Whiteboard Alternative – The Bamboo Board | Hacker News Reader

Whiteboard Alternative – The Bamboo Board

imulus.com

100 pointscharliepark48 comments

Instead of working and working to get a decent surface finish with paints, we just get a big piece of lexan and put it over whatever we want the backdrop to be (usually just the wall of the room).

Lexan is clear, scratch resistant and super easy to erase.

What a cool idea! Thank you.

I see 4ft x 8ft sheets of "polycarbonate sheet from LEXAN" for US$167.00 at Home Depot. Is that comparable to what you're using? What's your source?

Something I did was to get a 4' x 8' board of something called either "shower board", "melamine board", or "hardboard" (depends on the store you're in). Here it is at Lowe's: http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?partNumber=16605-46498-3.... It's around $13. They're not as nice or durable as "real" whiteboards, but they work surprisingly well, considering their low cost.

In a Lowe's or a Home Depot, you can have them cut the board to a custom size, usually for $0.25 a cut (or free if you're polite). So I had them cut the board into three panels, each 48" x 32". (Also makes it easier to transport than a single 4' x 8' board.) And then I got some "mirror clips" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001KAKT1O/) for $2 or so (for a four-pack).

So for less than $20, you can have three mounted boards, each one being a pretty good size. And, actually, I only got one four-pack of clips, and kept the other two boards mobile, for moving around from one room to another.

So $15 for a mounted whiteboard and two mobile whiteboards. It's hard to beat that. (But I do think the bamboo boards look awfully nice.)

We use shower boards at the startup where I work, and we not only mount them on walls but also cut them into smaller whiteboards that we can carry around in "decks." We might take a blank deck into a conference room, work out a design on several mini-whiteboards, and then carry them back to our offices to refer to when coding.

A strange branch in the evolution of paper.

When I want a record of a whiteboard, I simply take a picture of it. Guards against accidental smear/erasure, too.

Not that taking them back and perhaps continuing to mark them up doesn't make sense, too.

The Home Depot stuff is way too thin. It will flex and bend when you try to write on it.

We got a bunch of 24" X 48" X 0.375" sheets from Online Metals (ironic, I know) and hung them up everywhere. They were a bit pricey and you could probably do with thinner but they look and work great.

http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=7459&step=4...

Edit: Just for info: Lexan is a brand name for polycarbonate plastic sheets. Plexiglass is acrylic. Lexan/polycarbonate is much harder, scratch resistant and more or less shatter proof. Plexi is soft, scratches easily and snaps into big jagged shards when bent too far or hit with something.

How does it compare to glass? After using a glass-front whiteboard, I find it almost painful to use anything else.

But make sure you do something about stiffness rather than just screwing it into the wall's studs. We got something similar to Lexan and it works, but it ripples a bit when you draw - not enough attachment points. (Also, not magentic, if you care.)

How is the readability from a distance? Between the grain of the individual boards and their color it seems like there is less contrast and more "noise" when compared to a generic white board.

They do look nice though.

Very pretty, and I love the idea, but the video implies to me that erasing might be difficult. Note how much they had to wipe to erase brand new writing. Either that's a bunch of grooves, or it's just a fair bit harder to erase than e.g. a normal whiteboard.

Use an old (red!) marker. Leave it on for a month. Then erase it and show me it erases well (with alcohol cleaners is fine, whatever works). That's real world use, not write-now, erase-in-seconds. Until then, I trust nothing but glass to actually erase, and have yet to see anything but glass beat standard whiteboards.

I know of at least one temporary dry erase surface that works well. It's a 3M dry erase "sheet" that comes in rolls. You can buy it from American science and surplus: http://www.sciplus.com/search.cfm/scategory/SFM/term/whitebo...

I have a 6' x 10' surface of it on my bedroom wall, and it works great, even for erasing old marker.

Could you tell us how easy it is to erase after leaving a message up for a week? I've seen whiteboard alternatives that erase fine at first, but are impossible to erase if you don't get to it in a day or two.

even with the old overwriting trick?

This. It's amazing what solvent will do.

Good trick! I'll try it the next chance I get. Still, it'd be nice to know I wouldn't have to resort to such measures.

Pretty cool, but iPad + Paper + stylus has almost completely replaced physical whiteboards for me. The ability to save/send/flip thru drawings is a killer feature that physical whiteboards can't deliver.

I tend to use whiteboards with a team who are all in the room with me, rather than as an individual (although I'm thinking of installing one in my home office, just to see how useful it would be). The iPad is less useful in this case, although I suppose you could get a big TV screen connected (or apple tv). Also, there are apps specifically designed to take and share photos of physical whiteboards…

The real killer for me is still the lag. Handwriting is just painful, although perhaps simple diagrams are not so bad? It seems to me that an Android tablet could distinguish itself by providing both very low lag with something like the Wacom accuracy. The iPad is unlikely to ever reach the ideal 1 ms lag -- I suspect the retina displays have relatively high response times (but have no evidence).

For the iPad, there is this app[0] that actually makes decent use of AirPlay: you can set the TV viewpoint separately from the iPad. Past that (no app can make eraser nub styli better), the Surface Pro might be worth a look, it packs a digitizer (no idea who's, likely Wacom or N-Trig).

[0] http://notetakerhd.com/

Agreed. Nothing beats a whiteboard for team work in a meeting.

There's a lot of variation in responsiveness between different apps. Have you tried Penultimate? You certainly may be more discerning than I, but I've found it to have almost no lag.

I think I must have very nearly every app of this type in the app store. All have noticeable lag with a jot pro stylus, though some are reasonable when just using a finger -- I guess the lag simply can't be seen in that case.

I find handwriting with my fingers to be a bit unnatural, unfortunately; it tends to break my flow.

That's really too bad. Although I'm happy with Penultimate, it's unfortunate that various sorts of latency rarely seems to be considered for consumer electronics.

have you tried syncpad? http://www.mysyncpad.com/ a friend of mine built it

If you're looking for an attractive alternative to whiteboards, chalkboard paint or glass have always been good options.

Indeed, isn't glass in front of the bamboo easier, cheaper and more proven?

Heck even faster. 5 days in startup time is like... Weeks.

Yes, we could have done glass. We considered grabbing recycled shower doors. Ultimately this solution felt better so we went with it. Still might try the shower door idea in the future.

Cabinet grade plywood would work too, it already has a great surface...

Never sacrifice function for form.

Magic Whiteboard is pretty cool too:

http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/

It's basically a roll of big white sheets that stick to walls without adhesive. They're also erasable/reusable.

Took off after appearing on Dragon's Den (a TV show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to investors):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QvguJJNilA

Those are great if you're bunkered down in a hotel conference room or something, but they really don't compare to a proper whiteboard. Erasure, in particular, but also size and wall imperfections..

Of course, they're no match for a permanent whiteboard - just another neat tool for startups who present in random places.

The article also mentioned that there's now a clear version of IdeaPaint, which is great news:

http://www.ideapaint.com/work/products/#ideapaint

Yep, still grossly expensive though. $225 for 50 square feet compares favorably to high quality whiteboards, but not to paint.

Yes, high tech engineered polymer coating, I know. :)

It's less than half that price at Lowe's Hardware:

  8 oz (10 sq ft) = $30
  17 oz (20 sq ft) = $50
  29 oz (40 sq ft) = $100

Free shipping on the larger two sizes.

I haven't used it yet, but I'm about to go to Sherwin Williams to get the recommended primer to stainless so I can paint whiteboards on the front of commercial freezer doors.

I don't know if the stuff I mentioned upthread, made by 3M, is the same stuff as magic whiteboard, but I find that it erases just fine, and is stiff and slick enough to make wall surface texture not a problem.

Another writing board variant: http://habrahabr.ru/post/132863/

Disregard text (or put it into some translator Ru->En), just look at the pictures. Basically the board is some hard base with blue paper on top of it, and all that covered with glass sheet. Write on it with white markers. The target was to make the board very similar to the blueprint.

Huh, it works wonders. I'll add a video to my blog post to show you how easy it is. Don't be a hater.

The critique was meant for using such a solution in long term or how long do you already use it?

This is a really really bad idea. I have one. They do not work well. It is extremely difficult to erase.

If you're looking for something different, they sell paint that can turn any wall into a chalkboard/whiteboard.

Article mentions they do not want to think whiteboards are hideous, so that's out. I do like the suggestion below to use glass, my previous office had that. It was a very nice touch aesthetically, even when not in use.

Did you make it yourself with the same whiteboard repair fluid that the author used? That seems to be the key, though I've never tried nor seen the product.

I've used glass over (x), but it's heavy and expensive in large sizes.

The cheapest portable whiteboard option is the laminated MDF sheets they sell at Lowes. $15 for a 4x8 foot sheet.

The whiteboard paint is merely OK...it's difficult to erase, unless your wall is glass smooth.

Chalkboards are beautiful but create way too much dust for use near computers.

> Did you make it yourself with the same whiteboard repair fluid that the author used?

No, it was an expensive thing off of Amazon. This thing:

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Seattle-Channel-Inches-Bamboo/dp...

I'll probably leave a shitty review when the thing pisses me off again.

Isn't this a completely different product from the OP? I don't see why its erasing properties would be at all related.

Well, they're both bamboo. If the OP's coating works better than whatever is on my thing, that's great. Just sharing my experience.

'cept, now that we get down to it, your experience was not "I have one"

Rackspace grew up on the laminated MDF sheets. They are not easy to erase, either, especially if the marker has set in. The top coat and the markers used really matter.

Yes, that's true. The brand of marker, and even the color of marker makes a big difference. Expo blue and green seem safest, with red distinctly unsafe. And burn in is real, though you can often get stuff clean with a decent vinegar based solution...but who wants to do that?

That's why the whiteboard repair fluid stuff sounds interesting. The only good options I've found for eraseability are a good expensive whiteboard (and even then you takes your chances) or glass (which you can paint the flip side of or put over wood, etc for aesthetics -- but it gets heavy and expensive, and I guess sort of dangerous, at large sizes).

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