IllumiPaper: Illuminated Interactive Paper | Hacker News Reader

IllumiPaper: Illuminated Interactive Paper

imld.de

65 pointsBerislavLopac17 comments

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SCNR, but this is the most German thing I've found on hacker news for a long time.

I can hardly come up with a use case, for which this would be a better fit than just a tablet.

Disclaimer: I'm German ;)

Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5ZmPzI0D2Q

Is that really a computer generated voice-over ? And if so, why ?!

Cheaper, faster, but horrible to listen to.

Doing voice overs takes a bit of talent and a lot of practice. Using a CG voice over is cheap low effort even if low quality.

Also, authors may not be native English speakers, which makes it even harder

There is that. Self confidence also plays a huge role. Some people can’t standard hearing their own voice and can’t find anyone else willing to do it (or are too shy to ask). You’ll find a lot of these people inn CS research who think CG voice is an easy way out of that anxiety.

In 2001 Wired had an article about a company making a pen that could read microdots on paper while you are writing. It would then be able to uniquely identify the paper that you wrote on and correlate what you wrote with, for example, the form you wrote it on.

I'd wondered a few times what happened to that company (Anoto), thinking they are probably long gone. Turns out they are around, and the pen they are using in this article is actually one of their models. Not sure if it is still using the microdot idea though.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2001/04/anoto/

> In 2001 Wired had an article about a company making a pen that could read microdots on paper while you are writing. It would then be able to uniquely identify the paper that you wrote on and correlate what you wrote with, for example, the form you wrote it on.

/me know that some laser printers use same type of steganography

Anoto was mentioned at around https://youtu.be/u5ZmPzI0D2Q?t=63 in their demo video

Livescribe makes/made a product that did this. I used it back in 07-09.

Someone (CJ Wilson) has written about Anoto's path several times:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/eight-reasons-why-anoto-digit...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/anoto-late-2017-update-analys...

How or why is this better than an iPad with the Apple Pencil? It had better be wayyyy less expensive or better in every aspect otherwise it is dead in the water, imo.

Looks like publication of research, not a product.

Perhaps this make sense for those limited markets where the setting is too hazardous or theft-prone for even the cheapest tablets, but digitizing form data for streamlined and accurate ingestion is still highly desired? I'm thinking maybe situations like food ordering screens in a sports stadium, conducting surveys with masses of people, medical intake for disaster-relief or indigent populations, refugee intake and administration, etc. Basically anywhere you want the loss of some of these "hardcoded tablets" isn't an undue burden on a constrained budget, or the hardcoded nature of the device itself deters theft.

They don't go into sufficient detail on how they solved battery and wireless communication, as far as i could find out from the video (site itself seems hugged to death at the moment). If those components are the "backing" of this illuminated paper, then that might make sense; I could see those be thin enough to be inexpensive, yet reusable enough to not be an environmental concern.

First thought I had when I saw the paper: it could be used to enhance board games.

Solution looking for a problem ...

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