Boox Poke3 is a 6" e-ink display that runs Android 10, as a general-purpose computing device, and is available for 160 EUR. Since you're selling a significantly less usable device (it only does one thing), I wouldn't want to pay more than 80 EUR for this. It's cute, but... when the price of the product is dominated by the screen, it's hard to sell a single-use device.
>when the price of the product is dominated by the screen, it's hard to sell a single-use device.
IMO if it doesn't have more than one UI menu, the UI ought to be built into the hardware - because AIUI e-ink screen costs scale geometrically with size. In other words, if you can e.g. break the five/seven days of the week into five/seven separate e-ink screens of the same surface area (not counting bezels), they'll be cheaper than a single e-ink screen of the same surface area.
As a bonus, giving each day its own screen means you can put a nice clean margin between them that's not made of expensive e-ink despite being left empty the entire time.
IMO that's the only way the price would drop to less than half the price of an e-reader of the same size.
The price point will be a sticking point for consumers. I understanding the pro’s of this style of device with an e ink screen, and the associated power savings and readability it comes with, but the general public may not. This could be better positioned towards an office environment but it would possibly be too small to be useful to a team.
I love the idea and the design, and I hope it works for you, but I think it’s going to be a hard sell ahead for you at that price point.
- Add a hidden button/switch to change between weekly/monthly calendar layout.
- Show a small popup with the pertinent information of the next appointment. (Location &c.)
- Where do you show entries that are scheduled for the entire day? It would be nice to display them in an area that is separate from the regular entries.
- Add a button/switch to flip through the next few weeks.
Good luck with your project, I can surely see a market for the e-paper calendar.
The price seems high, but it might work as a christmas/birthday present, and probably wouldn't ultimately stop it from being purchased in this case.
It would be replacing a paper calendar that shows 3 months ahead. A nice feature would be to be able to move between views of today, this week, 3 months. Much bigger would be nice too. Again not having these would not stop a purchase.
The wood bezel is pretty big.
Most likely to stop a purchase is the ugly wire hanging from it. If it didn't need charging often, then having it have a powerbank (swappable?) in it would be better from my point of view, although how often it needs to charge would be a factor.
There was a beautiful concept epaper calendar I saw a while back, https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/22/15028600/m... but I don't think it ever made it to sale, and if it had, it would have been frighteningly expensive, but that is what I would really like...
That concept you're linking is what inspired me :)
> It would be replacing a paper calendar that shows 3 months ahead. A nice feature would be to be able to move between views of today, this week, 3 months.
To me, a physical calendar is useful to get an idea of the schedule at a glance - but this seems like it will be too small to get a clear idea at a glance.
I'm guessing 6"-7" ? TBH 13-15" would be ideal to hang up on the wall (with a better contrast ratio as well) - but I'm guessing that would be way too expensive?
It's a bit above 7 inches. It's enough to get a feel actually for the week and not miss anything important on the next day - that's what I'm using it for personally.
You're right in guessing that anything bigger is very expensive - let's hope the cost comes down!
Something which is really missing is wifi support and the ability to pull a custom image to display from somewhere. You could then easily display status dashboards, calendars, whatever someone likes.
If you have a library for easily building these screens this could be really interesting.
I have seen this idea at the joan board, but they are really expensive (attaching an ipad to the wall is cheaper) and i cant find this feature anymore. I guess it was hidden at some screenshot and small text somewhere.
I looked at buying a company that does this, called Visionect. They have a consumer product called getjoan (at getjoan.com) that is some direct competition for what you want to do.
Here's my quick summary:
* They were using the tech for low power conference room calendars, which was a good use case pre-COVID.
* They said consumers really liked Joan, and that it was a popular product internally for employees.
* It renders pretty much any web view, which I think is the right idea
Overall, my assessment is that generally the market is small, and building a 'good' version, e.g. something that feels as good as a remarkable 2, is going to be really expensive.
Joan as a product is very thick, and also has terrible connectivity - no wifi-based configuration, needs out of date USB drivers downloaded in order to talk to it, etc. etc.
So, in answer to your question, as a hobby, yes. As an actual product for sale, I do not think it is a large market. If you find a large market you will be fighting companies like visionect that have deep supply chain roots to Eink directly.
If it were larger and lighter, I think putting one up on the fridge showing the family calendar, or other use cases like the conference room where it's nice to have updating information without running power are good ideas. But this is a very small market. And you are fighting the fact that people usually prefer bright colorful displays except in niche applications.
In summary, I would urge you to look at a different hardware niche.
Sigh... I work in the display industry and interact with competitors as well as partners of EInk. The first link is a reddit post. I leave it to others to work out why a lot of these comments blaming patents are completely wrong. I've tried to counteract these mistaken assumptions repeatedly on HN. See my comment history. But after this kind of low quality approach to factual discussion (eg: I ask for a citation and instead am given a reddit link) I'm giving up trying to correct this misconception.
“Citation please” is the mother of “low quality approach to factual discussion” if you have a different opinion or have facts to present please do so.
Asking for a citation to what you say is a misconception is somewhat pointless don’t you think since if this misconception is so prevalent all the citations would be misconceptions as well...
For quite a while I've been specifically looking for a reliable source on the "e-ink prices are caused by patents" (or alternative explanation) to bookmark, but haven't been able to find one.
Please educate me. Preferably with sources I can cite. The best I have right now is a freaking reddit comment.
As I have stated, I was looking for evidence or proof for OP's claim about patents and did not find it, nor does OP appear to be able or willing to back up his/her claim. My opinion is that display pricing is driven primarily by volume, and secondarily by a lot of other rapidly fluctuating variables related to ITO/TFT manufacturing costs. I'm sure patents has some effect on the industry, but most likely negligible as I've never heard companies being impacted by it. At least not in my corner of the industry.
To be frank, I believe OP's claim about patents is wrong and is just some kind of worldview that for some reason has caught on recently in HN and is getting repeated without being challenged.
The simplest evidence I can give that volume is the main driver of pricing is to compare EPD 6" matrix display pricing between 2007 where it was 100x more expensive than it is today. Patents haven't changed. Volume has. That was driven by large scale buyers like Sony, Amazon, and others.
The frame size to screen feels unbalanced to me. I would reduce the frame width and consider using a solid CNC’ed price of wood instead of using picture frame construction. Unless you can get those seams very tight, it looks a little cheap (which your price point isnt).
- mount the display flush to the front of the frame
The contrast in the photo does not look great. Perhaps use hatching or shading instead of the solid black areas? In any case, you'll want to be able to separate out different calendars.
Other display modes? "Today", "Clock/Calendar", "Now and Next"?
Wall calendars don’t have room for enough information. A weekly view would be nice. I would like a thinner frame and larger screen for readability. I might worry about the inconvenience of powering it or of entering/editing information. For the price point, a fancier build quality would help with the “premium” feel you probably would need: it would need to stand as a practical art piece
I actually like the heavy frame, although I see why some might find it a bit heavy, given that the apparent goal of most screen designers is to eliminate the bezel entirely.
My biggest sticking point here is price. 200 euros is a no-go; given the limited nature of the device, I wouldn’t even consider 100. 50 is the absolute max I’d pay for something like this.
It’s a very nice product, and your target audience might very well be people who can afford an expensive desk object. I don’t think most of the folks I know could pay that, though.
Others will comment on the product itself, and because it looks like you're trying to feel out the market, my questions are:
Do you have experience developing, certifying and shipping consumer hardware? In what countries do you want to sell it? Who builds the hardware? How big is your first run?
I run a small business selling a piece of open source hardware I designed a few years back (total sales around 10,000 units do far).
I haven't got a single certificate - FCC, CE, RoHS or otherwise.
Your customers don't give a fuck, the governments don't give a fuck, and neither should you.
That goes for all forms of official certification. Unless some bureaucrat actively gets in your face and demands you do paperwork (EU VAT registration for FBA sellers is a good example), focus on good logistics and a solid product.
Just in case anyone is considering taking the above as advice..
Everything is entirely correct. Focus on a great product. However, avoiding certification 'because noone cares' - is incorrect. People don't care until something goes wrong.
Correct, you can skirt standards and certifications, or buy CE ratings from less-than-reputable firms - but if something goes wrong - and you're unable to produce appropriate certifications - you open yourself to a world of risk.
The wood bezel is kind of ugly & cheap looking. The audience for this is likely to be tech people and users who want to show off their calendar or manage their time with calendar invites. I think this could do well with a more contemporary frame. You could market it to people as a solution to forgetting meetings; the price would have to be low enough (sub $100) to trigger people’s impulse buying. The lower the price the more likely you will be to get a sale.
Do a test on Facebook with different price points and see which one produces better conversions: you don’t need to actually have the product available to buy yet. This product is mostly going to live or die based on the marketing & pricing.
I think the price point is about right for those tech bro’s that want to buy this to show off. I don’t think you should try to compete with consumer grade stuff.
Have you been to a shop that does picture framing?
I wonder if you are trying to re-invent (or at least DIY) a picture frame -- you can get a high quality custom-sized picture frame made at a very reasonable price. The mitres will be perfect :)
(I haven't seen the reverse of your product, so there may be a constraint I'm not aware of.)
Please make it use standards or at least don't directly use Google's or Office APIs. It'll be way easier to support a lot of calendars (including Google Calendar) if you stay with CalDav in mind than the other way.
However, I like the idea. That said, 199€ is not cheap. It will be really hard to sell at that price.
Since you're announcing it at an heavy traffic like HN it is quite likely there are already 200 companies in ShenZhen reading your post and and planning to sell it for one tenth of what you're asking.
While Chinese can copy it easily the eInk display will kinda guarantee that even half the price would be pushing it.
In any case they don’t need to even preemptively copy it once you order it from a Chinese OEM they’ll use the money you paid them to make a few 1000’s units more for themselves and have them on Aliexpress before you even get the first batch shipped.
I really like this idea, but I agree with others that the bezels look a bit too large (do you need them to hide the components?) and the price seems relatively high.
I also thought that the calendar looked a bit grey/dull in the image you show. Is this just about the lighting or is the display not very high-contrast?
E.g. allowing people to extend your product, by software or by providing necessary information to easily create 3D printed mounts or alternate frames. Give the users a place to exchange and host their solutions and your calendar could be a presentation platform that others create for without requiring you to do the work yourself.
I think your product is a great idea, good luck! Only feedback, as others have said, the frame isn't quite my style, maybe a non-wood or a thinner frame would be nice. And personally I'd like to have the option to not have Saturday and Sunday on there (since I'm imagining using this at my work desk) and the font size maybe a little bigger/bolder for legibility.
The frame fit and finish is not adequate, hire someone who is able to cut and assemble frame miters that do not have gaps. Offer a three wood options, Maple (light) Oak (Medium) and Walnut (dark).
It's an awesome idea. The color the epaper might go better with stainless steel, or even glass. But as it stands the gray/black/brown combo looks a bit like an Ugly Tie, it could work in the right room/wall, but may need some thinking on the end of the buyer.
IMO, the bezel is way way way too big for how much screen space there is. Instead of red oak, I'd suggest looking at walnut or cherry -- something with more color and a little less texture might help the screen to take focus. You could also look at separating the screen from the bezel with some kind of mat board or something (another commenter linked to an instructable that did this).
I'm also not super clear on the the exact use case for this. Have you considered making it more of a portrait orientation, making it a single day view, and maybe adding some additional information (maybe some todos from Todoist or something?)
The wood is actually beech, though this particular batch I got for the prototypes had a surprising amount of texture. I am planning to use lighter colors in future.
Regarding your second point: I'd love to support a multitude of layout options some day.
Huh. Alright then. Either way, I'd recommend leaning toward a less textured, richer/darker color and species of wood. If you go lighter, it's going to look a little washed out IMO.
Also, in your quality control for the wood bits, make sure that those mitered corners all line up evenly across the entire joint (examples of what I'm talking about highlighted here: https://monosnap.com/file/MkTzAjJhx7v7DkL5kOKypQNFKVyrNU). People who have purchased any kind of fine woodworking will see this and see something somewhat poorly made, even if the actual electronic hardware and software parts of the product are rock solid. The presence of those gaps means that one or more of the following things are true: 1) the miters weren't cut at a perfect 45, 2) the wood wasn't dried long enough, 3) the pieces were cut too short, 4) the wood was moved from a high humidity environment to a low humidity one (causing it to dry out and shrink slightly). 1 and 3 can be solved by closer inspection/better processes for the people/machines cutting the wood. 2 and 4 are harder to remedy if it's possible at all. I'd guess it would mean a new supplier + factory doing the wood bits.
Not necessarily saying that layout options would be _necessary_. Just pointing out that something more focused on showing immediately relevant information (i.e. scoped to _today_, rather than this entire week) might help to more clearly define the value of the product to a prospective buyer.
Thank for the tips on the woodwork. I am not sure if a darker color would make the screen look brighter or darker.
I had noticed those gaps in the frame as well. I agree they look poorly made :)
I think they are mostly from the fact that this was cut with a hand saw, and the cut wasn't even throughout the Z axis. I am hoping that I will be able to fix this as I go from a prototyping process to a more refined production process.
Another commentator brought up CNC milling the wood - what do you think of that idea?
It’s a frame. It’s not a complex shape. A simple mitre saw should be enough to do this consistently. Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be.
Re CNCing the wood: I'm not a woodworker, but given the simplicity of the cut, I'd dare say that miter sawing the planks using a guide would more than suffice.
I'm both an amateur woodworker and a professional CNC programmer, and this is right. Frames like this are made with routers to carve the profile, and miter saws to cut the corners.
Personally I'd love to buy the guts and make my own frame, to personalize the gift with a nicer frame than I'd want to pay someone else to make.
Give me a good dimensioned drawing or a 3D model (or both!) of the display panel and the electronics that drive it, I'll chop some scrap into a mockup of the screen, craft a custom frame around it, and then swap in the real guts when I'm done.
You can email me at mail@konstantinschubert.com - I think there should be no problem with me sending you the "guts" at-cost once I have converged on a final BOM list.
I also have question that you might be able to help me with:
The frame requires some special shaping on the back-side to accommodate the "guts" as you call them. In fact, if I can freely choose the profile of the frame on the back side, I can probably solve some other constructional open questions I am having.
You seem to be an expert on this: If I provide a CAD file, what will be the order of magnitude in cost I am looking at for one or more custom profiles? Both in terms of design and in terms of per-piece production cost?
I'd be happy to give you some more details over email of course.
CNC sounds like kind of a bad fit unless you're going to mill the entire frame out of a solid piece of wood -- you'd lose a lot of material to the router bit and still have to do a fair amount of finishing by hand. For mitered joints like this, there are computerized saws that can feed and cut the lumber pretty precisely, but those are very expensive.
I'm not super clear on whether or not you're doing all of this by hand or working through a factory. If it's the latter, I would recommend just setting your expectations for the final product very clearly and then make sure that the end product is meeting those expectations. If you're doing it by hand, practice makes perfect! Go to your local lumber yard store and get some construction grade pine or fir boards and cut several dozen miters by hand (you can also invest in a compound miter saw -- that's generally useful for any woodworking that you'd want to do down the road as well and you can find them used for ~dozens of dollars or brand new for ~100-500 depending on features, size, power, etc -- just make sure you've got a good, sharp blade with lots of teeth for a nice smooth cut). You'll get the hang of it. For soft woods, clamping pressure and even glue distribution matters too -- you can clamp them a little tighter and the wood fibers at the boundaries between the boards will crush down a bit and help to even out the joint. That doesn't work so well with hardwoods though - you'll have to be pretty precise to get those done right.
Depending on the thickness of your wood, you might be able to do something with a laser cutter, but you'll need to figure out how to square up the edges appropriately (since laser cut edges on thicker lumber are rarely perfectly square).
If you're particularly lucky, you might be able to find somewhere that will give you some time on a water jet. Those edges will be perfectly square and everything will be cut perfectly -- just make sure to thoroughly dry your parts before assembly.
Frame making is actually more complicated than it seems, it's not enough to just make one mitered cut on four pieces and call it a day (if you want it to look good / fit well). It's certainly a learnable trade, but more complicated than just butting four square pieces together with glue. If I were you I'd stick with what you have working now, unless your current process is significantly time-consuming or costly.
As for the look, see if you can make the wood grain go the same direction for the entire frame, rather than the grain changing from vertical to horizontal. Should make it look more attractive. To expand the appearance from there, you can sand it down and apply different oils, stains and paints.
Sure thing! Feel free to reach out (email in profile) if you get stuck or want input on something. Woodworking (and especially woodworking with tech inside) is one of my favorite hobbies and I'm glad to share what I know when I can :)
If you want the bezels look less chunky, have them taper inwards towards the screen. It'll give the allusion of thinness and also pull the screen forward visually.
Personally I prefer the subtlety of using lighter woods (maple would be my preference).
A darker wood enhances the contrast with the white e-paper, but is over-the-top (IMHO).
I guess I see a lot of people new to woodworking do the maple+walnut thing to make a bold statement but I don't feel it stands up over time ... if that makes sense.
168 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadI am trying to develop an e-paper smart display as a consumer product. The first available layout will be a calendar.
I'd love to have HN's input on this: Do you think it's viable? Does it look okay?
What would be a good selling price?
I wouldn’t be interested in spending that much since I can’t really do much other than look at my calendar.
I’m either on the move, or in front of a computer, so I don’t see if there’s a good fit for this device in my life
> I’m either on the move, or in front of a computer, so I don’t see if there’s a good fit for this device in my life
It's possible that the device isn't for you then, I agree.
IMO if it doesn't have more than one UI menu, the UI ought to be built into the hardware - because AIUI e-ink screen costs scale geometrically with size. In other words, if you can e.g. break the five/seven days of the week into five/seven separate e-ink screens of the same surface area (not counting bezels), they'll be cheaper than a single e-ink screen of the same surface area.
As a bonus, giving each day its own screen means you can put a nice clean margin between them that's not made of expensive e-ink despite being left empty the entire time.
IMO that's the only way the price would drop to less than half the price of an e-reader of the same size.
I love the idea and the design, and I hope it works for you, but I think it’s going to be a hard sell ahead for you at that price point.
- Add an indication of the current time and date.
- Add a hidden button/switch to change between weekly/monthly calendar layout.
- Show a small popup with the pertinent information of the next appointment. (Location &c.)
- Where do you show entries that are scheduled for the entire day? It would be nice to display them in an area that is separate from the regular entries.
- Add a button/switch to flip through the next few weeks.
Good luck with your project, I can surely see a market for the e-paper calendar.
The price seems high, but it might work as a christmas/birthday present, and probably wouldn't ultimately stop it from being purchased in this case.
It would be replacing a paper calendar that shows 3 months ahead. A nice feature would be to be able to move between views of today, this week, 3 months. Much bigger would be nice too. Again not having these would not stop a purchase.
The wood bezel is pretty big.
Most likely to stop a purchase is the ugly wire hanging from it. If it didn't need charging often, then having it have a powerbank (swappable?) in it would be better from my point of view, although how often it needs to charge would be a factor.
There was a beautiful concept epaper calendar I saw a while back, https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/22/15028600/m... but I don't think it ever made it to sale, and if it had, it would have been frighteningly expensive, but that is what I would really like...
> It would be replacing a paper calendar that shows 3 months ahead. A nice feature would be to be able to move between views of today, this week, 3 months.
I agree.
> Much bigger would be nice too.
Totally.
To me, a physical calendar is useful to get an idea of the schedule at a glance - but this seems like it will be too small to get a clear idea at a glance.
I'm guessing 6"-7" ? TBH 13-15" would be ideal to hang up on the wall (with a better contrast ratio as well) - but I'm guessing that would be way too expensive?
You're right in guessing that anything bigger is very expensive - let's hope the cost comes down!
If you have a library for easily building these screens this could be really interesting.
I have seen this idea at the joan board, but they are really expensive (attaching an ipad to the wall is cheaper) and i cant find this feature anymore. I guess it was hidden at some screenshot and small text somewhere.
Here's my quick summary:
* They were using the tech for low power conference room calendars, which was a good use case pre-COVID.
* They said consumers really liked Joan, and that it was a popular product internally for employees.
* It renders pretty much any web view, which I think is the right idea
Overall, my assessment is that generally the market is small, and building a 'good' version, e.g. something that feels as good as a remarkable 2, is going to be really expensive.
Joan as a product is very thick, and also has terrible connectivity - no wifi-based configuration, needs out of date USB drivers downloaded in order to talk to it, etc. etc.
So, in answer to your question, as a hobby, yes. As an actual product for sale, I do not think it is a large market. If you find a large market you will be fighting companies like visionect that have deep supply chain roots to Eink directly.
If it were larger and lighter, I think putting one up on the fridge showing the family calendar, or other use cases like the conference room where it's nice to have updating information without running power are good ideas. But this is a very small market. And you are fighting the fact that people usually prefer bright colorful displays except in niche applications.
In summary, I would urge you to look at a different hardware niche.
I agree that the market for this particular product is very small.
It would be interesting if you put a little red LED on it like a soft alarm for upcoming events.
I would pay $35 for this, buy I'm sure others would pay more.
Edit: Saw the 200 euro price tag, don't think I'm in the market for this at that price.
I recently bought an M5Paper which is a 960X540, 4.7" ESP32 e-ink display for $70. So that provides a baseline for your hardware.
eInk displays are expensive as fuck thanks to patents.
Citation please.
Asking for a citation to what you say is a misconception is somewhat pointless don’t you think since if this misconception is so prevalent all the citations would be misconceptions as well...
For quite a while I've been specifically looking for a reliable source on the "e-ink prices are caused by patents" (or alternative explanation) to bookmark, but haven't been able to find one.
Please educate me. Preferably with sources I can cite. The best I have right now is a freaking reddit comment.
To be frank, I believe OP's claim about patents is wrong and is just some kind of worldview that for some reason has caught on recently in HN and is getting repeated without being challenged.
The simplest evidence I can give that volume is the main driver of pricing is to compare EPD 6" matrix display pricing between 2007 where it was 100x more expensive than it is today. Patents haven't changed. Volume has. That was driven by large scale buyers like Sony, Amazon, and others.
- a tiny version
- with little bezel
- at most 35eur
- showing just todays upcoming agenda.
- Maybe some bold and inverted display of soon to begin events.
Than again... I could dock my phone, keep the screen on and show some calendar app, but I don't either.
Maybe I should :), would be possible with tasker, rfid and a dock.
Interesting idea with the CNC'd wood - I'll look into that for sure!
- reduce the size of the frame
- mount the display flush to the front of the frame
The contrast in the photo does not look great. Perhaps use hatching or shading instead of the solid black areas? In any case, you'll want to be able to separate out different calendars.
Other display modes? "Today", "Clock/Calendar", "Now and Next"?
How do you control it?
You're right, the display is smaller than I'd like... for sure.
I'll also see what can be done on a black-and white display with regards to the stark contrast.
> Other display modes? "Today", "Clock/Calendar", "Now and Next"?
Yes, that's do-able, I "just" have to code it.
> How do you control it?
In the App. I should make that clearer on the website for sure.
I would only want this if I can use it without yet another app. Please consider using a simple web interface etc.
My biggest sticking point here is price. 200 euros is a no-go; given the limited nature of the device, I wouldn’t even consider 100. 50 is the absolute max I’d pay for something like this.
It’s a very nice product, and your target audience might very well be people who can afford an expensive desk object. I don’t think most of the folks I know could pay that, though.
Do you have experience developing, certifying and shipping consumer hardware? In what countries do you want to sell it? Who builds the hardware? How big is your first run?
I'm looking at the EU and the US market. I know I need to get CE and RoHS and a bunch of other certificates. I know this won't be easy.
If you know somebody who has experience with that, ideally in a boutique/startup environment, I'd love to hear the advice they have to give.
I haven't got a single certificate - FCC, CE, RoHS or otherwise. Your customers don't give a fuck, the governments don't give a fuck, and neither should you.
That goes for all forms of official certification. Unless some bureaucrat actively gets in your face and demands you do paperwork (EU VAT registration for FBA sellers is a good example), focus on good logistics and a solid product.
Everything is entirely correct. Focus on a great product. However, avoiding certification 'because noone cares' - is incorrect. People don't care until something goes wrong.
Correct, you can skirt standards and certifications, or buy CE ratings from less-than-reputable firms - but if something goes wrong - and you're unable to produce appropriate certifications - you open yourself to a world of risk.
Do a test on Facebook with different price points and see which one produces better conversions: you don’t need to actually have the product available to buy yet. This product is mostly going to live or die based on the marketing & pricing.
One of the appeals of the e-paper though is the "natural" look of it — as though it is paper. The wood frame is in keeping with that.
I'd love to lower the price, too. I don't know yet if it's possible.
I wonder if you are trying to re-invent (or at least DIY) a picture frame -- you can get a high quality custom-sized picture frame made at a very reasonable price. The mitres will be perfect :)
(I haven't seen the reverse of your product, so there may be a constraint I'm not aware of.)
However, I like the idea. That said, 199€ is not cheap. It will be really hard to sell at that price.
Shooting from the hip, what price would you have expected?
In any case they don’t need to even preemptively copy it once you order it from a Chinese OEM they’ll use the money you paid them to make a few 1000’s units more for themselves and have them on Aliexpress before you even get the first batch shipped.
I also thought that the calendar looked a bit grey/dull in the image you show. Is this just about the lighting or is the display not very high-contrast?
Yes for now. Though I might get them down in size as I iterate on the hardware...
> Is this just about the lighting or is the display not very high-contrast?
To be honest I'd say it's both.
There are ways to make it work but it's not yet the way I'd like it to be.
discussed a while ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25939042
E.g. allowing people to extend your product, by software or by providing necessary information to easily create 3D printed mounts or alternate frames. Give the users a place to exchange and host their solutions and your calendar could be a presentation platform that others create for without requiring you to do the work yourself.
I'm also not super clear on the the exact use case for this. Have you considered making it more of a portrait orientation, making it a single day view, and maybe adding some additional information (maybe some todos from Todoist or something?)
Regarding your second point: I'd love to support a multitude of layout options some day.
Also, in your quality control for the wood bits, make sure that those mitered corners all line up evenly across the entire joint (examples of what I'm talking about highlighted here: https://monosnap.com/file/MkTzAjJhx7v7DkL5kOKypQNFKVyrNU). People who have purchased any kind of fine woodworking will see this and see something somewhat poorly made, even if the actual electronic hardware and software parts of the product are rock solid. The presence of those gaps means that one or more of the following things are true: 1) the miters weren't cut at a perfect 45, 2) the wood wasn't dried long enough, 3) the pieces were cut too short, 4) the wood was moved from a high humidity environment to a low humidity one (causing it to dry out and shrink slightly). 1 and 3 can be solved by closer inspection/better processes for the people/machines cutting the wood. 2 and 4 are harder to remedy if it's possible at all. I'd guess it would mean a new supplier + factory doing the wood bits.
Not necessarily saying that layout options would be _necessary_. Just pointing out that something more focused on showing immediately relevant information (i.e. scoped to _today_, rather than this entire week) might help to more clearly define the value of the product to a prospective buyer.
I had noticed those gaps in the frame as well. I agree they look poorly made :)
I think they are mostly from the fact that this was cut with a hand saw, and the cut wasn't even throughout the Z axis. I am hoping that I will be able to fix this as I go from a prototyping process to a more refined production process.
Another commentator brought up CNC milling the wood - what do you think of that idea?
> CNC milling the wood
It’s a frame. It’s not a complex shape. A simple mitre saw should be enough to do this consistently. Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be.
Personally I'd love to buy the guts and make my own frame, to personalize the gift with a nicer frame than I'd want to pay someone else to make.
Give me a good dimensioned drawing or a 3D model (or both!) of the display panel and the electronics that drive it, I'll chop some scrap into a mockup of the screen, craft a custom frame around it, and then swap in the real guts when I'm done.
I also have question that you might be able to help me with:
The frame requires some special shaping on the back-side to accommodate the "guts" as you call them. In fact, if I can freely choose the profile of the frame on the back side, I can probably solve some other constructional open questions I am having. You seem to be an expert on this: If I provide a CAD file, what will be the order of magnitude in cost I am looking at for one or more custom profiles? Both in terms of design and in terms of per-piece production cost?
I'd be happy to give you some more details over email of course.
I'm not super clear on whether or not you're doing all of this by hand or working through a factory. If it's the latter, I would recommend just setting your expectations for the final product very clearly and then make sure that the end product is meeting those expectations. If you're doing it by hand, practice makes perfect! Go to your local lumber yard store and get some construction grade pine or fir boards and cut several dozen miters by hand (you can also invest in a compound miter saw -- that's generally useful for any woodworking that you'd want to do down the road as well and you can find them used for ~dozens of dollars or brand new for ~100-500 depending on features, size, power, etc -- just make sure you've got a good, sharp blade with lots of teeth for a nice smooth cut). You'll get the hang of it. For soft woods, clamping pressure and even glue distribution matters too -- you can clamp them a little tighter and the wood fibers at the boundaries between the boards will crush down a bit and help to even out the joint. That doesn't work so well with hardwoods though - you'll have to be pretty precise to get those done right.
Depending on the thickness of your wood, you might be able to do something with a laser cutter, but you'll need to figure out how to square up the edges appropriately (since laser cut edges on thicker lumber are rarely perfectly square).
If you're particularly lucky, you might be able to find somewhere that will give you some time on a water jet. Those edges will be perfectly square and everything will be cut perfectly -- just make sure to thoroughly dry your parts before assembly.
As for the look, see if you can make the wood grain go the same direction for the entire frame, rather than the grain changing from vertical to horizontal. Should make it look more attractive. To expand the appearance from there, you can sand it down and apply different oils, stains and paints.
A darker wood enhances the contrast with the white e-paper, but is over-the-top (IMHO).
I guess I see a lot of people new to woodworking do the maple+walnut thing to make a bold statement but I don't feel it stands up over time ... if that makes sense.