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Comment by jayvoordemensen | Hacker News Reader

Hey! It's Jay, I'm a journalist and developer and I've done most of the work on the front and backend of Project E Ink. Happy to answer your questions!

So what we've done: we're indeed running our own Visionect servers these devices connect to. We've build a friendly and news-centered frontend so the display shows news, updates on new editions (or a user-set timeframe), or forgets about newspapers altogether and displays HTML on any URL you provide.

If we were to sunset or go MIA or anything else unforeseen and unlikely you will still have an awesome display that you can configure to connect to any other Visionect server in the world. And indeed: these servers are Docker-images you can deploy yourself https://hub.docker.com/r/visionect/visionect-server-v3/

So the deal is: a screen and our software. If you don't like our software you'll still have an awesome screen that'll work as long as there's Docker and TCP/IP ;)

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Hey, thanks. Yeah it seems it could be run just fine without some cloud based third party paid services, and the suite is nice and accessible, that's cool. I am just really confused by Visionect product page I guess.

I don't think I'm your target demographic but I always appreciate folks who make their hardware accessible like this. Thank you :)

Who is the target demo? I'm old enough to have had actual newspapers appear on my doorstep. I ever saw anyone mount them on a wall, at least not in a private home. I would think a table/tablet orientation would be more appealing than an awkward wall mount. Is this thing meant to be art, a bit of faux-nostalgia decoration?

I’ve seen newspapers hung above urinals as reading material. Generally the front page or the sports page under glass.

Back in the day, I'd flip it around to display the Fry's ad.

Harry Potter fans possibly :)

If they got the actual newspaper animations and such from the movies, THAT would sell. An e-ink Harry headline, or wanted poster, would be something that any potter fan would seriously consider.

I think people definitely do mount significant newspaper and magazine covers. The advantage of this, of course, is that it changes daily.

It's part function, part art piece imo. I can imagine somebody who's fairly well off drinking their morning coffee whilst reading this on their wall. A statement piece for the guests at their fashionable dinner parties too.

Yeah, my initial thought when someone said people don't mount newspapers was that yes, they do, even if not always in a personal or home context. It's exactly the type of thing you might see at certain bars, and there's no shortage of interesting famous front pages to display[1]. They're often about disasters, but there's notable very positive ones as well, such as the announcement of peace and the end of WWI and WWII, the famous newspaper announcing we arrived at the moon, etc.

Or you could just have it cycle through the most outlandish front pages from the Weekly World News about the latest exploits of Bat Boy[2]. Or switch to whatever your tastes are for the day! :)

  1: https://www.google.com/search?q=famous+newspaper+front+pages&tbm=isch

  2: https://www.google.com/search?q=bat+boy

I think it's clear this isn't supposed to solve a problem. The article describes it pretty clearly as more of an art piece than something of function.

There are definitely people who would like this in their homes. Probably multiple.

If it is going to be art, I'd use some more creative content than daily newspapers. A series of fictional newspapers would be better. I would much rather it display a the front page of the Gothem Times with the latest Batman v. Joker news. Even realworld historical headlines would make for a better conversation piece. Older monochrome front pages would also probably look better on such as display.

That's your opinion I guess.

You could tie it into a calendar app and have it as a family organiser sitting in the hallway.

I would guess people who spend a lot of money on interior design. It’s a nice statement piece IMO.

I think it's not that dissimilar to people who have a rotary telephone in their kitchen in 2023, use records, play tapes, hack Commodore 64 systems, or who use old Panasonic handhelds. There's a degree of personal expression in vintage technology that exceeds mere nostalgia.

I can't speak for this creator, but often these niche products serve a community of like-minded, or in fact are the mechanism or way to find and connect with a community of like minded people.

I think of folks doing projects around old technology paradigms as similar people to those who grew up building hot rods and find building cars to be greatly satisfying. Hacking a newspaper on your wall is similar, but in more of a dick tracy watch ethos.

Is that compliant with Visionect's licensing? Their site says "A license is needed for every device." I don't doubt that it technically works.

Hey Jay, thanks so much for your work! The screen looks very beautiful but for me personally it would be much more attractive if it could also be used for reading the entire newspaper, not just the front page. Any plans to include (tiny) buttons to switch pages?

In this case, during breakfast I could put the screen on a stand on my table, and read the news without having to resort to a backlit screen / news app on my phone. Though, maybe 32" would be a bit big for my breakfast table, not sure. :)

> connect to any other Visionect server in the world

Okay but what if, like a sane person, I don't want to give it direct internet access and have my own data I want to put on the wall? Can I pay less to get less (e.g. just the screen with an HDMI or DP connector so I can connect it to literally any raspi, picture frame, nuc, etc. etc. in my house)?

A pi in hostapd hotspot mode should work fine, right? Anyways I would guess most of the (“insane?”) target users of this device probably don’t want to mess with any of that.

I once designed some outdoor bezels for your 13" and 32" displays. nice pieces of hardware! Wish eink prices were lower in general.

Why doesn't it have a way to directly push an image to the screen like a $30 router from worst buy? It looks like the software to push an image to a display can be run on your own device but then you need an $80 box and if I read this right you need to pay $72 a year forever.

https://www.visionect.com/software/

Because the Visonect devices and software are meant for commercial and business customers as information displays that are centrally managed, not for use as a consumer product, and is designed around those use cases. That somebody bought one and repurposed it for a hobby art project doesn't change that.

Well if you’re sold on paying 2000 euro for the display it’s a drop in the bucket. Who reads newspapers in 2023 anyway? Why not just get a subscription to a newspaper for like $50/yr? Then you can sit and read it instead of standing facing a wall. I don’t get this product. A solution in need of a problem

If you or some future buyer want to keep it for 20 years and want to run your own hardware to deal with it you will probably end up sourcing at least 2 single board computers for around $160 and paying $72x20 adjusted up for inflation or 1440-2160. You will spend at least 30 minutes picking out a machine and some number of hours over the years managing each machine.

This is of course assuming it doesn't actually stop working or some aspect of the process isn't broken.

All this so you can run a docker container with postgres instead of pushing an image to an endpoint on the local network. It's both bad and unimpressive engineering.

Furthermore if it did need central management for business purpose THAT would be something that consumes the same simple process for showing something on the screen.

<COMPLEX SOFTWARE> => posts image => shows image

This would trivially allow you to build on the simple process if that is all you need. It's not so much bad engineering as gross engineering its engineered to be complicated to they can insert themselves into the process to stick their hand in your wallet.

Is there an email I can reach you at about something related?

If Docker is in any way _required_, it's still a dealbreaker.

That's an extremist view.

Docker is not magic, just extract the contents an OCI image[1] and run it with your favorite container runtime, like cri-o[2]. Or use the docker or OCI inage with podman[0].

And if containers are the problem then unpack the image into it's contents, take the binary, relink it and run it on bare metal.

[0]: https://podman.io/ [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73961256/how-to-convert-... [2]: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o/tree/main

You like to have it signed by RMS personally?

(Nothing against the FSF, but "dealbreaker" is a very relative concept.)

Docker is never required by anything, it just makes communicating software dependencies simple and concise.

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