This screen comes with a subscription based cloud CMS. The only way to pass image to this display semms to be through a proprietary application which is this so called CMS. There are no other connectivity options mentioned.
You are unable to use this screen if:
- subscription is not paid
- company decides to terminate your subscription under any condition of your contract
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 ;)
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.
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)?
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.
I would like to caveat that a bit. I'm running two Visionect screens at home (I really do love them, hardware-wise especially) from a similar setup (local Visionect server running on Raspberry Pi).
As far as I understand though, they have stopped offering support for non-subscribers, and they also seem to have stopped producing builds for ARM devices a couple of years ago (but the server software works even with new firmware versions). I am still betting on them supporting local installs for a while (based on my understanding that at least some of their corporate clients would want an on-prem solution), but am a little bit worried it might not be as openly available forever. I am therefore slowly researching my best migration path from a Raspberry Pi to some affordable and reasonably low powered x86 thing. Suggestions welcome.
P.S.: The biggest selling point for me compared with some other (more open) E-ink screens is the battery. I keep mine on the fridge with a magnet and can't really use one that needs to be plugged in all the time in the same place. If anyone knows of anything similar and controllable locally, I'd be very interested to read about it.
Thank you. I think their product page is pushing cloud subscription too hard, they call subscription the same way they call display itself, and subscription is paid and cloud based. Product page says: "Place & Play devices work on a subscription basis. Select a plan here.", and "A license is needed for every device." while describing software suite.
I'm still confused about the way it presented, but documentation and suite itself look quite decent.
I also run visionect locally to power a couple of displays around the house. When I recently went to go buy a few more - it was clear that they require a subscription. I emailed them and they confirmed that they now require a subscription.
It’s a bummer because I don’t think there are as good quality displays to replace visionect with, but the subscription was far too much.
That’s OK though right? As long as you know that going in you can decide if it’s worth it for you. Personally, I’d rather have something that works out of the box in exchange for a bit of money and risk that the company will go out of business one day than something that I have to spend time tinkering with to get and keep working.
It's not OK in my opinion to have perfectly capable hardware and software be obsoleted by circumstances outside of your control. I consider it to be wasteful and unnecessary. It don't have to conflict with convinience and services provided by cloud CMS.
As we've figured out in other thread this is not an issue with this particular display - apparently, you could make it work without touching external networks, and it's decently supported by Visionect way of doing things.
> As long as you know that going in you can decide if it’s worth it for you.
But it looks like there's no way to know that going in? I have checked the product page and found no information that the CMS is paid.
Based on the current description ("Comes with personal online portal to set up and change the content of your screen." [1]) I wouldn't expect an additional subscription.
I have taken a look at the protocol between the software and the display and it is straightforward to hack, but the docker image is lightweight and reliable enough that I don't see the need to.
I'm a news junkie, and the power and allure of a newspaper's front page have always fascinated me. When I stumbled upon an article written by a Google engineer who had built an e ink device with the front page of his favorite daily newspaper prominently displayed on his wall, I was a bit jealous. So, I worked with a e-ink company called Visionect in Slovenia to build a version that comes shipped ready to put on your wall. The screen isn't cheap ($2500) because it's a huge 32" e-ink display. The beautiful glass screen is connected to wifi and we made it easy to choose your favorite newspaper frontpages to put on display. It's a bit like an ever changing artwork.
It does look cool, but I think the last thing I want on my wall is yet more 'news'.
I was about to say something similar about the price; for that money I can just stick the newspaper itself up on the wall.
OTOH if the display is already 2300EUR, I can't see how the OP can possibly make any money on this, especially with free global shipping, returns, etc, etc.
You may be missing the purpose of this item. The price is high, but it is really not for a picture of the paper. It is for the 'look','old feel, while still clearly being very modern'. In other words, it is trying to be closer to art; so its about being cool in an understated way with unnecessarily expensive things.
Other commenter [1] mentioned that there's a subscription required. I found no pricing link, but saw a subscription on the parent page [2] listed at 60 per year. So if we're talking 10 years, then it's closer to 3000.
Hi! This looks like a useful product at a good price point. Are you based in Germany? How come you only ship to Australia, Canada, China, India, UK and USA?
Also, you should look through your privacy policy. Its straight up copy/pasted from Shopifys template now with all the "ADD CASES THAT APPLY FOR YOUR STORE", "REMOVE THIS TEXT IF THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO YOUR STORE" text remaining. And apparently you sell your customers information to display targeted ads?
But it's not going to look as nice as a 32" e-ink display on the wall.
Is there a yellow backlight, or a blueish backlight?
Is there a low-cost way to make a solar roof that varies in solar reflectivity? FWIU e-ink only requires voltage to cause the e-ink particles to flip over? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink
> Why do larger e-ink screens cost more to produce?
Last I knew the bulk of cost for e-ink displays was just due to the patent holders decision to charge a lot, which is disappointing, but can't go on that much longer...
The e-ink newspaper project comes up from time to time and I keep waiting for the prices to come down to Earth.
Guess I'm still going to have to wait, ha ha.
I did play around with an affordable (smaller) display and liked the result though (but since it was small I did not ry to emulate a newspaper but rather a vintage Mac).
yeah the displays are where the cost is, here, and until the company that makes these giant panels starts pricing them sanely, there won't be any products built with it which are priced sanely.
It's kind of sad that the newspaper format--which gradually developed over many many years due to how a human interfaces with the medium--is now so... quaint?... that it has entered the realm of "art."
All that inverse-pyramid, "Five Ws and an H," Journalism 101 stuff developed in part because of how newspapers were designed, typeset and printed. Now it's kind of like a Thomas Kincaid print?
That's pricey. Perhaps using a normal 4k monitor is a better option? It could even display video. You could couple it with a motion sensor to turn it off and save power when noone is around.
There are cheaper e-ink displays by Waveshare.
e.g. the WaveShare 13.3inch e-Paper e-Ink Display HAT For Raspberry Pi for 500€.
You can build a box to house the display and the Raspberry Pi for under 100€…
Add some scripts to download and display the news PDF and you can enjoy it for 1/4 of the price…
Is that really worth it, though? The 13 inch screen from this company is 899€ and already comes in a proper enclosure, and is wireless which seems important for this product. If your goal is to quickly manufacture reliable devices, partnering with someone that already sells a proper device seems totally worth the extra cost.
Not to mention that OP wants a big poster-size screen, so your suggestion comes a few inches short.
I came across this a while back wanting to make my own - thanks for this! I wound up deciding to just get an InkPlate because I also wanted something to take off the wall and review
Looks nice, but it's still just more news for the news addicted.
Silly idea dump: How about: A 4k TV in form of a window, which displays a live stream of a 4k camera of various places in nature. Lets say, in the middle of the forest, or a beach in italy. To have a window into another place, for some calm and mindfulness.
You might be a customer for Bob Shaw's fictional 'slow glass':
Travelling through a remote area, they find a place that sells panes of slow glass. This is glass that light takes a long time to pass through, even years, so that a pane of this glass shows a scene from the past. People buy slow glass that has been placed in picturesque scenery so that later they can enjoy the view in their homes or workplaces.
I have the same thing, gitlab job scheduled every 12 hours refreshes it using the visionect docker image, I have google calendar at the bottom, and currency exchange over the top left, localized weather on the right, countdowns to holidays, F1 schedules ect... I decreased the heartbeat timer and battery lasts about 2 months. I can't find an asian or european news paper that gives a good high res front page like the NYT. Waking up to read the US centric world view of the NYT gets old and the headlines are not so entertaining anymore without trump.
Let me know if you find a more global news source that has a good high res reliable front page dump without advertisements. There has only been one time where NYT had on the front page over ~2 years and that was some fake diamond company took out the entire front page.
Are (large) e-ink displays expensive because of lack of scale in manufacturing? Or is there something inherently expensive about them? This display is literally almost ten times the cost of a generic 4K monitor, which has color, a higher resolution, and a 60 hertz refresh rate.
The only advantage here is the reflective display and the ultra-low power consumption. I'm not saying that there aren't use cases where those could be critical/decisive, but given the cost differential it seems like the decision between the two is effectively automatic: the products don't compete, in the same way an SUV doesn't compete with a Cessna: if you need to fly, you buy the plane; otherwise the car is a no-brainer.
I ask because I would love to have a second monitor like this display: easy on the eyes, distraction-free, etc. But at this cost it's a ridiculous non-starter for that purpose.
I chatted with the guy from Visionect about this once and he said that it was basically all about scale. There is massive demand for the panels that go in those generic LED monitors and many huge factories dedicated to making them.
The eink display looks gorgeous, by the way. But it's not a computer monitor and doesn't claim to be.
You'd think there would be a large market for signage, and the process for manufacturing electrophoretic e-ink screens isn't that different from web printing (rotary presses), which is both mature and scalable (in size).
To be fair it will have a good viewing angle even better than IPS as well as not shining a flashlight in your face with a terrible spectral power distribution but I don't expect a real analysis by someone who compares 2 watt power savings as if this is the bottleneck of display tech or anything close to it.
Readit News
You are unable to use this screen if:
- subscription is not paid
- company decides to terminate your subscription under any condition of your contract
- company decides to sunset software or a product
- company doesn't exist anymore
- CMS isn't compatible with your device anymore
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 ;)
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. :)
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)?
https://www.visionect.com/software/
Deleted Comment
As far as I understand though, they have stopped offering support for non-subscribers, and they also seem to have stopped producing builds for ARM devices a couple of years ago (but the server software works even with new firmware versions). I am still betting on them supporting local installs for a while (based on my understanding that at least some of their corporate clients would want an on-prem solution), but am a little bit worried it might not be as openly available forever. I am therefore slowly researching my best migration path from a Raspberry Pi to some affordable and reasonably low powered x86 thing. Suggestions welcome.
P.S.: The biggest selling point for me compared with some other (more open) E-ink screens is the battery. I keep mine on the fridge with a magnet and can't really use one that needs to be plugged in all the time in the same place. If anyone knows of anything similar and controllable locally, I'd be very interested to read about it.
I'm still confused about the way it presented, but documentation and suite itself look quite decent.
It’s a bummer because I don’t think there are as good quality displays to replace visionect with, but the subscription was far too much.
https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-timeframe/
It fetches images from HTTP every half hour and shows them.
But it looks like there's no way to know that going in? I have checked the product page and found no information that the CMS is paid.
Based on the current description ("Comes with personal online portal to set up and change the content of your screen." [1]) I wouldn't expect an additional subscription.
[1]: https://projecteink.com/products/e-ink-newspaper-art-display...
Deleted Comment
I was about to say something similar about the price; for that money I can just stick the newspaper itself up on the wall.
OTOH if the display is already 2300EUR, I can't see how the OP can possibly make any money on this, especially with free global shipping, returns, etc, etc.
Other commenter [1] mentioned that there's a subscription required. I found no pricing link, but saw a subscription on the parent page [2] listed at 60 per year. So if we're talking 10 years, then it's closer to 3000.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36629864
[2]: https://www.visionect.com/software/
It’s very cool what you have done, let’s maybe collaborate or join forces?
My product is an e-paper calendar:
https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
Also, you should look through your privacy policy. Its straight up copy/pasted from Shopifys template now with all the "ADD CASES THAT APPLY FOR YOUR STORE", "REMOVE THIS TEXT IF THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO YOUR STORE" text remaining. And apparently you sell your customers information to display targeted ads?
Something like this for (e.g. Kanban card-based) project management would be cool, though the contrast at a distance.
The PineNote is a 9" eInk development device; 3287cm/3 for $400. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineNote
But it's not going to look as nice as a 32" e-ink display on the wall.
Is there a yellow backlight, or a blueish backlight?
Is there a low-cost way to make a solar roof that varies in solar reflectivity? FWIU e-ink only requires voltage to cause the e-ink particles to flip over? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink
Last I knew the bulk of cost for e-ink displays was just due to the patent holders decision to charge a lot, which is disappointing, but can't go on that much longer...
Guess I'm still going to have to wait, ha ha.
I did play around with an affordable (smaller) display and liked the result though (but since it was small I did not ry to emulate a newspaper but rather a vintage Mac).
All that inverse-pyramid, "Five Ws and an H," Journalism 101 stuff developed in part because of how newspapers were designed, typeset and printed. Now it's kind of like a Thomas Kincaid print?
I feel really old now.
Eink feels close to paper, regular LCD's or OLED's do not.
Not to mention that OP wants a big poster-size screen, so your suggestion comes a few inches short.
- the display size is 6x
- no need to DIY
Silly idea dump: How about: A 4k TV in form of a window, which displays a live stream of a 4k camera of various places in nature. Lets say, in the middle of the forest, or a beach in italy. To have a window into another place, for some calm and mindfulness.
Travelling through a remote area, they find a place that sells panes of slow glass. This is glass that light takes a long time to pass through, even years, so that a pane of this glass shows a scene from the past. People buy slow glass that has been placed in picturesque scenery so that later they can enjoy the view in their homes or workplaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days
1) Place a camera + display somewhere in an urban area of the world so that random pedestrians can come and watch the display, will be on camera.
2) Place any number of these identical setups in other areas of the world.
3) Arbitrarily feed the camera from one to the display of another (shuffle every 24 hours?).
You get people seeing/reacting to others seeing/reacting ... possibly to them, possibly to others who are seeing/reacting to....
The only advantage here is the reflective display and the ultra-low power consumption. I'm not saying that there aren't use cases where those could be critical/decisive, but given the cost differential it seems like the decision between the two is effectively automatic: the products don't compete, in the same way an SUV doesn't compete with a Cessna: if you need to fly, you buy the plane; otherwise the car is a no-brainer.
I ask because I would love to have a second monitor like this display: easy on the eyes, distraction-free, etc. But at this cost it's a ridiculous non-starter for that purpose.
The eink display looks gorgeous, by the way. But it's not a computer monitor and doesn't claim to be.