E-paper is making it's way into museums | Hacker News Reader

E-paper is making it's way into museums

visionect.com

57 pointsluka-birsa70 comments

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Here's a link to the hardware:

https://www.visionect.com/technology#hardware

Details of the controller board:

https://docs.visionect.com/VisionectPandaDS.html

And the thing that was interesting for me the most, the screens they use:

https://docs.visionect.com/ElectronicPaperDisplays.html

Now why the screens were most interesting for me? Because "e-paper" name has in the past been used not just for e-ink-like displays, but also for super-low-power LCDs, which is kind of a different thing. Fortunately, Visionect seems to be using "the real deal", i.e. ink-based displays.

Now the only question for me - where can I get my 24” e-ink display for my computer?

In case the last question was serious (i honestly don't know): You wouldn't want that except for daily work (except maybe for reading longer texts), at least not with current e-ink technology. Even with proper colors, adding several 100ms of latency to everything you do at the computer slows you down while typing, makes scrolling ugly etc. Not to think of videos or games...

You can get refresh on a Kindle screen down to under 100ms if you want plain black and white. You only get the ludicrous refresh times if you want greyscale --- I believe they do some kind of dithering over time to achieve that.

Back in the old days I had a Hercules monitor with slow phosphor. I've tried to find some figures on the response rate, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar speed to the eink screen. It was really comfortable on the eyes and I slightly miss it (of course, it was the size of a postcard compared to a modern monitor). So I think an eink monitor could be quite usable for certain purposes.

The thing I'd be concerned about is scrolling. We've got very used to monitors which will scroll smoothly. I've seen monitors which just turned into hash when scrolling; there's a reason why vi and emacs have modes for page-at-a-time scrolling.

Update: here's a 32" epaper monitor!

https://www.visionect.com/development_kits

Greyscale: $3600. Colour: $4700. There's a 13" model at a mere $999, but who wants that?

Slightly more realistically, there's the Dasung Paperlike:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9DbdaPQyLY

Interesting thanks. 13.3" is just under the size of US Letter or A4 paper.

Paging is honestly easier for me than smooth scrolling when reading text.

When smooth scrolling, you lose a lot of time following the animation and waiting for motion to stop.

For some use cases, this would be ideal. For others, not so much.

Can you speedily grayscale into black-and-white? That is, type a letter, putting black/gray into a previously white space (or vice versa, if using a dark color scheme), clearing a single-pixel-wide cursor and installing a new one to the right of the added letter. I don't need the letter to be fully black instantly, I just need to see that I have typed something.

It is serious. I'd like that for my text editor. And for most of my Internet browsing (which consists of reading text). It doesn't even need to be full-colour, I'd live with grayscale for now. Refresh rates are better nowadays, especially if you refresh only parts of the screen - which would be the case for text editing.

Sure it won't be as fluid as 1080p @ 120Hz, but I'd like it anyway.

On OSX, in the accessibility settings you can make your display greyscale, change the contrast and invert colors.

I desperately want a 10-12" e-ink ebook reader. Trying to read textbooks or programming tomes on a standard size Kindle is too painful. Not a whole lot of options out there though.

How about that ?

https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-DX-Wireless-Reader-3G-Global/d...

Even better maybe, the Onyx Boox Max at 13.3 inches:

http://www.banggood.com/ONYX-BOOX-Max-13_3-Inch-1G16G-Flexib...

Are there any good hackable e-ink tablets? I love the feel of my Nook but the software is terrible. I want to be able to wirelessly sync content from my own document management system without much fuss.

I periodically poke around on Alibaba looking for basic, blank e-ink readers but haven't seen much.

The Good e-Reader runs arbitrary Android apps and has a 13" display, if that meets your needs.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/13-3-inch-android-e-reade...

Sony made some models running Android that you could root, but I think their current offerings don't have that. For others (some Kindles, I think Nooks?) jailbreaks were also available, so that is something worth researching.

The nook can be rooted to run Android, I'm not sure if the newest models have the capability: http://www.babblingengineer.com/how-to/how-i-turned-my-nook-...

The Kindle DX would be nice, but I'm a little wary of buying used consumer electronics.

I looked at the Boox Max and it looks awesome, but it's a little rich for my blood right now. The regular Kindle costs $80, 10" Fire tablets are selling for $180, so nearly $800 seems like a lot.

As a Kindle DX owner, I would strongly recommend against purchasing one. They do show up on Amazon Warehouse as refurbs, but even still, you're not going to get any software upgrades, display of PDFs is awful, and it wasn't particularly fast even when new.

Sony has a 13 inches model as well that goes for 599 dollars. A bit cheaper but they appear to get rid of it, so you might need to pick one soon if you are interested...

The Kindle DX is like a decade old now I think.

Sony has one which seems really nice (based on the 2 minutes I played with it once): https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-DPTS1/

Unfortunately it is a bit limited (only supports PDF's out of the box) in what it can do and much too expensive.

It is the best electronic device I have owned in years. Has a well defined feature set and hits that feature set spot on. Unlike most other devices, it does not try to lock you into any kind of ecosystem. Setup a webdav server, throw your pdfs on it and this device will automatically sync and pick up new pdfs you add to your server. Plus you can use a memory card.

I would've killed for this in grad school. At the time (well still, with the exclusion of this device), there weren't any eReaders with good PDF support, especially for technical documents with nontrivial typesetting.

I've been saying this since eBook readers came out. Sure the current kindle is convenient for travel, but for any serious reading, I want a larger one. It's why I still purchase larger hardcover books, and the kindle is only for convenience/travel.

You'll need to wait for E Ink to launch 24" displays :).

I saw some touch-screen displays labeling artwork in the Gallerie de'llAcademia in Venice that gave detailed background and history and explained the scene being depicted. Thank god! I know nothing about art and embarrassingly little about history and like to go to museums to learn, but they usually suck at teaching! They just have the year the object was made and a label, usually, plus artist if known. No context. Nothing explaining why this piece is out front and not hiding in storage. You're expected to already know that.

And then when you do get audio tours or descriptions, they're often banal and just describe the object that you can already see ("The girl on the left looks onto the scene with a pained expression" so what?!).

Although I can see the advantage of having a digital label in a lot of cases, I don't see the necessity in a museum environment. There is serious human interaction necessary to change the collection to move and change the works of art. It would be easy to change the label at that time.

What use case is there to change the label "on the fly"?

How about showing different slides to show more text. Imagine it rotating between 5 blocks of text. That's 5x the information you can display. I'm usually disappointed by the tiny amounts of texts those little placards show.

I imagine if the screen refreshed frequently, that would greatly reduce the battery life of these displays making them much more tricky to maintain

Say you want to change a descriptive text, because there is a typo or maybe you just have 10 mins to spare and want to expand something. Currently, you type your text, print it somehow (often on laminated or plastic material, but might be more much complex), then walk to the work at the other end of the goddamn gallery (because Murphy) and replace the label.

With a networked display, you click on an icon and type your new text. Done.

And of course, if the label becomes a hypertext, the possibilities are endless; but that will not scale well in busy museums where you can't have anyone hogging the screen for minutes.

One of the reasons from the article is multiple language support.

If you have n signs with different languages next to each other then everybody can read the sign at the same time. If you have one sign that can switch between n different languages then only a subset of the people there can read the sign at the same time.

We use similar displays for room occupation displays on our campus (made by https://www.roomz.io/).

For me, the most interesting thing to learn was that "battery-powered" means that the manufacturer expects a battery to last 2-3 years, as the displays maintain no active WiFi connection, and are only woken up sporadically via RF.

You can check https://joanassistant.com which is a room booking system, based on the same technology. It integrates with Exchange, Office 365 and Google Apps, connects via WiFi and runs for months on single battery charge. Its fully interactive and updates instantly.

Looks neat.

How much do they cost? Could not see any pricing information in the website.

Yet an other example of "progress is not obviously better" : like these commercial centers' electronic maps, one guy will be able to handle the device at a given time, and all 5 people around will have to wait him to finish before being able to just know the title. And I'm skeptical about the reduced ecological impact of electricity and electronic devices as compared to paper.

Mmm, in this case, as long as the labels are just labels, I think on the whole for the lifetime of product for net changes.

From the eink site under the bistable display, the device draws once then really isn't drawing power. [1] They claim that theoretically as long as nothing needs to change, it will stay that way.

So, I guess it really depends on how often museums have to change labels or wish to update the labels. Even if it's a one and done, I do think that the net energy savings of a horde of labels as opposed to new label printings every time would result in net savings both financially and ecologically. Often the labels are not just simple paper and require more resources to make, etc.

I don't think this is necessarily saving any rainforests, per say, but I also don't think it's draining electricity.

[1] http://www.eink.com/technology.html

> one guy will be able to handle the device at a given time

Handle what device? As the photos at the link plainly show, these are wall mounted e-paper signs.

Not to mention interactive displays acting as fomites.

Its funny how we link 'museum' with 'outdated things'. When I first saw that title I just thought that would be something like e-paper being obsolete.

E-paper is kinda incredible. It uses no power once its drawn and works off the light in the room. I mean, we could make this placard with the newest OLED displays, but it would look distracting and tacky to have this bright source of light next to the artwork.

Its not outdated if nothing can compete against it in these use cases. The same way I'm typing this message on a 101-key style keyboard with a design that is pretty much unchanged for 30+ years.

Museums are certainly in need of redefining their purpose, but to call them 'outdated' is a bit of a stretch, I'm afraid. I would recommend anyone interested in the role of museums in today's society to read Art Power (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Power-Boris-Groys/dp/0262072920)

but to call them 'outdated' is a bit of a stretch

I didn't say that =)

Theres no need to link to Amazon when recommending a book. Amazon has been quite hostile to us devs lately in terms of culture/employment. I think the book and author name plaintext is enough.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260512

Can someone please correct the it's in the title?

I thought it might be a sly reference to the "it's" found in the museum label depicted in the article photo.

Various stores in the Netherlands are currently using EPaper like screens as price-tags. Examples are Mediamarkt/Saturn and Makro/Metro. Nice way to automatically update pricing and have up-to-date pricetags.

I'd say this is more for posterity than anything, seeing how those thrive on aggressive advertisement.

> seamlessly blending in with the paintings

Certainly does not like so from the pictures.

Anyone seen cheap E-paper solutions, one could use at home for various things?

Sure, you can use HTML&JS to create an interactive E-Paper device with the technology that Visionect offers - check the development kits: https://www.visionect.com/development_kits

I doubt that $700 counts as cheap to most people

You can use a cheap Kindle for playing a bit around with web pages: https://github.com/PaulFreund/WebLaunch

(No first hand experience yet, weekend project for this weekend :))

"making it is way"

For some reason, everyone on Hacker News spells it "it's"... :-/

And don't get me started on "their", "there", or "they're"... though on Hacker News commenters knowledgeable of the correct usage of "their" and "there" seems to be the least common.

"Its" seems obsolete there, even.

Does "coldpie's" mean "coldpie is" or "belonging to coldpie"?

Either, depending on the context. What's your point?

A good case where design really does matter. These things stick out like sore thumbs. Good museum labels blend. They certainly don't look like old thermostats.

I can't imagine most museum curators would dare to put these on their walls.

And anyway — why constrain all information to a single display. If the goal is to get more information about a painting to a view, there are more solutions both more efficient and kinder to the patrons.

This feels like a case where a simple (dare I say it?!) QR code would have much longer, smarter legs.

Not every visitor can use a QR code. I can't think of a single situation where QR code is the best answer.

is replacing physical labels such a significant overhead for museums? I would think in the effort associated with updating art pieces, the new label is a drop in the bucket.

Also, like all software, the digital labels are unlikely to "just work" so maintenance will become an additional expense, which is likely to be more expensive than just printing labels.

I don't think the act of replacing them is the biggest cost, but having to make hundreds (or thousands) of custom printed labels is definitely costly. I can see this saving time and money in a lot of places.

German retailer 'Mediamarkt' ( electronics ) already uses e-ink price-tags and displays for over a year now. Seen in NL.

I wonder how long till someone figures out how to make unauthorized edits. If it's just over wifi...

"All report an average cost of $70-$100 per label, " Why so much to print a traditional label?

Usually museum labels are very high quality, mounted inside of laminate or glass. Definitely not $100 worth, but when you factor in design and installation labor then it might reach that in theory.

...and "its" seems to be making it is way out of the English Language.

The best think about e-paper is low-power usage: it needs >>no power<< to hold an image. Power is consumed only when changing the image...

... not to mention very good reading capability when exposed to direct sunlight

its.

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