from Hacker News

ArtFrame: E-paper wireless artwork for your living room

by lnyng on 3/28/22, 1:52 PM with 82 comments

• by tarsiel on 3/28/22, 9:32 PM

  Very much on the DIY end, but I made a similar e-ink art piece that shows off the currently playing song on Spotify. I used a 3 colour display to add some flair :)

  It’s not the easiest to set up yourself - need to generate Spotify API keys and build the unnecessary separate binary for dithering, but here’s the project if anyone is interested!

  https://github.com/CampbellOwen/NowPlaying

• by paxys on 3/28/22, 11:11 PM

  I was moderately excited when I saw the photos, but wow those prices! 900 € for a 13 inch screen? For comparison, you can get a 55" Samsung Frame TV for cheaper than that. Digital photo frames are under $100.

  I like e-ink, but not that much.

• by m463 on 3/28/22, 11:46 PM

  This is nice, and very refined. It's nice that it is standalone and doesn't force you to go through an app or "the cloud".

  loosely related is inkplate, which is a wall-mountable DIY e-ink project:

  https://www.crowdsupply.com/search?q=inkplate

• by greggman3 on 3/29/22, 3:31 AM

  I don't know if this would actually work but I've wished for years there were 24" full color e-ink books I could put on my coffee table and have them display coffee table books in full color.

  I don't know how far away that is from (1) looking as good as color print (2) being relatively sturdy (3) being under $300 so I can buy several.

  I got rid of all my books at one point and at the time I'd wished I could have scanned all the art books (didn't have the time to arrange it)

• by voldacar on 3/29/22, 7:16 AM

  When can I get one that's several feet x several feet in dimensions, like an actual painting's canvas?

  Eink has been around for several years now but apparently they are unable to just make a big panel? That combined with their idiotic pricing scheme makes me think their management is just stupid

• by unfocussed_mike on 3/28/22, 11:39 PM

  If they get to say 220dpi, 12x8", at least 128 shades of grey and a really, really white "paper", that would be enough for this to be interesting.

  But they are not there yet.

  I love black and white but this is not much better than framing a page from a newspaper -- which has an appeal this does not.

• by vmurthy on 3/28/22, 9:52 PM

  Starts at EUR 349 in case someone is just looking at the website to find out the prices (like I did) :)

• by teleforce on 3/29/22, 7:21 AM

  Imagine a full, half or quarter wall size of e-paper that dynamically display all of your ebooks collection as if they are physical copies in your study room, main hall, etc.

  The main different compared to the physical bookshelf is that it is always updating (round-robin, moving, rotating, etc) thus it can display all your books in a limited e-paper physical gallery space (depending on the installed e-paper size and dimension) but should cover all your ebooks over time.

• by edent on 3/29/22, 4:22 AM

  I built one of these with a £40 nook off eBay, a cheap custom sized frame, and some open source software.

  https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/turning-an-eink-screen-into...

  It has been a great way to subtly discover new art.

  As everyone has said, eink is amazing - but the price is ridiculous.

• by libraryatnight on 3/28/22, 6:04 PM

  This is neat, but it looks like something the HN crowd would build themselves over buying. I know my first impulse was "I could make this..."

• by speedyapoc on 3/29/22, 3:53 AM

  This past week I setup an e-ink display using a 32” screen from Visionect. It displays the front page of the New York Times (setup by following this guide [1]).

  The compliments from friends/family have been insane. It looks like I cut out the page and put it on the wall. Unfortunately the Visionect solution is fairly cost prohibitive and seems like ArtFrame is in the similar price ballpark.

  [1] https://alexanderklopping.medium.com/an-updated-daily-front-...

• by lnyng on 3/28/22, 5:54 PM

  I was recently searching for wedding gift for my photographer friend and found this. There does not seem to exist many other e-paper art frames and this one looks decent. It also has some open source software (https://github.com/framelabs-eu), but the firmware seems closed-source.

• by Gatsky on 3/29/22, 1:12 AM

  Amazing tech that is too expensive to buy…

  Reminds me of this: https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/05/04/245988/the-world...

• by j7ake on 3/29/22, 5:13 AM

  Interesting but at 1000 bucks I would just buy art from my local artist and hang it on my wall.

• by 999900000999 on 3/29/22, 5:02 AM

  I'm feeling good tonight, feeling like wasting some money. When I looked at the landing page, I kept saying please be $200 or less, alas, it's almost $400.

  I also tried to build this myself, and nothing happened but my Raspberry pi started to overheat

• by api on 3/29/22, 1:52 AM

  > Configurable via web interface, provided by the device.

  Very much a plus. No cloud means these won't magically stop working at some random time in the future. Also means my picture frame is (probably) not spying on me.

• by Etherlord87 on 3/30/22, 11:30 AM

  Looking at the prices I wonder how long you have to wait until the electricity bill for sustaining an image on a normal LCD makes it economically justifiable.

• by tcyrus on 3/28/22, 6:19 PM

  I was considering making something like this. Might look into buying this to save some time.

• by freewizard on 3/28/22, 10:30 PM

  I'm looking for a case for Kindle Paperwhite to make it look like this.

• by kderbyma on 3/28/22, 4:09 PM

  don't you need to charge them eventually? so you end up taking them down a lot. they should think about wireless charging pads that can be installed into the wall for these sorts of things.

• by smcleod on 3/29/22, 2:35 AM

  It's such a shame that e-paper / e-ink is so expensive

• by productceo on 3/29/22, 2:01 AM

  What is the customer need being solved, and why is this 900 Euro 13 inch display a better solution than either paper or TV?

• by davidsawyer on 3/28/22, 10:43 PM

  Am I going crazy, or is there no way on the website to actually buy this?