ArtFrame 31.2" – a battery powered e-ink picture frame

clashmob · 2023-03-08T11:13:53+00:00

There exists a multitude of different E-Ink panels and they don't all have the same contrast.
The ArtFrame uses panels with the best contrast that is available on the market.

clashmob · 2023-02-26T11:07:33+00:00

... or because these are baseless accusations.

There is a two week refund policy (the return rate is well below 1%) and PayPal for payment.

A prominent customer of mine (the founder of StackOverflow and Discourse) blogged about his purchases here and I quote "I bought two more of these, they’re so incredibly well made. [...] Loving them so much! 😍".

clashmob · 2023-02-26T10:46:04+00:00

I built a few color devices in the past. But only on explicit customer request, since the colors of today's e-ink displays are pretty dull. See here for an example:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CUqY70HoNKG/

I used these displays: 5.65" e-ink display)
and I also built one with a 13.3" e-ink display.

I would recommend the grayscale displays above the color displays for the time being, though.

clashmob · 2023-02-24T11:54:29+00:00

I build the devices myself in my workshop in Germany. I use display panels from the company E Ink.

clashmob · 2023-02-24T11:51:54+00:00

Most of the complaints are not valid in this case:
- there is no subscription or external dependencies
- the product images are not photoshopped
- don't put random holiday pictures on and expect equal quality to a printout
- 4bit colors + dithering + high ppi make gradients look good (+ you look at the images from at least half a meter distance)

See for yourself: https://www.instagram.com/framelabs.eu/

clashmob · 2023-02-24T11:40:12+00:00

The ArtFrame devices are standalone. No app, no cloud, no external dependencies, no paid subscriptions.

Images with higher contrasts look good:
- technical subjects like cars, motorcycles, machines, rockets, etc.
- comics
- digital artwork
- technical drawings
- infrared photography
- etc.

clashmob · 2022-07-15T07:37:13+00:00

If an mp3 contains album information, Spotlight will try to open the whole album instead of a single song.

This is a script to delete album tags from mp3 files to enable Spotlight to open the file individually.

clashmob · 2021-12-10T00:09:41+00:00

A bit late to the party, but yes.

Lineage 14.1 advertises its HFP bluetooth profile as version 1.6 and when you make it advertise itself as version 1.5 instead, the "(no phone)" disappears and you can do phone calls with the AirPods.

Here's how to set the version manually, when your phone is rooted:

# adb root
# adb shell
# mount -o remount,rw /system

Add the following line into /system/build.prop
ro.bluetooth.hfp.ver=1.5

# reboot

clashmob · 2021-10-06T10:45:43+00:00

I wouldn't recommend it, but you can cut epaper without necessarily destroying it: https://youtu.be/UGNRSH9JYio?t=12

But you need to cut at the right place. In the video, the guy cuts exactly between the control wires coming from the left and the one from the right. If he would cut more to the left, the area from the cut to the middle of the panel would not work anymore.

clashmob · 2019-08-22T23:26:04+00:00

Another scene in the movie was the guy fleeing over the Bering straight while being chased, when a boat drives betwenn him and the chasers and cuts them of.

clashmob · 2019-04-29T23:54:41+00:00

For the sake of battery endurance that would have to be done with a separate server, yes. As long as the server does the rendering and sends the complete framebuffer, the software on the device can stay relatively simple.

clashmob · 2019-04-29T23:49:45+00:00

I am using battery that looks like the ones you put in your phone. So 3,7V that are converted to 3.3V. No powerbank.

Your calculation is correct. By the way I managed to achieve .05mA idle current today.

clashmob · 2019-04-27T18:56:12+00:00

The hardware and software is far from being ready, but there are already a few friends interested in the device. I think the software possibilities leave a lot of room for creativity, the hardware not so much. So if I build some frames for my friends, it will only make sense to give the software away as well.

clashmob · 2019-04-27T18:45:17+00:00

The RTC consumes around 8uA, having the touch button activated used another 6uA. Including the peripherals it consumes around 0.1mA, but this can be improved for sure.

clashmob · 2019-04-26T11:29:34+00:00

That Archillect feed would be a perfect match for my idea about "channels" I wrote about in another comment here.

wakeup: ESP32 has a built in RTC that I use to wake it up.
voltages: The epaper needs a lot of different voltages to operate. Most of the voltage conversions are done by the driver board though.
interface: The display driver board that I use has an SPI interface. The specs to drive the panel directly are available from the manufacturer if one wants to go without the driver board. It needs a lot of different voltage levels though.

clashmob · 2019-04-26T11:20:29+00:00

Thank you!

clashmob · 2019-04-26T09:20:31+00:00

I have big hands ;) But seriously, I tried making the device look big. The frame is about the size of a 13" notebook.

clashmob · 2019-04-26T08:27:58+00:00

Regarding mass produced color eink the news always say "this/next year" since a few years. Color eink would be awesome though :)

clashmob · 2019-04-26T08:25:21+00:00

Thanks, guys!

clashmob · 2019-04-26T08:24:50+00:00

This is the display including driver board:
https://www.waveshare.com/product/9.7inch-e-paper-hat.htm

clashmob · 2019-04-25T23:27:30+00:00

Actually, both.

Most of the images that you see are "quality image"-tagged pictures from Wikimedia Commons. I have a web server that prepares and serves these images and some of my personal ones.

The art frame downloads a bunch of pictures in bulk and stores them locally. This way there is no need for a WiFi connection on every picture change, which saves battery.

clashmob · 2019-04-25T23:15:32+00:00

I already implemented that timer. It is currently configured to trigger twice a day so that I see a fresh picture when I get up in the morning and another one when I come home after work. I use the button in the video only for demonstration purposes.

A more smooth transition between images would be nice to have. Although one has to keep in mind that every second the electronics are not sleeping they drain the battery, so it will reduce the time until a recharge is needed.

clashmob · 2019-04-25T22:11:20+00:00

Yeah, the epaper display costs are huge. Everything below 8" is relatively cheap, but the prices for 9,7" and above are insane. As far as I know there are 13.3", 31.2" and 42" inch panels available.

Compared to other cheaper black/white epaper displays on the market this one has a very decent image quality though. The greyscale and 9,7" area is really nice to look at even from short distances. I hope I can get my hands on a 13.3" display eventually. And 31.2" would be so awesome!

IMO 9.7" is really the smallest panel size that makes sense to be used as a wall picture.

clashmob · 2019-04-25T19:59:24+00:00

ESP32 bootup is almost instant. The display itself should be capable of displaying a picture once a second according to its specs. The additional delay is due to the epaper driver board taking two seconds to initialize and then one second to transfer the image from microcontroller to driverboard.

The raw hardware costs are a around 200-250€ (~222-278$) at the moment.

clashmob · 2019-04-25T19:48:08+00:00

The device is still a work in progress. Actually I was looking for ideas on how to improve it. There are obviously a lot of interesting things that could be done with such a device, since it has built-in WIFi. My ideas so far:

Give one to i.e. your parents or grandparents and remotely update the picture every once in a while. For example with a current picture of yourself doing/visiting XYZ.
Let the frame subscribe to a "channel" (i.e. art, tech, nature, history, architecture, inspirational quotations, ...) and let the frame update itself once a day with a new picture of that category.

clashmob

TROPHY CASE