E-ink art frames are a scam (2021) | Hacker News Reader

E-ink art frames are a scam (2021)

kurotimedesign.blogspot.com

56 pointsscottmcdot45 comments

Honestly, this is as close to an objectively wrong "opinion" as I've seen on here. I think a scam is best defined as something where there's a huge disjoint between what is sold/marketed, and what the person actually receives or experiences.

They may not look AMAZING, but so what? They do what they say on the tin.

> there's a huge disjoint between what is sold/marketed

I think that's exactly what OP is arguing here. The website (which they didn't link to) showed entirely different capabilities than what the product can do. Nothing "objectively wrong" about that

EDIT: Take this website for example [1]. I have no idea if this is the website OP ordered from (it's just one of the top google results), but if I ordered a picture frame from this website, and it turned out to be what OP ended up with, I would 100% consider that a scam. No question.

[1] https://www.ionnyk.com/

OK, but that is just one product. I agree that some companies are overselling e-ink in a way that is scammy, but that doesn’t mean the whole market is a scam. Plenty of products eg. Inkplate are upfront about what you’re getting, and I think it looks pretty good, albeit not nearly as good as a proper print.

I work there as a software developer, definitely not a scam. It’s not your 50$ kindle quality e-ink. You can check some youtube videos about it to see the real life capabilities of the frame.

I'm sorry that this guy feels that these devices are a scam. E-ink frames have their own aesthetic and do a decent job of displaying black and white photos. Sure they have some limitations, but they are good enough and solve a particular problem if you have a large amount of b&w photos to display.

maybe, but this is pretty damning

> Nice looking website, edited and misleading pictures and videos with a soothing voice to let you sleep and distract you from the truth.

> High prices, unclear specifications. Unclear business model, subscription based, phone app dependant, making you bound to their service. These devices may easilly become useless if (when) the company closes its doors.

just be transparent about what you're selling and don't require a service for something that can easily be done offline

The author makes it impossible to judge though by refusing to link to the website in question.

While I won't judge him or assume malice, I would strongly prefer to make my own judgements about the honesty of their advertising.

B&W photos generally don't look very nice on e-ink (you end up with either strong banding or plenty of noticeable dither); ink drawings do though. You want high contrast content that doesn't rely on grayscale too much there.

I'd love an e-ink frame, regardless of the contrast issues.

The article writer is attacking unspecified providers that are promising more than it is deliverable - not the technology.

Most of the article is spent on explaining why e-ink is unacceptable for art and why no-one wants this. Clearly nonsense. I want an e-ink display for showing art, regardless of the quality.

I bought one from Clemens at https://framelabs.eu/en/

I've been extremely happy with mine. There are contrast limitations, of course, but you quickly develop an eye for what works on it and what doesn't. But sure, you can't just throw any picture on there and expect to get away with it.

Note that it's made in and ships from Germany.

I can see that the maximum is 13'', 150 PPI.

I suggest one could buy an EPD tablet - you can find 13'', 300 PPI - and build a nice wall mounted (or table sitting) frame structure for resting.

(Setting the "power off" picture in Android (you do not need the OS to be on to display the picture) can be an ugly process, but there may be workarounds)

Is it locked to someone’s cloud where it will stop working randomly when they decide to shut down the service?

The page linked doesn’t say a lot, but it does say “local web interface”

That’s a good sign.

> Unclear business model, subscription based, phone app dependant, making you bound to their service.

Get an Inkplate[0] and easily display whatever you want however you want. My one serves as an automated calendar and trash collection schedule, decorated with inkpen drawings that look great on e-ink[1].

[0] https://inkplate.io/

[1] https://mastodon.social/@holypangolin/108698546628218087 / https://mastodon.social/@holypangolin/109291506657105213

E-paper and E-ink are different technologies though. E-paper is transfletive LCD and requires power to keep the image on the display.

E-paper and e-ink are synonyms (well, to be more precise, e-ink is a brand of e-paper, but those terms are being commonly used as synonymous). Not sure what you're referring to regarding transflective screens, as both the article and my comment refer to displays that only need power to update their content.

I also have a device with a transflective LCD, it's called Nokia N900 - it would be hard to mistake one display for another ;)

Might be referring to monochrome RLCD as used on Hisense Q5. Some press calls it e-paper.

Nope, see my sibling comment.

Pebble had branded its transflective LCD display as e-paper. So, it signifies transflective display commercially, unless owner of the trademark decides to do something else with it. (I'm not sure though the term was trademarked, but it had been used for transflective displays for a while).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_d...

While classic Pebble used TLCD, Pebble Time used actual e-paper. Also, note how this "trade names" section has no references, and includes an entry called "sunlight readable lcd". There are no trademarks involved there.

> E-paper and e-ink are synonyms

They absolutely are not. E-paper is a generic term for "screens that can be used like paper". E-ink is a specific technology.

If you see people saying a device uses an "e-paper display" it's because it's not e-ink, but often they want to make people think that it is (because e-ink is arguably the best kind of e-paper display).

Transflective LCD is an example of an e-paper display that is not e-ink.

> Electronic paper, also sometimes electronic ink, e-ink or electrophoretic display, are display devices that mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper.

> Many e-readers (...) utilize electronic paper for their displays in order to further resemble paper books; one such example is the Kindle series by Amazon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

"E Ink" is just a brand of e-paper - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink_Corporation. There are other brands that utilize the same technology.

Unless specifically noted otherwise, you can safely assume that anyone talking about "e-ink" or "e-paper" means the kind of display used in Kindle, Inkplate or the art frames this article is talking about. There were cases of RLCDs and TLCDs marketed as "e-paper" in the past, but those are rather exception than rule, riding on the popularity of the real thing. Nobody considers calculator or OLPC screens "e-paper".

> "E Ink" is just a brand of e-paper

It is not. It is a brand of electrophoretic display, which is a type of e-paper display.

> There are other brands that utilize the same technology.

There are not. Not any significant ones anyway.

> Unless specifically noted otherwise, you can safely assume that anyone talking about "e-ink" or "e-paper" means the kind of display used in Kindle, Inkplate or the art frames this article is talking about.

No you can't. "E-ink" displays are definitely e-ink. But an "e-paper" display could be e-ink, transflective LCD, or anything else. There are real products that use transflective LCD and say they have "e-paper" displays. The Pebble watches are the obvious one (sadly discontinued).

There are tons of e-ink products that are described as having e-paper displays which probably contributes to the confusion, but the meaning is quite clear.

Photos are tricky, but you can make e-paper displays look nice if you embrace the constraints. For example: https://accent.ink

One of my primary "consumer electronics" dreams for the future is that e-ink displays become cheap and commonplace.

Something about screens causes them to steal away your attention. "Ambient" screens for menus in bars/restaurants are convenient but are awful decor. This is why I will never have a utility display in my house for e.g. displaying news, weather.

I do not even really care if the tech improves - just give us larger, cheaper e-ink displays with the same DPI/contrast ratio and let them replace ambient screens.

They indeed feel magical after getting used to non-ink displays.

When I got my first e-ink reader and opened the box I saw that beautiful black and white artwork on screen. My first assumption was it was a plastic film with the artwork on it to protect the screen and I was supposed to remove it

But nope, the art was actually being displayed on the screen. Since the display consumes no power even while it is "on", they were shipping with that art on the display

My brain was just not able to comprehend a display can show a picture like that without emitting any lights

You can get TVs that look like paintings. I'm not talking about just having a painting like frame, but I wasn't actually sure if I was looking at a print or a TV. It's mostly to do with the matte screen and low brightness I guess. Supposedly you sacrifice color accuracy for this effect though.

Can you please share what TV you saw?

No idea, it was on a wall in a store. I think it might have been the Samsung frame tv.

Thank you.

With only 16 gray levels

It's disappointing that, even after several years of a hobbyist showing that it is indeed possible for an EPD to display more than 16 levels, none of the commercially available panel controllers out there have this capability:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284

Legislation for labeling product images as selectively enhanced, or composite, would be nice

Especially for food!

And people!

It'd be about as useful as California's Proposition 65.

There's already a law for this in France and it's quite useful.

I don't get why a lot of people are saying this isn't a scam, just because they are somewhat usable for the purpose. The scam part is that the product photos are faked, giving the impression that the images it displays are of a much higher quality than they really are. If you see a product page for an electromagnet that shows it holding up a 50lb weight, and when you get it, it can actually only hold up a 10lb weight, would you not consider that a scam either? Or how about a monitor advertised as 4K but that's actually 1080p?

That's just one specific shop being a scam then and not "E-ink art frames are a scam".

Personally I think e-paper screens are good enough for art reproduction, but it depends on what you are looking for. laser-sharp photo reproductions are out-of-the-question. But to me, that doesn't mean they can't be suitable art frames.

E-paper or E-ink displays can totally reproduce art, but they convey more of a 'vibe'. Look at the examples of my 3-color epaper display [0],[1] and/or read my blog article about the device to see for yourself [2].

The key take away is that from a distance, images look great and they are definitely good enough to be fit for purpose. Just take into account the limitation and select artwork for display that better suit this type of screen.

[0] https://louwrentius.com/static/images/epaper/epaper05_large....

[1] https://louwrentius.com/static/images/epaper/epaper04_large....

[2] https://louwrentius.com/a-1248-inch-1304x984-three-color-e-p...

The word scam is really losing all of its meaning

Not really related, but I did see an art installation where the screens had been completely disconnected and removed but retained the grainy image which was on them last.

a sculptor want to make a good art and last to the end. one artist chooses the sand to make sculp to last longer and it doesnt last longer. who's we should blame? to artist, to sand, to wind and waves, to art?

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