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Show HN: FrameOS – operating system for single function smart frames

by mariusandra on 1/3/24, 3:42 PM with 112 comments

• by smith7018 on 1/3/24, 4:16 PM

  Fun little project! I worked on a 7 color eInk Arduino-based picture frame two years ago for a gift. My biggest issue was that I had to manually crop, dither, and color index the images to get them to look _okay_ on the display. If FrameOS could handle all of that for me then it would have saved hours of manual editing and testing.

  I ended up getting that same person an Aura frame this year because remotely adding photos ended up miserable

• by samstave on 1/3/24, 4:56 PM

  This would go a long way in Medical Kiosks, Digital Art and Signage.

  The digital art thing is big in hospitals (Source: I was the technology designer for SFGH, UCSF, and the technology implementation manager for El Camino Hospital - and director of OPs for Vizio (TV))

  Ive evaluated, purchased and installed systems such as this, and wayfinding in hospitals - paying hundreds of thousands for digital artwork to be looped in elevator lobbies, room screens etc - they, like you said - had rubbish software.

  For the lobbies in El Camino Hospital, I had to replace some units with Mac Mini's playing an MP$ on loop via VLC because the digital signage system was so crappy.

  So, having this with a piZero would be great.

  However - wayfinding would also be elegant with this - so long as when you say "interactive" surely it could display a webapp/app via the PI, and "screen-saver" to your digital art loop when idle...

  But - seriously, the digital art/signage/wayfinding market needs a fiesty upstart like you to ruffle their muffins - I dont have any PIs currently else, I'd be using this....

  I wonder if I could install it on my shitty android TCL tablet from T-Mobile...?

  (Also look at controlling Feit Electric bulbs)

  EDIT:

  I think the most lucrative option for a device/OS like this would be travel signage at BART, any 'regional transit' -- find the dumbest person at that organization and train them to install and configure and display something in a fool-proof manner...

  Look at Sacramento (california) regional transit - they have so many screens with zero usable information...

  Have you been in a train in APAC? THey have LCD screens with status maps on the upper walls...

  Have you been in a train in the US? THey have pee and poo on the upper walls, and zero map status anyplace.

• by eddieroger on 1/3/24, 4:47 PM

  This makes me miss the Chumby, which had such untapped potential and was given up on so quickly. I have many uses for a smart, controllable and low-code screen in my house, and barely the time to figure it out myself. Very glad this project came across my page today!

• by malcolmosh on 1/3/24, 8:49 PM

  Very cool ! I built a series of scripts to exchange e-ink images through Gmail last year which I baptized DispatchPi (https://github.com/malcolmosh/dispatchPi/blob/main/README.md) and a program like this would definitely have accelerated development. It was a bit fussy to always have to use a terminal to SSH into the Pi, then update the scripts through FileZilla (ftp client) + Vscode.

  I've just completed a dashboard project which I'm about to release and I was also thinking of switching my frame drivers to ESP32 to run them on batteries, since they consume far less energy than even a Pi Zero. So +1 for ESP32 compatibility if time allows!

• by jauntywundrkind on 1/3/24, 5:26 PM

  The first picture on the page is the editor, and dammmnnnm wowwww. From it's bullet point:

  > Diagram Editor: A drag-and-drop interface to combine Nim apps into scenes. Fork and edit existing apps like "OpenAI image", and "Text overlay" to suit your needs. Overwrite all fields with inline code snippets.

  This looks really slick. It feels like it must be a huge effort! I wonder what they used to build this. Is the editor written in Nim?

  What do you run once you write a scene: a runtime similar-ish to the editor but with a presentation mode, or does it spit out a new Nim program to run the other nim programs? Do apps get once-off invoked or is there persistent communication for apps to keep running? What triggers a frame to start, how does composting happen?

  I feel like they've built a very cool generic flow-based programming system here, that happens to be used for smart frames.

• by NoboruWataya on 1/3/24, 6:52 PM

  Looks really interesting. Am I right in thinking it's not actually an OS, but rather software that runs on top of an OS on the Pi?

• by justusthane on 1/3/24, 4:46 PM

  Looks cool! I've been wanting to set up an e-ink display with my HomeAssistant, so I'll be checking this out.

  In your "Why FrameOS" post, you have a photo that looks like an e-ink display displaying a HomeAssistant dashboard, and under it you say "However the software side of things was rubbish." What exactly were the issues you had before writing FrameOS? It looks like it's working great in the picture at least!

  I'm also curious what this actually means:

  > GPT4 Support: Ask your favourite LLM to write and debug FrameOS apps for you.

• by whycome on 1/3/24, 4:05 PM

  Is there a good equivalent to keep old Amazon fire tablets from being e-waste? They are Android based.

• by eightysixfour on 1/3/24, 4:22 PM

  This is awesome! There are a lot of projects trying to duplicate this but very few have the polish, especially on the creation side.

  Selfishly, I’d love support for the lower power eINK devices, like the InkPlate series which has a built in ESP32, but this is making me consider swapping them to a Pi.

• by greendude29 on 1/4/24, 5:05 AM

  Thanks for posting, this is a fun space to see more software in.

  Indirectly related, but I'm in the market for a 32inch+ screen which can be used for a photo frame. With the exception of Samsung's Frame, I haven't been able to find other products which is surprising to me because it seems like such a simple use case. Here's what I've found so far:

  - TVs and monitors: downside is keeping these on 24-hours isn't great for energy consumption

  - color e-ink: these are of course usually a maximum of 13 or so inches

  - Samsung the frame - alas, has good features and a good look, but downsides are expensive(!) and Samsung(!!)

  Do you have any recommendations?

• by sydbarrett74 on 1/3/24, 10:51 PM

  Reaaallly cool project. These are the innovative OS stories I like to see, not the latest useless marketing department driven 'feature' that some Microsoft PM thought was a good idea.

• by bitwrangler on 1/3/24, 6:57 PM

  I was imagining something like MotionEYE OS https://github.com/motioneye-project/motioneyeos/wiki

  Where I would download the sdram binary image and flash with Balena then boot on the Pi.

  Great work anyway! It was a nice opportunity to read up on Nim language too.

• by cryptozeus on 1/3/24, 5:48 PM

  Worked on a similar product 10 years ago at Pandigital. They used some custom os from china and the way you send photos to the frame is by giving guid email id. It was doing good in those days until they got ddos on holidays season and lost all the business.

• by 293984j29384 on 1/4/24, 1:21 AM

  I use MagicMirror to do this. It's a great piece of software. I'm a bit shocked nobody has mentioned this yet. https://magicmirror.builders/

• by niutech on 1/7/24, 9:57 AM

  Why do we need full-blown RPi to run FrameOS? There are many cheap ESP32-based e-paper displays like LILYGO T5-4.7", so please add support for ESP32.

• by m463 on 1/3/24, 4:11 PM

  pretty cool

  Seems to require a pi. Wonder if it can work with this: https://amazon.com/dp/B0C4TS1NMS

• by fudged71 on 1/3/24, 4:26 PM

  for dashboard software like this are there any reliable techniques to prevent burn-in? I'd like to set up a large screen with a dashboard but I don't want to wreck the screen

• by 12th on 1/3/24, 9:59 PM

  This looks really good. I can see it's not listed in your list of devices but I'm wondering if there is anyway to get this running with an old kindle.

• by isoprophlex on 1/3/24, 7:14 PM

  Those circular color displays look incredible! I had no idea these things were available, but outlets like adafruit have them in stock. Amazing.

• by gotwalt on 1/3/24, 7:23 PM

  Would be amazing if this could be adapted to replace the Tidbyt OS. Such a promising device with such terrible software.

• by ycuser2 on 1/3/24, 6:57 PM

  Does this work only with HDMI displays? I have a waveshare e-ink display which connects only via GPIO interface.

• by proee on 1/3/24, 7:39 PM

  Can a Pi go into sleep mode running FrameOS so the device can be battery powered?

• by bluepuma77 on 1/3/24, 9:59 PM

  Would be cool to run this on old kindle ebook hardware.

• by zubairq on 1/3/24, 6:45 PM

  Cool OS! Could it work for shop window displays?

• by snvzz on 1/4/24, 2:02 AM

  Note this is not an OS, but something that runs on top of Linux.