Hah, not exactly what most people think when you use the word 'print' but then again ...
People have asked what is the impact of 'free' CPUs. Something Dave Rosenthal realized way back in the 90's was that the electronics for driving a display could be printed on the margins of the display and eliminate the need for a separate controller board. Having watched the evolution of displays and seeing Mary Lou Jepsen's work on the PixelQi and other screens it became fairly clear that it still made sense to use silicon for the controller and glass for the elements, but once you get to OLED technology (no backlight) and printing on plastic substrates then you reach the point where you can imagine something like this project but the size, weight, and thickness of a Polaroid picture rather something the size of a cigarette box.
At its simplest, imagine an OLED display driven by reading out an EPROM printed on the borders. Your camera encodes the image in the EPROM and then whenever you apply power to the "picture' it shows the one image.
Certainly something there to explore, a number of engineering challenges between there and a product though.
Definitely agree with you.. this was just a concept for me that I was able to build with off the shelf parts but this is exactly the type of discussion I was hoping to get going..
I've long imagined something like that: a card-sized (including thickness) full-color display devoted to displaying, say, an entire movie. Given ultra-thin displays like OLED, dirt cheap storage, and "free" dedicated processing, you could hand out videos like sales brochures or cheap paperbacks.
a sheet for a polaroid costs maybe $2 now, some of them even include a chemical battery to power the camera. it seems very plausible to me that a printed display/controller could hit parity with that.
I was expecting some thin e-ink-paper (Kindle like).
E-ink supports colors and videos nowadays. (unfortunately the ebook readers still use the older monochrome e-ink generation. e.g. Amazon has little initiative as the went with LCD Kindle Fire for video and colors)
I used to use make Apple ][ screen snapshots with glow in the dark silly putty, but they only lasted a minute or so. But while it lasted, you could perform all kinds of cool distortion effects, kind of like Kai Power Goo.
also I agree I use the word print loosely but I guess after seeing all those print functions in programming languages, I thought there was no better way to put it
This is one of those projects that at first, is easy to dismiss as "silly" or "useless". On the surface, sure. But looking at the imgur album and reading the comments (and I would imagine going to the website, etc - which I haven't done), it becomes clear (and the author even says so on the album) that this project ultimately served a larger purpose:
From start to finish, this project has helped the person develop a complete (or nearly so) set of manufacturing skills. An idea was taken from concept, on through a multitude of other steps (design, prototyping, software development, hardware development, etc), to producing a final working "product".
Now - it seems from the comments in the album that this isn't the authors first go at such a project, but it may have been one of the most complex or largest they have done. Regardless of that, it has helped them to hone and develop a complete set of skills very few people have.
Heck - I would encourage the author to try turning this project, or something similar, into a MOOC in some manner; I don't know if this is possible, or if it has been done before, but I bet there's a growing audience of people who'd love an all-in-one course to study to gain such skills. Part of the problem of implementing such a thing as a MOOC is whether a person has access to the needed tools and equipment; maybe that could be part of any pre-req's? Or, maybe people would pay for such a course, and parts or tools could be provided (kinda like those "boxed recipe meals" you can get)?
Ultimately, I liked seeing this project; even though to me it seemed "frivolous", it really is a physical form of "random play coding exercises" software engineers do from time to time, in order to learn a new language or framework, or just to try out ideas or whatnot. Such a project thus becomes a education and learning opportunity of a very intense sort.
If this individual hasn't gotten any job offers or such, I would seriously question "why not?" - they have shown a level of competence and follow through rarely seen in a single individual, and they should be considered a valuable asset to a company (that, or this person needs to create a startup or something).
Very cool. If you can make that cartridge dirt cheap, you will have invented an exciting new technology. Build a V2 with cheaper tech, change your wording a bit as to what the device does, keep the polaroid link a little bit, but make it your own and then I think you'll have something that could kick ass on Kickstarter.
Make the carts NFC and turn Share on when you remove it. You could Tap to swap whatever gif is currently displayed on someone else's cart. That's probably easier than dirt cheap, disposable displays.
yes, bringing the cost of the cartridge down is definitely something that needs to be worked on.. this one though is entirely built from off the shelf components
Cartridge is easily big enough to contain a camera (see phone tech) so I'm not sure it makes much sense to make a system which separates the two. A digital photo frame with built-in camera seems more plausible, cute as it is to emulate an old Polaroid machine.
Yeah the real jam would be a low profile e-ink + custom pcb "prints."
The low fidelity + refresh rate (compared w e.g. an LCD) could be positioned as a feature.
Pretty neat. Crazy it uses an adhoc wifi network to communicate between the camera and the cartridge. Seems overkill for a battery powered device when they are already plugged in to each other physically.
If I add up the parts of the cartridge, I come to around $88 (including a $35 touch screen).
The demo makes me wanna take a picture like that and give the cartridge away. Maybe if it can get under $10 that would be feasible? And before that, at $20 or $30 they could sell them at theme parks where they take your picture in a roller coaster.
The price of his battery and power converter are pretty insane, and a Raspberry Pi is convenient but overkill. Given a more price-conscious part choice and at least some volume (since what's the point in building only one cartridge), you should be able to get that to $5 plus display fairly easily. Suitable displays can be found for $10 from Amazon (shipped from China).
So you can probably home-build it for $15. If you're a startup in Shenzhen it might be feasible to sell them assembled for $10 and make a nice profit if you can sell a million of them.
I noticed the author decided to use metric thread machine hardware. He's probably an American because he specified McMaster-Carr as a source.
#4 and #6 machine screws are a lot less costly here and available everywhere. (Your hard drive screws are 6-32, same as the electrical wall boxes; floppy 4-40)
I personally hate unified threads, on the basis that the rest of the world uses iso threads. But this is one of those times that being a pedant about it would increase the cost.
I'm just in America but not American which is why I refuse to accept inches and weird numbering for screws haha.. it's worth the few extra bucks for me, you're right though, you could modify the design and use cheaper screws
Great trick with laser cutter and black paint on the pcb. I wonder how end resolution compares to milled pcb.
Also this is one of problems I have with Imgur. How to archive such detailed imgur post?
I have tried ripme [1](great for grabbing image sets without addnotations), printscreen browser extensions (mixed results - most do not cope with floating menus and have problems with dynamic image loading), page saving or printing via browser (similar problems with dynamic loading).
Does anyone have seen something that could archive imgur post with all content?
> Great trick with laser cutter and black paint on the pcb. I wonder how end resolution compares to milled pcb.
Eh, I thought this was a point where they made the wrong call. You can get a much better result for less money and less personal time invested - just wait a week or two - by sending your Gerbers off to be manufactured. PCB manufacture is dirt cheap and has extreme quality compared to home-etching your boards.
ya I enjoyed that trick too, it was the first time I had tried it but it worked really well.. You can get the traces to be really fine though I haven't measured the actual doable resolution
I enjoyed seeing the design and build process. There's a long way to go to make a product out of this. I also wonder whether there are legal downsides to using the look and feel of the Polaroid "rainbow" nextstep (which was famously the source of the now-retired Instagram logo).
It would be very neat to have a credit card sized screen with a micro-controller and a bit flash doing the work rather than a full-sized computer.
thanks, glad you liked it.. I definitely wasn't doing it with the purpose of showcasing my skills, but more with the purpose of cementing them.. all of this is just a real good bonus :)
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|8 years ago|reply
People have asked what is the impact of 'free' CPUs. Something Dave Rosenthal realized way back in the 90's was that the electronics for driving a display could be printed on the margins of the display and eliminate the need for a separate controller board. Having watched the evolution of displays and seeing Mary Lou Jepsen's work on the PixelQi and other screens it became fairly clear that it still made sense to use silicon for the controller and glass for the elements, but once you get to OLED technology (no backlight) and printing on plastic substrates then you reach the point where you can imagine something like this project but the size, weight, and thickness of a Polaroid picture rather something the size of a cigarette box.
At its simplest, imagine an OLED display driven by reading out an EPROM printed on the borders. Your camera encodes the image in the EPROM and then whenever you apply power to the "picture' it shows the one image.
Certainly something there to explore, a number of engineering challenges between there and a product though.
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|8 years ago|reply
Amazing how technology has advanced.
[+] [-] acchow|8 years ago|reply
Incredible possibilities
[+] [-] dfps|8 years ago|reply
Their low-power daylight-friendly monitors are only available on eBay as far as I've found.
[+] [-] joezydeco|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Palomides|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frik|8 years ago|reply
E-ink supports colors and videos nowadays. (unfortunately the ebook readers still use the older monochrome e-ink generation. e.g. Amazon has little initiative as the went with LCD Kindle Fire for video and colors)
[+] [-] DonHopkins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cr0sh|8 years ago|reply
From start to finish, this project has helped the person develop a complete (or nearly so) set of manufacturing skills. An idea was taken from concept, on through a multitude of other steps (design, prototyping, software development, hardware development, etc), to producing a final working "product".
Now - it seems from the comments in the album that this isn't the authors first go at such a project, but it may have been one of the most complex or largest they have done. Regardless of that, it has helped them to hone and develop a complete set of skills very few people have.
Heck - I would encourage the author to try turning this project, or something similar, into a MOOC in some manner; I don't know if this is possible, or if it has been done before, but I bet there's a growing audience of people who'd love an all-in-one course to study to gain such skills. Part of the problem of implementing such a thing as a MOOC is whether a person has access to the needed tools and equipment; maybe that could be part of any pre-req's? Or, maybe people would pay for such a course, and parts or tools could be provided (kinda like those "boxed recipe meals" you can get)?
Ultimately, I liked seeing this project; even though to me it seemed "frivolous", it really is a physical form of "random play coding exercises" software engineers do from time to time, in order to learn a new language or framework, or just to try out ideas or whatnot. Such a project thus becomes a education and learning opportunity of a very intense sort.
If this individual hasn't gotten any job offers or such, I would seriously question "why not?" - they have shown a level of competence and follow through rarely seen in a single individual, and they should be considered a valuable asset to a company (that, or this person needs to create a startup or something).
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fairpx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaosjester|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QAPereo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessriedel|8 years ago|reply
Step 1: Have the idea.
Step 2: Implementation.
We're already half way there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
[+] [-] ATsch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theoh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssalazar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathancahill|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twiss|8 years ago|reply
The demo makes me wanna take a picture like that and give the cartridge away. Maybe if it can get under $10 that would be feasible? And before that, at $20 or $30 they could sell them at theme parks where they take your picture in a roller coaster.
[+] [-] wongarsu|8 years ago|reply
So you can probably home-build it for $15. If you're a startup in Shenzhen it might be feasible to sell them assembled for $10 and make a nice profit if you can sell a million of them.
[+] [-] ctdonath|8 years ago|reply
[edited per comments]
[+] [-] switchstance|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skykooler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derfj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stillsut|8 years ago|reply
https://media.giphy.com/media/ZPJO1M6RViPT2/giphy.gif
[+] [-] jdironman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|8 years ago|reply
Exposure compensation dial.
[+] [-] kw71|8 years ago|reply
I noticed the author decided to use metric thread machine hardware. He's probably an American because he specified McMaster-Carr as a source.
#4 and #6 machine screws are a lot less costly here and available everywhere. (Your hard drive screws are 6-32, same as the electrical wall boxes; floppy 4-40)
I personally hate unified threads, on the basis that the rest of the world uses iso threads. But this is one of those times that being a pedant about it would increase the cost.
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictnein|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Multicomp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuldeepkap|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tau255|8 years ago|reply
Also this is one of problems I have with Imgur. How to archive such detailed imgur post?
I have tried ripme [1](great for grabbing image sets without addnotations), printscreen browser extensions (mixed results - most do not cope with floating menus and have problems with dynamic image loading), page saving or printing via browser (similar problems with dynamic loading).
Does anyone have seen something that could archive imgur post with all content?
1. https://github.com/4pr0n/ripme
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|8 years ago|reply
Eh, I thought this was a point where they made the wrong call. You can get a much better result for less money and less personal time invested - just wait a week or two - by sending your Gerbers off to be manufactured. PCB manufacture is dirt cheap and has extreme quality compared to home-etching your boards.
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MindTwister|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michrassena|8 years ago|reply
It would be very neat to have a credit card sized screen with a micro-controller and a bit flash doing the work rather than a full-sized computer.
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otto_ortega|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lisper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhi3188|8 years ago|reply