Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album | Hacker News Reader

Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

ben.page

320 pointsbenborgers141 comments

I've built a few things with eink displays and I strongly recommend NOT using simple picture frames (unless they fit perfectly). One way to get a really good looking result is a custom frame. There are tons of custom framing company that will cheaply make you a frame that fits the display with the appropriate cut out.

https://blog.jgc.org/2023/05/a-better-case-for-my-inkplate-1...

I did that for my Rust/LLM-based e-ink AI newspaper: https://imgur.com/a/NoTr8XX

Custom frame by Halbe Rahmen, who I think make the most magnificent frames in the world, with the most loving team behind them. Not a shill; whenever I interact with the Halbe staff for anything I feel it.

This is an incredible project. I love every bit of it. Well done!

cool project and writeup!

Wow I absolutely love that. The cost of the larger ones has been prohibitively expensive for all the stuff I want to do. I did make a small weather display with one of Waveshare's 6 inch screens, then I 3D printed a stand that gives it a nice frameless look.

Super cool! What kind of battery life do you get in practice?

March/April to October or November or so in my first run :-)

> Custom frame by Halbe Rahmen, who I think make the most magnificent frames in the world, with the most loving team behind them. Not a shill; whenever I interact with the Halbe staff for anything I feel it.

Bold statement, what are they offering that's better than going into your typical framing store?

I really like their magnet lock thing :-)

Thanks for the pointer! I'm from Germany too, and been considering a similar project (using an old tablet) for a while now. This is another company however that would have been better off if the founder wouldn't have used their own name for it. My first thought was "why buy half a frame from these guys when I can get a whole frame elsewhere?"

Nice project BTW! However the coffee stain doesn't look very realistic in black-and-white...

I definitely need a 3-color e-ink display black/white/brown ... :-)

I saw in the summary that you planned to open source it, do you still think you'll do it? I was thinking to build one for self (e-ink + battery powered so can move it around), and trying to avoid reinventing the wheel

The matte could be cut for any sized frame for another alternatively cost effective option.

Got any names of good quality and reasonably priced custom framing shops?

They will all be local, or call your local Michael's, or else try Framebridge.com

It’s relatively easy to cut your own frame from Michael’s or haven’t hem cut it too.

Have you considered MIP displays?(1) Memory-in-pixel displays are commonly used on watches, wearables and they can display up to 64 colors in theory. They have high-contrast even in bright ambient conditions.

Example of a color MIP display is the Garmin handhelds: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/553168

The largest one I can find in production is only 4 inches,(2) but a tablet-sized one could be great as a display. They don't use much power (just like e-ink) as a MIP watch can last 11+ months without a charge.

(1)https://www.sharpsde.com/technologies-for/memory-in-pixels/m...

(2)https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sharp-microelectr...

AKA transflective, AKA Memory LCD. It neither looks as good as the ipad, nor does it use no power (at idle) or read as easily as the kindle. It still has to use a little power, but it has the advantage of the fast refresh of an LCD, and a million times better than the ipad in the sun

For a reader/ note taking pad, or even a tablet, that sounds perfect.

As long as you only want to use it in bright light. I almost always need to use my Garmin watch's backlight indoors since it's just not bright enough to see otherwise.

And while the display is great outdoors, the colors are muted compared to what you'd see with an OLED or traditional LCD display.

I use my tablet indoors much more than outdoors (and it cranks up the display brightness to be usable in pretty much any light other than full direct sunlight, and I rarely sit in the direct while using it), so I don't think I'd want an MIP display on a tablet.

A £3 custom mount board really makes a difference. I've built beautiful looking e-paper pictures using a basic IKEA frame and an custom cut mount from best4frames.

> iCloud photo albums have no API. However, if you share an iCloud photo album to a public link [...]

How do folks feel about the security vs. convenience aspect of this? I almost talked myself into doing this for our shared family albums, but I know I really shouldn't do it.

Some of our older family members run Windows and iCloud sharing is just horrible there. Basically, the photos keep disappearing from their computer. It looks like we're not the only one with the issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/iCloud/comments/150nq4i/icloud_wind...

Apple should just pull that windows app/feature if they’re being this shitty with their users. That thread was infuriating.

The iCloud file syncing on Windows destroyed my files twice and I never touched it again.

I even have build a small product to show apple shared albums online https://public.photos/

also wanted to add API on top so that people can show photos however they want. But didn’t have a time to finish it yet.

That’s cool but why not fetch the photos via URL? Seems easier than having to maintain an email inbox

have more information that way I think on each photo.

Plus feels more robust.

Getting from the website might break if layout breaks.

Its actually damn near impossible to retrieve all of your photos/videos from icloud for a backup if you are using a windows machine to do so. It will constantly fail to sync fully, duplicate files, takes eons to download even on a fast connection, and there are bizarre file format conflicts with certain types of images. Very infuriating, and its been an issues for at least 5 years. 'Buy a mac if you want to actually adhere to proper backup standards' i guess this is the apple stance on the issue.

A workaround is to use OneDrive with Camera Upload feature turned on, and then sync this back down to your PC. You can choose how to sort (e.g. folders by year and month).

I've been using icloudpd to get photos off of icloud. It took a while the first time but after that I set it up to only download the latest 500 photos (total number downloaded is usually way under) and run it every few months.

https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

TBH, the Photos app on Macs is just as bad at this. Especially if you have a LARGE album.

I'll give you exactly the use case, and exactly why that is:

I decided I didn't want to pay for the family 1tb icloud plan anymore because 90% of it was being used up by my brother taking silly pictures and videos all the time. So I had him get an external SSD and set him up with the Photos app to download to it.

~900gb of images and videos. It took OVER. A. MONTH. to download. The whole time the photos app was being very cagey about when it would bother to download. To an M1 iMac. With an 500mbit fiber connection and connected via ethernet.

I think they do that on purpose to discourage people from quitting icloud. They want to keep you dependent on their cloud storage and they REALLY don't want you taking your files back.

I fucking hate icloud. I hate the way apple uses dark patterns and is so naggy about having an icloud membership when using an iPhone. I hate their crappy cloud syncing software too.

I ended up back on icloud later because, well, reasons... but I moved my own photo/video syncing over to onedrive. Now let's not get ahead of ourselves - one drive is a piece of crap too. But at least it's consistent on all platforms. And it's cheap as fuck.

Agreed on the dark patterns. I’m pretty adamant about staying on the free 5GB plan. So once a year or so my backup fails and I have to spend half an hour fighting with their intentionally terrible UI to reduce its size.

> I think they do that on purpose to discourage people from quitting icloud.

I think they just haven't updated the CPU/bandwidth-saving provisions that have been in the products for years. The same issues happen if you are staying on iCloud and syncing to new devices. I know that I have a gigabit ethernet connection to a machine that is not doing anything else, but the app doesn't have a way to tell it that.

Yup. iCloud is just my most recent photos. Once my 200gb starts getting full, I go back and delete photos and videos year by year until i'm down to the last year or two. My entire library is still backed up to a NAS which has offsite backup as well as google photos.

I feel really okay with this, but I'm not okay with is that there isn't language to talk transparently about it. Facebook does the same thing (or did, because I haven't used Facebook in a long time), if you copy link to image, you can just forward that, even if the post is private.

This is pretty inherent in image sharing, though. You can just download the image, or if the website limits that you can take a screenshot (let's not get into the debate about DRM and assume that it doesn't work).

Where should you draw the line? Time limited link sharing? Login based doesn't work because you can't share with Grandma - she doesn't know how to login.

We need words and descriptions of these basic patterns, and better ways to Intuit which is in use.

I think the phrase used here quite often is "security through obscurity" when it comes to links. The question is whether people feel comfortable with family photos falling under that principle. They're obviously not meant for public consumption, but the feeling of privacy invasion if a random person stumbled on them is going to vary from person to person. If one was totally comfortable with them being public and has zero reservations about random folks peeking on them, then I'd be surprised if there weren't an even sturdier way to do this publicly (through Flickr or just an open FTP link – but that loses some of the convenience of just an iCloud album for some people).

Securely-generated unique links aren't security by obscurity at all - They are literally the same as any password or private key being unique and high entropy. The security problem is inherent with any data that is shared widely.

By most standards im fairly security conscious. IE: No listening devices/alexa/google home in the house. For the most part no cameras or mic's inside (obviously cant get past the phone thing). Generally i prefer to self host stuff (ie: my security cams are local only and have no interenet access.)

That said I DID setup a public shared album to share to a Dakboard....Its also one i share with family.

The URL is so long, from a privacy standpoint its less a concern. The facial details are already on the internet due to family sharing stuff on facebook etc. None of the photos are particularly revelealing and nothing i wouldnt care if they were on a billboard...So meh. I doubt i could be targeted to find it and anyone stumbling across it wont see anything they wouldnt see if they drove by my house and saw my kids playing in the front yard. We also dont religiously post to it, so its not like anyone is going to glean we are out of town because of something we put there.

TL:DR - meh, not much a concern on my end, despite other concerns that may border on tinfoil.

I’m mildly surprised that this isn’t an official product. I have half a dozen relatives I’d give “AirFrames” to if Apple made them or let a third party do it, especially if they had decent handling of Live Photos.

The keywords that you would want to enter into your preferred search engine are:

   Digital Picture Frame

At this point in time that is already a regular product category. The OP could just have bought one, but chose the DIY path.

But none with an official fruit logo!

Show me one that hooks up directly to iCloud though. We got one for grandparents and its just full of proprietary crap specific to that app.

We kinda got something like this working for a relative. They have an "Aura" frame, and in their app you can set a watch folder/album. So we have a shared iCloud album set as the source and it automatically updates based on the images in that shared album.

Yeah, we use an Aura hooked up to Google Photos rather than iCloud, but I think it's similar from the Aura UX perspective. It's super easy to use, and the photos just show up in the frame rotation whenever we add a photo to the corresponding album in Google Photos (which we already use for backing up and organizing photos).

The problem here is that iCloud is the proprietary crap. They don't offer an appropriate API to get photos out. It'd be easier if you were starting with pictures in something more accessible.

That said, I think Aura frames will sync from iCloud via their phone app. Not sure how well it works.

> They don't offer an appropriate API to get photos out.

There's this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/photokit ("The framework provides access to photos on the person’s device and in iCloud.")

If you want to use undocumented APIs on non-Apple devices directly, there are projects like https://github.com/steilerDev/icloud-photos-sync and https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... that appear to be able to do this.

I've got an app that uses that to upload to S3. It's pretty straightforward.

Yes, you have to build an app that runs on a device owned by someone with access to the album.

Google Photos, by comparison, has a REST API.

My MIL has one and loves it. It even plays Live Photos.

There are multiple apps that will keep your iCloud Photos synced to various blob storage services. If you just want to maintain a copy or have direct access to photos, that will be a lot easier than a webservice API anyway.

Look up the "Aura frame". It syncs with Google photos and iCloud photos. Works great.

I wanted to get a simple, high quality digital frame for some older relatives and I had a hard time coming up with many options to choose from. It seemed like there were two groups of frames. Amazon cheapies and $600+ art frames. If you just want a nice 10" inch digital frame of high quality and at least moderate privacy from random apps with photo access good luck.

Not really. Software for each of them is clunky. You have to first buy one which is wifi enabled. Then you have to download an app from manufacturer and create a login password. Then you have to manually move/upload photos from camera roll to the corresponding app. After this, you have to to back to digital photo frame interface, select the appropriate picture and then tap "display this photo".

All of this should be one step. Ideally Like airdrop. I say "share" and it should magically show up on the photo frame. I should be able to download pics from reddit/imgur and display it on photo frame using a CLI/API.

Yeah, and almost all of them suck, in terms of build quality, features, privacy and software.

Which of those integrate with iCloud? Generic picture frames tend to either use USB or their own cloud services/mobile apps, and the exceptions are things like this guy had to do making the album public which many people aren’t willing to do.

The official product is E-Ink Spectra, as of 2023 it has a complete colour spectrum. Not cheap, though.

https://myereader.net/e-ink-spectra-6.html

https://youtu.be/TEqTg-Pjiag

Edit: And I don't know of any consumer-ready solutions.

I haven't dug into it enough to see if there's an iPhoto integration, but the Aura frames - generally - have good UX and image quality. They've universally been a hit with grandparents.

I wish Apple would let you do it with old iPads. I know there are apps you can use but it’s a notably inferior experience to a dedicated frame.

I have a second generation (I think) iPad mini that can barely run most web sites and has an OS version too old for most apps. Would be a great boost to Apple’s claims for caring about the environment.

> I know there are apps you can use but it’s a notably inferior experience to a dedicated frame.

Can you elaborate on how it's inferior? I was thinking of doing this and imagined it'd be straightforward with Single App Mode.

I'd love for someone to prove me wrong here but I have a Google Home that I'd like to replace with an iPad. One thing it does beyond just showing pictures is brighten and dim the screen according to ambient light. When the lights are off it dims entirely into a night mode-like display that just shows the time. I've not seen an iOS app capable of the same (I'm not even sure if API access allows it?)

Excellent question.

> I've not seen an iOS app capable of the same (I'm not even sure if API access allows it?)

I don't believe apps can change system brightness settings themselves, but iOS does have an auto-brightness feature, and the app can additionally dim images or change what's displayed based on brightness or movement (using Camera access), time of day, and other signals.

They can, here’s the API to do so: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiscreen/161...

If you're open to donating it, you can give it to an elderly care home of your choice, so the home can use it for WiFi FaceTime. For examples see https://BoldContacts.org.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aura-frames/id990062908

I didn’t check to see if it can play from a photo stream directly, because I prefer to use the share button in Photos to send to the app. It handles Live Photos just fine, and will put vertical photos side by side.

The killer function for me would be a private shared folder so new pictures would automatically go to the grandparents. If the Aura software does that, I might have to replace the ones they have currently.

I have a Google Photos album (shared with a few close family members) that automatically adds photos of my daughter and syncs them with the Aura frames her grandparents have. We've had this setup for the last two years and it works really well. I think it's literally the use-case Aura is targeting.

I don’t use Google any more but it looks like they have the same functionality for iCloud. I’ll have to give that a try since it’d be perfect for our older relatives.

I just have Google One or whatever, and have my photos synced to both services. Then I use the Google home assistant frames. They're pretty good:

- big enough but not intrusive

- go off automatically at night

- doubles as audio assistant

Overall, it works really well for us.

I have been working on adding an image gallery wideget to the The Invisible Smart Screen (https://shop.invisible-computers.com)

The images look surprisingly good, even on the relatively small, black-and-white display! It definitely has its own aesthetic.

I need to hurry up and ship this! In the meantime, if you're a dev, you can probably use the image url widget to build your own image gallery: https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-calendar/image...

10,000 times this. I've bought a handful of Nixplays for my family members, share pictures to them, etc... but an apple ecosystem solution would be great.

It's a good gift idea but seems like a lot of trouble to build and maintain a consumer friendly version for what would be a relatively cheap product. Because I can't imagine people paying hundreds of dollars for that.

What he build looks cool but he set it up for his parents and if you were to sell it to them directly it would have to work out of the box. They'd have to be able to share the pictures with the frame with airdrop or something like that. Or maybe an SD card slot for Android users. Anything beyond that will be too complicated for the average user.

> Because I can't imagine people paying hundreds of dollars for that.

We're talking apple customers here. I just spent $300 on "air pods." Would I spend $300 on a two pack of AirFrames? Very maybe! The value of sharing pics with grandparents is huge, especially for those of us without facebook.

There are already good products out there and I doubt Apple could make much money off of it anyway. If it’s not at least a billion dollar business, why would they even consider it?

Edit: maybe if they make it a HomePod too it would make sense? Just please fix Siri first.

Small promo here but: the inability to make collaborative photo albums without some onerous signup/login/auth flow was one that that recently inspired me to make this really simple moodboard website:

https://mood.site

When you got to the site (a SPA) it generates a new view/edit url for you. You can immediately drag photos onto the page to add to the gallery, remove them, etc. If you share the edit link with someone else, they can do all the same things. However if you share the link without the edit portion, the site is view only. The API is also public and just uses the edqit key query string for auth (check the network traffic), so I've been building a few apps on top of this as a sort of ad-hoc collaborative CDN thing.

I'm also working to build something similar to OP for my own grandparents and use mood.site as the image backend.

For those who want less tikering: Two 24 inch monitors bought from a design house auction connected to 3rd Gen Chromecasts.

They automatically boot up and display a Google Photos album that contains pictures of the family and pets. These monitors are set to power on at 8 AM and off at 10 PM.

Initially my wife hated the idea of having two monitors in the living room. But after I put them in place, we both found it is a constant reminder of good times - which was helpful in many subtle and unexpected ways.

…or buy a cheap digital picture frame from <mass market retailer>.

When my g-parents passed, and the family moved away, we bought everyone a cheap digital frame linked to a shared family album. They’re like 50-200$ depending on size. My grandmother was always bringing the family together, and we wanted to honor that with way to see each other across geographies.

Our chosen company’s albums have an email address that you email a photo to, and it displays on everyone’s frame. Very easy for everyone to contribute.

What brand and model did you buy? I've been looking for something like this for my family.

I got an "Aura" one. It works well and supports connecting a google photos album.

I think it’s NixPlay. I think they’re commodified though so I don’t know how much brand matters.

This is basically the main value prop behind Samsung's "Frame" series of TVs (but you also use it as at TV). People who love them love them.

What is a "design house auction"?

It sounds like a museum auction or something? If so, that sounds like a nice way to promote an environment to enjoy things. Would make a great entrance/foyer hallway feature.

Design firms frequently upgrade their hardware. So you can frequently find great hardware at very low prices. Also snagged a fully loaded Mac Pro trashcan for $1200 back in 2017 when they all went for the iMac Pros.

I spent $50 for each monitor and additional $50 for 2 x Chromecasts.

Net out, 2 x 24” auto-updating photo frames for <$200.

Wow that's extremely good value.

Where did you end up finding the auctions for these? Contact the design firms directly?

+1 for Google Photos and Chromecast or Nest Hub

I take photos on my iPhone, Google photos automatically uploads and I can set my Google devices to show a specific album or a "highlight" reel which is pretty awesome. Not only does it show recent photos, but also photos from the same time the previous year (ala social media "memories"). It's a wonderful, automatic memory machine!

More info here: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9136992?hl=en

Nice! The wood frame makes all the difference. Any way to add auth so it doesn't have to be a publicly shared album?

Might do the same with a cheap/used OLED android tablet, though I like the minimalism and power consumption of the e-ink tablet

The device is running an Android app, rather than an OS and app optimized for an always-on device.

I wonder whether the power consumption is much lower than that of a regular tablet?

Come on, Isn't Android, the mobile OS, optimized for always on devices?

I guess, but perhaps having an app in the foreground increases power usage? For example, if this app accesses the network a lot (not just when it's time to update the image) this would result in the wifi chipset being awake for longer.

The device is an eReader. The majority of battery power on tablets goes to keeping the screen on and updating it 60 times per-second.

The eInk screen is low power to change, and requires zero power to stay on.

The device sleeps between screen refreshes, and the WiFi power use in minimal.

My nook art screen lasts over a week with refreshes over the day. I don't know of a tablet which has a screen-on time for that long.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/turning-an-eink-screen-into...

Awesome. I now see that the app's Play store listing explains this:

  When started, Electric Sign will download and display a user-specified web page, then go to sleep for a specified number of (minutes/hours/days). It will then wake up, re-download and refresh the web page, and go back to sleep again.

> I bought this pack of 8x10 frames off Amazon

Thrift stores (in the U.S.) are gold mines for picture frames. And they probably cost you only a few bucks.

You are absolutely correct. When I built my eink display calendar, I sourced picture frame for $2 at a local Goodwill store.

Interesting. I have an old nook in the drawer.

I made a picture frame project a long time ago (> 15 years according to file timestamps) https://agol.dk/elgaard/picframe.html

I think it is overkill to use a browser just to show images. feh still works great if you are running linux/unix

I also still would prefer to sync pictures using ssh and maybe rsync on top.

Random memory/story, when I was a junior in highschool (so 2007), my friend and I coverted two old laptops to picture frames, using shallow shadow boxes.

I took Dillo? Linux, and customized the squashfs (or whatever it was at the time) to run a wifi setup script from outside the squashfs that configured wifi, connected as a samba to their desktop computer with photos in folders, and then would loop through photos with, feh, I think? Definitely my first real use of Linux and probably another pivotal moment in setting me up for the 16 years since then.

Thing ran up until a few years ago when the home wifi got replaced with Unifi and the house got re-decorated. I think I even took the CF drive (because yes, I even got CF->IDE adapters) out and imaged it about 6 months ago, for nostalgia's sake. Anyway, this is a super neat project - re-used hardware, eink, and I'm getting to start to really appreciate glancing around and thinking of friends/memories. And though I know I'd end up giving it away if I built one, I am regretting giving away my old Kindle now!

A couple years ago, I did this with an old Chromebook.

To me the interesting part of an e-ink frame is that it wouldn't require any battery/cables (otherwise you might as well just get a regular digital frame)

I would love if there were a product where you just program the frame with a picture once by plugging it into your phone and using an app

Then you never worry about batteries/cables and you can always change the image later

To me that is the killer app

At that point, why not print a few photos, put one in an easy to change photo frame, and spend a couple minutes swapping them out now and then?

My brother tried to get my dad setup with Apple Music which he spent an afternoon frustrated with. OK, the UI isn't the best but I'm not sure anyone else's is better. I ended up getting him a desktop CD player, gave him a bunch of CDs I don't need any longer, and he's very happy. Sometimes the old (OK not quite) analog approaches are better.

ADDED: My (younger) brother rolled his eyes a bit and was a bit surprised CDs even existed any longer but sometimes simpler approaches really are better. And I'm the one with engineering degrees :-)

For anyone who wants a hackable e-ink display, the Inkplate combines a recycled Kindle display with an ESP32 (which also supports the Arduino framework). You can also buy them with both a 3D printed frame and a battery already attached, so all you need to do is program it.

(No affiliation, although I recently bought an Inkplate 10.)

This is really cool! I love pet projects like this. Although, I can't help but wonder why OP didn't put a frame around an ancient Fire tablet or something else with an LCD screen and web browsing out of the box.

Seems like it would result in a better experience (color) with much less work and about the same price point.

Colour e-ink displays exist. We don't live in spaceships yet but this is just as good.

You’d have to constantly power an LCD display.

With an e-ink device you could create something that only needs to be recharged 1-2 times a year, or that is passively charged off your WiFi.

> passively charged off your WiFi

I had no idea this is possible. Is there a name for power-over-wifi?

> Is there a name for power-over-wifi?

Yes, the name for power over wifi is power over wifi (or PoWiFi).

But doesn't look like it's used at all in anything and uses a special "PoWiFi router"(?)

https://modernmobile.cs.washington.edu/docs/powifi.pdf

I thought about this! An old iPad also wouldn’t have to be rooted to show a website.

But ultimately I wanted something that could be in a bedroom without glowing at night, which e-ink felt better suited for.

While I'm sure this is great as a nerd project, I can't imagine giving someone this as a gift over, say, a $30 digital picture frame which is better and more functional in basically every way.

what about battery life, picture that looks like a printed photo, a thin frame and something thats not yet another screen to look at.

As a parent your perception of value changes. I would much rather have a pile of garbage my daughter spent hours creating than something drop shipped from China at any price point or functionality. I can imagine the authors parents showing all their friends and family the frame their nerd child made for them and explaining that while it’s not as functional as the $30 frame from China their child made it from a used nook and was so excited about how it uses e-something that uses less battery or something.

The $30 frame would go in the corner until the plug unseated and then a few years later into a drawer.

I think it depends. My dad would absolutely prefer something that just worked. He certainly appreciates things I make and do but, even the books I've written, he appreciates that I've written something and leaves it out in his apartment but I'm quite sure he's only flipped through the semi-technical content.

I bet he leaves it out in his apartment more reliably than if you gave him a book off Amazon. The fact he can’t access the contents of the book isn’t the point. It’s that he takes pride in something he wouldn’t normally read is because it’s yours. That’s why a DIY project for your parents is better than a shrink wrapped piece of future garbage.

Sure. And a book has a cover with the author's name on it.

But he really wouldn't thank me (not that he'd say so) for some DIY project that wasn't as transparent to use as commercial versions--and he'd end up not using it. He appreciates that I've put together the photo collections given that I've scanned and kept a lot of photos he wouldn't other have access to but he'd like actually displaying them to be as easy as possible.

Yes, but that’s your family where you write books. If you’re a nerd that makes eink displays of photos, I bet their family appreciates their children just as much as your father appreciates you. The nice thing about eink for this is once your family member eventually unplugs or somehow disconnects the device from the network; it’ll continue to display the last photo.

So great to see interest in ePaper screens. Picture frame projects specifically seem to be gathering steam. Shameless plug: I built a solar ePaper frame that displays Google Photo albums or loads pictures from an sd-card. https://jamez.it/blog/2023/05/16/version-2-of-my-solar-power...

I have tried to build one out of the PocketBook Basic Touch e-reader last October. It has way less functionality tought...

https://www.malgregator.com/post/pocketframe/

https://hackaday.com/2023/11/13/obsolete-e-reader-gets-new-l...

On a sidenote, what happened to all the Gallery 3 eink devices we were supposed to get this year? I can't wait to finally have a proper comic book e-ink reader.

Good question. Having had a quick look at my favorite search engine's results, screen responsiveness and ghosting seem to have been major issues, which is why many people suspect manufacturers are abandoning the technology.

https://goodereader.com/blog/e-paper/what-happened-to-all-th...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ereader/comments/15s7tgo/what_happe...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ereader/comments/zms0br/new_eink_ga...

I'm curious how long the battery lasts. Since it's Android based I presume it doesn't have a deep-sleep option. Ideally I'd want it to wake up once every 10-30 minutes, fetch a frame to display from a LAN server and go back to sleep.

I know it's doable with a custom e-ink display and something like an ESP32 but reusing an e-reader that already has a nice frame and everything is so much nicer.

> iCloud photo albums have no API. However, if you share an iCloud photo album to a public link, you can use the Developer Tools to inspect the API requests Apple is making to get the photos.

That's clever. I tried something similar to get shared Calendar (Apple) events for the eInk project I put together. I wish there were a better, less hackish API I could have called.

Apple Calendar server uses CalDAV. If you could see the data after authenticating it should be quite parse-able. You could also share your iCloud calendar with an account that is logged in on hardware you own like an old Mac, and use the EventKit framework to send copies of the data to whatever custom server you wanted.

Yep, just switch the calendar to "public" and you can just use it with any CalDav client or icalendar libraries like https://github.com/pat/calendav. Nothing hacky about that, just a standard.

This is really neat! I have a receipt printer I’ve been meaning to do something cool with—I think it can even handle images.

I built something similar with raspberry pi zero 2 w. Instead of showing icloud album, I fetch a paper-edition newspaper frontpage using headless chrome and display it. The display is made by waveshare, quite on the pricy side.

So you had to inspect the network requests Apple was making with the Developer Tools. Nice that you got it working. I would have assumed they had an API for that already

Overall, looks like a nice and fun project

very nice. Years ago I did something like this with an old broken-but-working macbook for showing photos and cinemagraphs in a frame. Similar matte, but I added a webserver so it would run offline.

Very nice. If you don't have the time to build one yourself, you can also buy them here:

https://framelabs.eu/

Note: I sell them.

These don’t support an iCloud album do they, only photo uploading over WiFi?

Actually my devices can download from remote sources as well. An iCloud bridge is be necessary, though.

blahhh i really want to do a larger format one for art but scared of the hardware part of it not being that technical. seems like there are more people doing it.

Visionect makes some excellent eInk displays that take care of all the hardware for you. The tradeoff is they're not cheap.

I want to do something similar as a gift for my brother. Did you consider removing the bezel of the nook? How hard would that be?

This made me think... it would be awesome to build for my parents a picture frame that could show family photos, and was integrated with an LLM, such that e.g. my mother could say "now I want to see a photo of us during last years's vacations in Italy" or where a given person appeared, or things like that.

It would be quite a bit of work, though! Something to add to the pile of personal projects that never seems to progress :-)

Maybe you can try the automated classifying function of iPhone?

Very neat! Did a similar project with AI generated images. Fun for days with this kind of cheap hardware!

This is really cool! How many photos are in your album? Do more photos slow it down?

I mean cool but... but really wasn't expecting shoving an eink tablet in a frame lol, was excited for a new big eink display with esp32 or raspi

Can someone explain to me what the obsession with e-ink is on hackernews?

I understand that it has a lot of great qualities to it but it so far out of price range that it negates the upside. Or am I completely misreading the benefits?

Why did I get downvoted - I am asking a legit question. I don't understand.

I suspect because you came across as judgmental and opinionated more than questioning. I'm not saying you meant to, just that is how it could read.

> I suspect because you came across as judgmental and opinionated

No, they did not.

Note I said it wasn't clear that they meant to be, just that you can see how people (those downvoting) could read it that way. It was quite categorical, and "obsessive" has negative connotations.

e-ink has a cool and unique aesthetic that LCDs simply can't offer. It also, theoretically, can be permanently displaying information without being connected to the grid.

Neither of these two things are tradeoffs for price - a higher price can't get you an LCD that provides the e-ink aesthetic, and while you could buy a big solar/battery array for LCD, it'd be heavier/less portable and would be more expensive overall, anyway.

Also, the cost is basically zilch:

>For this project I went with a Nook Simple Touch Reader. You can find them on eBay or Facebook Marketplace for $10-$30 used.

$30 for a hobby project is nothing. You can spend more than that on wood.

It's hard to explain, but I also have a bit of a love of e-ink. I'd describe it as more of a fascination than an obsession. I think it's because it so closely resembles its analogue equivalent (paper & paint) and draws no power. For me, the holy grail will be when I can build, for less than 50 USD, a colour e-ink photo frame, of at least 12 inches diagonal, that I can wall-mount and have it display my photo memories each day, forever changing. Seriously excited about that day.

PS: I un-down-voted you. I think it's a fair question.

Super cool work!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com