhat are the 3d and 4d textures?
- jalict 3y agoUsually something like volumetric data, animations, or other forms of data packed into something the GPU can swallow. I am not sure why you would apply the filters to those kinds.
- webkike 3y ago(I could be wrong, but here's what I'm guessing) 3D refers to RGB, and 4D refers to RGB plus Alpha
- andrewstuart 3y agoTablet manufacturers would do well to consider that the picture frame is the desirable form factor for E-ink tablets, perhaps more so than the iPad style hand held tablet. Look to what hobbyists are hacking to find commercial opportunity.
- bazeblackwood 3y agoGot excited, but then you qualified it was AI. AI art is not generative art, it is reductive "art". It requires samples of the art style you wish to cop, and it always produces something artificial and less than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, generative art is procedural, and represents the thought process of a human being. Better luck making meaning.
- chefandy 3y agoYou'll get downvoted into the earth's core here expressing the philosophical stance that asking a computer to make art from other people's art isn't actually making art. I wonder if they'd commission a painting with a 50 word description, and after a few rounds of alterations when it was finally delivered, cross out the painter's signature and add their own.
- lawlessone 3y agoI despise how some companies opted to scrape artists works without their permission. But aren't the prompts used also representative of a thought process? The chosen network architecture and the choices of images used to train also represent thought.
- chefandy 3y agoIs use of a thought process the standard for calling something art? Walking into a convenience store and buying milk also requires a thought process, but it's not creating art. Walking into a home store and selecting from various linens to assemble a complementary set requires a creative thought process, but it's not art. The closest analog is commissioning a piece from an artist-- that requires a creative thought process about art but that doesn't make the commissioner the artist. Most commercial art directors have more granular control of their project's outcome than people generating their AI art have over theirs. While they are credited for their direction and curation of those multiple pieces to create a unified project, they are absolutely not credited for the individual pieces-- the artists that created those pieces are. Maybe deliberately curating a collection or collaging AI-generated art that, through juxtaposition or some other method, elicited a response or communicated something emotionally that each piece individually could not. But that's not what's happening here. People are commissioning pieces of art from a computer which makes them out of other people's art.
- numpad0 3y agoIs the control board actually wrong, or is the cable supposed to be origami folded for adjustment? A control board that works should be really close to the right one if it weren't.
- supportengineer 3y ago>> instantly nerd-snipped er, what?
- mcphage 3y agoIt's a term from an old XKCD: https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
- supportengineer 3y agoOh, snipe not snip.
- ea016 3y agoThanks, fixing the typo :)
- Aspos 3y agoYou have plenty of space behind the screen. Wondering if you could harness wifi signal to generate power. Given days between changes, perhaps you could harvest enough amperage to make a change. Or maybe you could hide a Qi charger into the wall? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23181-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23181-1
- jnjnnksjnxjjsj 3y ago[flagged]
- nealeratzlaff 3y agoThis is really cool! I've wanted to buy something similar for a long time, but in RGB. I know Samsung makes the Frame, but its not hackable, and its a waste of power. I don't ever want the thing to function as a TV, just a way to display generative art. At one time there apparently was this: https://mono.frm.fm/en/shop/ https://mono.frm.fm/en/shop/ But the price was crazy. There's not much out there in terms of appropriately priced digital picture frames.
- NKosmatos 3y agoDon’t get me wrong, I like this project and the write up, but it seems a little bit overkill. These e-ink displays are 3 thousand each and this guy is the CTO of PhotoRoom. Hey it’s not coming out of my pocket and I don’t know if it’s company or personal money, but it seems a little bit off.
- KomoD 3y agoWhat makes E-Ink so damn expensive?
- 1-6 3y agoGood question. It has been answered before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143407