Comment by whiskers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whiskers | Hacker News Reader

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Context: I'm the CEO of Pimoroni who make this product.

I feel like something is missing here but I don't know what.

Our examples show large JPEGs being loaded in MicroPython no problem. For example this one from our examples is 100kB: https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/blob/main/micropyt...

During testing I worked with many images that were larger than that and never ran into issues either. I think the examples provided are pretty clear and demonstrate how to use the product reasonably.

We focus on MicroPython because the C++ SDK for connectivity is pretty gnarly for most people to work with - it is our intention you should never have to leave MicroPython to use this product.

No idea what the battery issue could be but I've never heard of any problem like that before and we've shipped thousands of this product over the past year. We'd be happy to get the unit back and test it for you if you want - or just replace it!

Please drop me a line if you want to discuss these issues further and I'll do my best to help!

> Our examples show large JPEGs being loaded in MicroPython no problem. For example this one from our examples is 100kB:

A 100kB JPEG is hardly a "large" JPEG in 2023. From the linked sales page (https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-frame-5-7?variant=40...) the first line of the description states:

"A large Pico W powered E Ink® photo frame ..."

From this, many are going to assume that they can simply load JPEG photo files from their cell phone and/or camera directly onto the device. JPEG photos from my cell phone range anywhere from 1Meg to 7-8Meg depending upon the scene being photographed. All of those photos begin at a compressed size substantially larger than 256Kbyte. This is the size JPEG that someone is going to think that a "photo frame" can process and display.

Additionally, the pixel resolution of the e-ink is stated as "600 x 448 pixels" (same sales page). Again due to the "photo frame" advertising, even if someone took their JPEG photos and scaled them down to 600x448, they would not likely also quantize to 7 colors at the same time (unless your docs give them very clear instructions to do so somewhere). So they would end up with a RGB 600x448 image, and 600 * 448 * 3 is 806,400 bytes just to hold the uncompressed bitmap from a JPEG of that pixel resolution and 3 bytes per pixel. That size is a bit over three times the amount of RAM quoted for the PI (256kB).

I used 100kB as an example purely because it was in the ball park of the images talked about in the article - not because it's a hard limit!

Inky Frame has an SD card slot on board which can store huge images if needed. JPEG also can be decoded in chunks so there is never any need to store the entire image in memory, simply scale and encode the chunks and store the result in the framebuffer - in principle there is nothing stopping you displaying multi megabyte images on Inky Frame.

You do seem to misunderstand our product range - it is targeted at Makers who want to take the base hardware and modify the software (and possibly to some degree the hardware) to create their own inventions and scratch their own itches. It's not really mass market stuff where you straight up plug and play.

Exactly! You'll be downvoted for pointing that out though...

The "many" you refer to is disingenuous, the target market for "send photos from phone to frame" isn't the same target market as "get hacky e-ink display and boot up micropython" ...

They clearly show the product (named Frame) displaying photos. Ergo, photo frame. The fact that you're trying to frame the Inky Frame as the equivalent of some underspecced 1080p screen or tablet used as a frame is mendacious and unreasonable.

It's as much a "plug in to micropython and learn to do stuff with it" product as any of the other e-ink frames or badges that Pimoroni sells -- it's absolutely not the sort of product you'd find at a supermarket, or buy for your grandmother to put photos on.

Docs and Github examples by Pimoroni are pretty darn clear and well-written, not to mention having YouTube videos and customer support available too.

It's worth noting that OP's conclusion includes, "I am pretty happy with how this project turned out" -- and that they admit they're unsure of who the target market is (suggesting they made similar incorrect assumptions as you).

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