Comment by luka-birsa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by luka-birsa | Hacker News Reader

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So far 100% of HN articles re: E Ink contain a comment like this. Sadly it is highly unlikely that you will get something like this at an acceptable price point.

We (https://www.visionect.com/) have been making non-ebook based E Ink solutions for a decade now. Except for Joan, our room booking solution (https://getjoan.com), we have not found a customer application that could survive the low-volume incurred high price of an E Ink solution (beyond E book readers and Note taking to some extent).

LCDs are simply too cheap and when customers get the option of going for a 75" color LCD display for a price of a 32" E Ink, it's a really tough sell to the consumer. The application really needs to make sense.

If you consider yourself as an outlier from the general feedback we got from the market, then do let me know - the 13" devices we offer come with a years worth of battery, have WiFi built in and our software allows you to display any web-based content or upload images. They even mount to the wall using a magnet. You can buy one on our online store.

Love what you guys are doing with Joan.

I strongly believe there's a place in the market for displays that don't feel like displays. I don't think there's much need for interaction, but passive emitters of relevant, useful, hyper local information that feel like a wall feature or design piece rather than screen could have high success rate.

I built a Smart Mirror for this purpose. It was mostly a mirror, in a nice wooden frame, but it also subtly told me when the next bus running down my road would be and whether or not I needed an umbrella that day.

The only reason it's not back up on the wall yet is because it uses a backlit LCD which is fine during daylight as the half mirrored glass hides this with enough light, but at night it's all lit up. If it were backed by OLED instead (impossible at a 24" size) it would feel much more magical.

There's lots of other ways of taking the same approach - furniture / feature first, display second, that I think could succeed as a popular product.

I have a few solutions for you:

1) Your monitor doesn't need to be the size of your mirror. Just the size of the display content.

2) Add a motion control or other type of sensor to turn on and off the backlight.

How much is only the raw cost of the display (say 15"), and how much would it go down with scale? It doesn't look like you guys are skimping on the other parts of the device, which I think a mass-consumer device could (should) do.

Arguing the other way: I think the other problem is that such a device doesn't make more money. Amazon can sell echos at a loss because it knows it lifts its other revenue streams.

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