Hacker News Reader

Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

This is cool as a DIY project, but digital whiteboards have been around since at least 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Board

View on HN

All the previous whiteboards force you to buy a projector or invest in smart pens. This costs ~150USD to make vs. 1500USD+ for the kind of smart boards that existed in the past.

Ah, this is a key piece of information, and indeed sounds like quite a big deal.

You should mention it in your presentation!

You get 42" versions from China for USD$118 each. I'd focus on the software improvements and benefits.

http://goo.gl/N02wRa

you could probably connect this to rPi to make it smart/connected.

It's probably using some no-name USB HID driver so yes, it will look like a mouse to a Linux system as long as the udev tables match up. Might need some tweaking to handle the multi-touch stuff.

I wouldn't say it requires a projector or smart pens. My school had both the "official" smart board most people know, but also a model of whiteboard that used IR sensors and regular pens.

I don't know how expensive they were, as they still were a commercial product sold to schools, but they didn't need a projector or smart pens

I forget the name, but I worked at a place ~1997 that had one that I'm pretty sure used regular board and pens. It had two bar-like devices affixed to a side and along the top of the board.

I remember that product. It seemed like a good idea, but it just couldn't keep up with writing at normal speed so we gave up on it. (You also had to put a special collar on the otherwise normal markers.)

Yes, the collars! I remember it had a kind of kiddie-name and maybe some blob-type design elements.

The one at my high school (admittedly, over a decade ago) was ridiculously expensive, though. If this is cheap, it could be pretty great for a cash-strapped startup, striking the balance between a smart board and a person with a cellphone snapping photos.

(The expensiveness of the whiteboard made it even funnier when a teacher used a Sharpie permanent marker on it one day.)

ethanol or methanol will clean it up.

Or a white board pen. Just paint over it with an erasable pen, and it will all go when wiped.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com