IdeaPaint allows you to write all over the wall | Hacker News Reader

IdeaPaint allows you to write all over the wall

humansinvent.com

47 pointsleonardRenter30 comments

There are several brands of dry-erase paint on the market. Where I work, it's on the conference room walls. They need to be repainted periodically as especially the red markers leave a residue behind that gradually builds up. And there's always some bozo with a sharpie.

Also, read the instructions carefully. Some of these contain isocyanates and need special handling.

$200+ for 50 square feet tin. Pricey as well. How often does your company repaint?

  always some bozo with a sharpie

Protip: If you go back over the Sharpie with the dry-erase marker, usually you can wipe off both nicely.

Also worth noting that it really, really stinks. Have a hotel booked if you're doing it at home.

We did the old Prismatic office with it a few years ago and had to evacuate for I think about 3 days (with the windows open & fans on the whole time). Crazy smelly.

I was about to say this. I bought a small can to do in one small area of our kitchen. I opened it up and my immediately shut down this project. We have a no VOCs policy in our house and this gave off a ton of fumes.

My experience with IdeaPaint has been completely dependent on who installs it. Just slapping it up on a wall is a sure way to ruin your walls. For best results, sand or otherwise smooth your walls and then apply multiple layers of the paint. After that, buy a subscription to this stuff: http://www.amazon.com/Expo-Non-Toxic-Whiteboard-Cleaner-8180...

Beyond that, writing on the walls is an excellent creative outlet.

Yeah, we were totally unprepared when we applied it to our wall... it ended up horrible.

The folks at Magic Whiteboard in the UK have a good half way house product if you didn't fancy painting the walls:

http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/category/magic-whiteboard/

They also do a clear version:

http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/product/magic-erasable-clea...

I remember seeing them on the BBC's Dragon's Den and winning over Deborah Meaden and Theo Paphitis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Works brilliantly so long as you remember exactly which walls you've coated :)

The problem is training your kids to only draw on those walls :)

... or coat every wall, furniture and surface in the house.

>> ... or coat every wall, furniture and surface in the house.

... and never take them to anybody else's house.

And don't let your kids at the sharpies.

Do the markers leave residue (as with most dry-erase boards)?

A lot more residu.. Basically ruined the wall

The problem is that walls are not as smooth as whiteboards. You have a lot of dents and hills. The stuff smooths it out a little bit, but it's still there. The markers will leave a trace in the dents, and I was unable to clean it.

The wall is a big mixture of black green and red.

Besides the dents, it also doesn't come off 100% from the coating (similar to normal whiteboards)

Is it easy to paint over, either with more IdeaPaint, or regular paint?

Link to the Ideapaint website: http://www.ideapaint.com/

My school has whiteboard paint on some of the hallway walls and my dad just painted a wall in his new office with it. A few things:

1) Markers leave more residue with dry-erase walls vs. a normal dry errase board. I suspect that this has to do with the less-smooth texture of the wall

2) It's expensive, like prohibitively so. Expect to spend thousands to paint a single room.

Philips had a working concept with a beamer some years ago. It was called the "Drag Draw". Can't find much about it but here is a movie of the device in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WsPncFFrRw

If you could store the resulting drawing into svg or something, it would be great for brainstorming. Still waiting for a company to produce it.

A few years ago I worked on a digitized whiteboard system that could be projected onto any surface. Took input from a Kinect, or other input system and recorded the history of the entire life of the canvas into a database that could be exported. Even recorded audio and video for final conclusions and wrap up.

I think we learned a lot of HCI lessons from that project, mostly about guerilla arm. Smart boards can already do what you're looking for but they're insanely expensive and far from portable which is what we we're tasked to "beat".

Oh, forgot the best part, they were networked ,~20 tables at a time and used a server to facilitate connections and store sessions between each other.

Point being, what you're looking for exists but is expensive or requires some custom development of your own. I'd open source mine but my grant won't let me do that.

s/guerilla/gorilla/ for anyone reading this and failing to make sense of that statement :)

Ah, good catch, was typing it on the T and smartphone auto corrected. Thanks.

This is cool, but I've seen it in Home Depot a couple years ago. Why is it just now getting attention?

Marketing push?

We have ideapaint all over the walls and marker pots all over the place at work. It's great to be able to convert a hallway discussion into a whiteboard design on a whim. There are designs and diagrams on the walls everywhere, it's like engineer graffiti. It's fantastic.

We've got this in the conference room at our office. The first time we put it on we did not sand the walls smooth enough before painting, And it ended up being difficult to dry erase. We re-sanded & reapplied the paint, and it's been fantastic.

Also handy for entertaining visiting nieces and nephews or our employees' kids.

There are some cheap panel materials available at Home Depot/Lowes that work great as cheap whiteboards. In our first year of grad school, we spent <$30 on a 3'x4' or larger sheet, screwed it to the wall in our apartment, and got to work.

The same idea would be an interesting google glass app, virtually draw on the wall. It would be cheaper and potentially more useful...etc, but would not be decorative to those not tuned in, for good or bad.

Am I the only one that really dislikes writing on a white-board? I love the idea in practice but I always end up reaching for a sheet of white printing paper in the end.

Clear-coat is an awesome idea! I remember seeing this a while back, but only white was available. My kids are going to love this.

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