[HN Gopher] Show HN: Building a 42-inch E-Ink frame for generati... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: Building a 42-inch E-Ink frame for generative art Author : ea016 Score : 209 points Date : 2023-10-10 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (eliot.blog) (TXT) w3m dump (eliot.blog) | landgenoot wrote: | Love 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. | tonoto wrote: | Fantastic 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.. | xnx wrote: | I thought I'd heard of all the dithering options from | https://tannerhelland.com/2012/12/28/dithering-eleven-algori..., | but surprised to read there's another one | (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/3288) that was used in this | project. | cubefox wrote: | Blue 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. | lionkor wrote: | That'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. | bee_rider wrote: | They should render these images when there's excess renewable | energy, then store them for later. | lawlessone wrote: | This is just a little too close to NFT art for me lol. | mk_stjames wrote: | My home computer batch processing prompts thru Stable Diffusion | can generate and then nicely upscale images at at rate of about | 1 every 5 seconds. Or 360 per half-hour. Which means a newly | image on the display every day to look at for a year in just an | half hour of computation. | | At about 300W of GPU + 120W of PC, that is 420W * 0.5hrs = | 0.210kWhr. This is a rounding error on my monthly electric | bill. About six cents. | | I've spent more energy than that likely just sitting and | reading HackerNews this week. | GaggiX wrote: | I think it simply uses some API to generate the images. | evrimoztamur wrote: | How does the API generate the images then? | GaggiX wrote: | It doesn't really matter if it's really cheap. | hutzlibu wrote: | Magic? | dheera wrote: | It 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.) | xnx wrote: | The cost (and environmental impact) of generated images is a | rounding error compared to the $7,500+ project cost. As an | aside, I wonder how much smaller and faster a diffusion model | could be if trained (quantized?) to 4-bit grayscale images. | andrewstuart wrote: | Tablet 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. | sho_hn wrote: | Posh frames e-ink friends! Here's my generative newspaper: | 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 wrote: | Wondering 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 wrote: | I _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 | | Here's a few more pics: 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 wrote: | Where is the information on how you built it? | sho_hn wrote: | There's some info on my Hackaday project listing: | https://hackaday.io/project/190478-hyepaper | | Also the album link in the other comment. | lawlessone wrote: | You could really gaslight house guests with this. Just deny | it's changed. | andrewstuart wrote: | Do you think people are fooled by any tech these days? | | I suspect people expect everything to be magic now. | sho_hn wrote: | So far my guests are mostly puzzled by "Why'd you frame | that?" until I tell them it will in fact change and isn't | my most prized selection of news articles :-) | jnjnnksjnxjjsj wrote: | [flagged] | bazeblackwood wrote: | Got 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. | lawlessone wrote: | I 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. | nealeratzlaff wrote: | This 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/ But the price was crazy. There's not | much out there in terms of appropriately priced digital picture | frames. | chromakode wrote: | Awesome 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/ | | [2] https://www.framedestination.com/prod/sh/ultravue- | uv70-pictu... | sho_hn wrote: | I 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 wrote: | [flagged] | robszumski wrote: | This is great! I would love to see a sample of the color input | images and the resulting image on the display. | itishappy wrote: | It's monochrome. | robszumski wrote: | The video has a lot of glare and the dithering seems like an | important part. I wanted to contrast that process with the | original. | ea016 wrote: | OP here. Here's a comparison with an input image vs gray | levels vs dithered: 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 | adolph wrote: | In 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 wrote: | In 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 wrote: | Well 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''MonochromeeP... | (minimum order 3) | | For comparison a 42" full-color 60fps TV with remote, speakers, | wifi, etc. etc. is $140. | | It seems like the patent holder could be making a lot more money | if they dropped the price. | graypegg wrote: | Hmm. I wonder what the whole-sale price is? A TV with wifi is | partly subsidized by the ads you see when you turn it on. This | 2500$ display seems like it's for small run signage, so they | know it's being sold for government/business use. Probably a | bit inflated. | | Does Rakutan/Amazon/Pocketbook really pay a similar cost/size | ratio for the panels on their ereaders? I hope not! | lawlessone wrote: | >so they know it's being sold for government/business use. | Probably a bit inflated. | | You just reminded me, a few years ago i wanted to buy a | transparent screen for a DIY project. The company said they | couldn't sell it to me because they're b2b. | | I think it was both a volume thing and a tax thing.. and | possibly a liability thing. | tomcam wrote: | Or they may have no procedure for selling one-offs to end | users. It's not uncommon. | FirmwareBurner wrote: | _> For comparison a 42" full-color 60fps TV with remote, | speakers, wifi, etc. etc. is $140._ | | Because it's a lot easier and cheaper to manufacture large LCD | panels at scale than E-ink film. | | _> It seems like the patent holder could be making a lot more | money if they dropped the price._ | | I don't know any company or shareholders that would say no to | making more money so if this would actually be true then it | would, but that's not the reality. | | The FUD that large e-ink displays are expensive because of some | patent conspiracy needs to stop. | | Large e-ink screens are expensive because manufacturing yields | are very low and so are sales volumes. | | Source: worked with e-ink on products with big and small | displays | | Edit: So I'm saying the truth and getting down voted for it? | Fine, then feel free to keep believing whatever you think is | the truth. No point in discussing it further. | xnx wrote: | I didn't realize e-ink manufacturing was such a tricky | process. I would think there would be a lot of applications | for larger e-ink panels even if they had a number of stuck | pixels. | bigfudge wrote: | I think it would be interesting to hear from an insider (with | examples/evidence etc) what the mechanism is for eink to be | more expensive. I/e/ the fundamentals for why this is the | case beyond economies of scale. Given this history of the | patent it looks to the outsider like this probably isn't the | case and short sighted rent seeking is the problem. Would | love to be wrong though, so if you do have a good explanation | then here would be a great place to air it. I've not seen | anything elsewhere... | LapsangGuzzler wrote: | I'm sure the ad-driven subsidy on TVs plays a huge part. TV | prices have declined as "dumb" TVs have been phased out of | the market. A more niche tool like a large e-ink display | might not make as much sense from to price this way since | ad systems need large networks of users to be relevant. | BoorishBears wrote: | people underestimate how long e-ink stagnated: it seems | hard to imagine an alternate timeline where e-ink had | taken the place of current LED outdoor billboards for | example... until you realize we were decades away from | LEDs being cheap and robust enough for outdoor signage | when eInk was already fundamentally similar enough the | tech we have now | | The company that owned the e-ink patents couldn't scale | properly until they were acquired around 2010: in an | alternate timeline where development open enough in the | early 2000s, we might have ended up with eInk display | modules large enough to be assembled into incrementally | larger and more profit driving devices | | Even now you see that with eInk store tags for example: | imagine if the profit they're driving now had arrived 20 | years ago and gotten re-invested | BoorishBears wrote: | I didn't downvote... but if you're being downvoted it's | probably for ignoring the flywheel effect needed to scale | novel tech in the market. | | Yes e-ink has high wastage, and yes demand is low, but having | had a strong arming expensive patent holder didn't help the | situation. The patents are actually expiring/expired but at | some point the damage is already done. | | A great corollarly to e-ink is 3d printers: they were very | expensive, very low volume products that needed to recoup | expensive development costs... but when the 200 lbs gorilla | sitting on the market in the form of patents started to die | down, a lot more players start to iterate, which unlocked | advancements, which made things cheaper and more accessible, | which improved demand, which then incentivized more | advancements... and now we have $400 printers that outperform | $10,000 printers from not that long ago. | | Most display tech starts high wastage, low demand. Patents | aren't a guaranteed death, but e-ink was just a bit too far | off the path for absolutely required innovations to overcome | the added resistance. In the mean time other technologies got | better: sunlight performance of non-eink displays has | improved dramatically for example. | | Now the moment has probably passed and e-ink is doomed to | stay a niche sideline product as a result. | [deleted] | mikepurvis wrote: | I've read (probably on prior HN discussions about this?) that | the manufacturing process still has major yield issues-- when | you're making small displays, you can slice around the bad | pixels and not have to waste as much, but making a large | display requires a huge sheet to all be perfect. | | Then again, if that was really it, surely there'd be a market | for people who want a 42" e-ink display and are willing to | accept some proportion of bad pixels in exchange for a deep | discount. Which really shouldn't matter much, particularly for | applications where distance-viewing is the expectation. | ThrowawayTestr wrote: | The first flat panel tvs started in the $x000 price range. I'm | amazed an eink display this big is actually affordable (minimum | quantities aside). | qingcharles wrote: | My first 40" flat panel TV ran something around $6000 IIRC. | bufferoverflow wrote: | E-ink has been around for a long time. It's not one of the | first panels. | diggan wrote: | > if it wasn't $2,500 for a 42" display | | Try $3000 :) | | > Driving boards are not included in the display module | package. E Ink Salt kit is designed to support this module | | > Salt Driving Board - $500.00 - | https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/SaltDrivingBoard | red_hare wrote: | My dream is, when these finally come down in price, to build a | dynamic DnD map. | spullara wrote: | Why not just put any other kind of display flat and put glass | over it to protect it? | | Edit: Someone has your dream display already :) | https://www.etsy.com/listing/1463146123/43-4k-dnd-tv-table | layer8 wrote: | Well, Apple's 32" Pro Display XDR is $5000, there's always | something. | prewett wrote: | If it's a 4k TV it also has more pixels and better refresh | rate. And color. But for that extra $2360 you get the feature | that your image is still there when the power is off. I expect | that feature would be substantially more costly regardless of | the patent holder's extra. | nomel wrote: | > you get the feature that your image is still there when the | power is off | | How is that a realistic feature? Who is losing power and | being happy that they spent a few thousand more, nearly 40x, | than a 36" photo quality print, just so the image can remain | while their lights are off? | k1t wrote: | The point is that it only uses power when changing the | image, so a small battery can run it for a long time - not | that it works during a power outage. | | (and of course it is a lot easier to change than a printed | photo) | numpad0 wrote: | Is 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 wrote: | >> instantly nerd-snipped | | er, what? | mcphage wrote: | It's a term from an old XKCD: https://xkcd.com/356/ | supportengineer wrote: | Oh, snipe not snip. | ea016 wrote: | Thanks, fixing the typo :) | Aspos wrote: | You 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 | esafak wrote: | Samsung sells an LED TV specifically for this use case. Currently | only at 4K. | | https://www.samsung.com/us/tvs/the-frame/highlights/ | renewiltord wrote: | A 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. | mholm wrote: | Yep, 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. | tambourine_man wrote: | I'm browsing this link for a good 5min. Looks interesting. I | get that it tries to simulate paper, but I have no idea how. | | Even the "explore technology" link has little extra detail. I | don't even know if it's backlit. | ffgjgf1 wrote: | It's just a tv with a picture frame and some additional | software/wallpapers | ThrowawayTestr wrote: | It's just a TV with a matte screen and a way for Samsung to | sell you public domain art. | huehehue wrote: | I have one of these, and only in a very specific environment is | it convincing as not-a-TV (aside from the concerns of privacy | and their proprietary app). | | Especially at night, I find the backlight makes it painfully | obvious that it's just a TV and I'd much rather have something | like e-ink which blends into the surroundings. | bigfudge wrote: | They look cool. Would be great to have an oled version | without a backlight. | andrewstuart wrote: | I 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. | jareklupinski wrote: | what'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-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 wrote: | Pretty cool at $36.36 USD | | 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 wrote: | I am making these displays that come in a wooden frame: | | 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... | | Admittedly that's still a lot of work from your side, and a | little applet to keep running... | schlarpc wrote: | I 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 | lawlessone wrote: | what are the 3d and 4d textures? | webkike wrote: | (I could be wrong, but here's what I'm guessing) 3D refers to | RGB, and 4D refers to RGB plus Alpha | freedomben wrote: | When 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 | grawlinson wrote: | Realistically, it'll be when the patents expire. | eli wrote: | My 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 wrote: | I 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? | avianlyric wrote: | Realistically you're not paying for the hardware when you | buy the driver board, but rather the software baked into | those boards. | | The waveforms, and the algorithms that create waveforms, | used to drive eInk displays at reasonable speeds and | produce high quality images are highly proprietary and | very difficult to develop. In theory it's easy to make an | eInk display an image, but doing that in a reasonable | period of time, when transitioning from potentially any | starting state, and handling the crosstalk between | pixels, makes creating good images on an eInk display | pretty hard to get right. | sho_hn wrote: | No, simple driver boards aren't super complicated. Nor | are the chips on them manufactured on the fanciest nodes. | They're not super-high-volume either though and as a | result somewhat expensive on a BoM. | | Here's the data sheet for the ITE IT8951, a frequently- | used ASIC for this purpose that supports basic partial | updates as well: https://www.waveshare.net/w/upload/1/18/ | IT8951_D_V0.2.4.3_20... | | Here's a sourcing price: https://www.win- | source.net/products/detail/ite/it8951e-64-dx... | | It's basically a fairly simple SPI interface (or here a | SPI wrapper around an internal Z80 protocol). The rest of | the board is power supply handling and a DRAM framebuffer | chip, external to the driver ASIC on SPI as well. I wrote | a custom driver for this in Rust for my project, and it | only took about a day despite a few leaky-abstractions | oddities in how it communicates over SPI. | | The chip itself is basically buffer handling, image | processing (features like JPEG decode, resampling and | some LUT mechanisms) and a waveform generator. Others | will have some IP blocks for, say, a HDMI frontend. Any | decent chip company can crank this out pretty quick. | There's easily 10+ product lines on the market. | | For simple things you may not even need one and can drive | the panel from an MCU directly. | | There are more expensive, more advanced drivers that | implement more complicated and higher-performance (say, | refresh rate) update schemes or I/O though. | GaggiX wrote: | Which patents need to expire to have cheaper e-ink displays? | fortran77 wrote: | They'll just keep repeating thus trope whenever an e-ink | project comes up. (They don't think that LCD screens have | patents too?) | bigfudge wrote: | Surely most LCD patents have expired by now? | fortran77 wrote: | 'And there are new ones as tech improves | dheera wrote: | Yeah I built one with 10" screens | | https://dheera.net/projects/einkframe/ | | I really want to upgrade to at least 31" but it's rather | expensive. | | Separately in the next irritation of this project I'm hoping to | use an ESP32 instead of an RPi Zero to power it, and use the | deep sleep mode so it can periodically update but sleep through | the rest of the time, allowing a few months of battery life | with no wire sticking out. | | Even more ideal would be putting a thin strip of solar panel on | the top edge of the frame to keep it charged, and use some kind | of supercapacitor to power the ESP32, though I don't know if | the parts for that exist, especially solar panel that is 1cm | wide. | ea016 wrote: | OP here. Your project is really cool, thanks for sharing. I | was considering the same idea, but it means updating the | drivers to work on an ESP32 | | The best option I found so far is a timer shield that can | wake up the Raspberry periodically: | https://www.pishop.us/product/sleepy-pi-2-power- | management-s... | KomoD wrote: | What makes E-Ink so damn expensive? | NKosmatos wrote: | Don'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. | semi-extrinsic wrote: | Really 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-... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-10 23:00 UTC)