Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023)(howtoware.co) |
Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023)(howtoware.co) |
For the uninitiated:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbne9a/a-history-of-badgelif...
"I live in the Bay Area. I'm biased, but this place is full of awesome engineers building things and you can just walk up to them and ask them to explain everything about their project and they will."
Edit to add: It reminds me of Jobs calling up Bill Hewlett at his home as a teen and asking him questions, and Hewlett not only answered them but gave him a summer job.
edit: it is a very cool e-ink project, and there are some cool communities like the maker faire. Reflexively reacting against the generalization
I meant walking up to a super cool music visualization at an outdoor art festival and they guy there happily explaining to me their entire system built out of a node flow diagram implemented on Max but adapted to visual graphics using a plugin called Vsynth.
Or going over to a friend's house and seeing their modular synth system and they happily explain to you how it works for an hour.
Just this weekend I met an amazing engineer with a street-legal steam-powered motorcycle which he patiently explained for an hour.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the younger 20-somethings.
At my company, we (software group) took a tour of the hardware R&D lab. They have a mechanical lab and a machine shop, which does the initial prototyping. A lot of the mechanical engineers on the R&D side work on basically "dev tools" for the big factories.
An assembly has an intermittent issue with something going out of alignment; they go on site, take measurements, create a CAD model, and take it to the machine shop. Then, they take whatever fixer part to the factory and install it to fix the issue on the line.
There are so many pieces of it -- it's just like software really. The factories are only partially automated, so fixtures and mounts for things need to be ergonomic if a worker is going to place a half-finished part into a fixture 1000s of times per day. Parts have to have an obvious orientation, so it's easy to tell at a glance to know how they go into where they need to go. Every part needs to be designed to actually be manufactured, keeping in mind the limits of the machine that will be creating it, whether CNC or a mold, etc. All this, with a minimum of steps to manufacture the part, using as little material as possible, while looking good and functioning as desired.
I went to school to be a mechanical engineer and hardly any of this stuff was discussed. (It was a big research university to be fair, but still) We spent maybe 6h across my entire degree talking about the way things actually get made. Things like, why use a flat head instead a rounded head on a machine screw in a design? How to design a part to be injection molded? Sheet metal? CNC?
We need to onshore manufacturing as soon as possible, because these are all very difficult skills that require ingenuity, craft, and dedication to acquire. They only can be acquired slowly, over time, through a long career, in an environment where volume manufacturing is happening.
I think scientists I know would snap something like this up so they didn't add to their kilograms of plastic pass/lanyard waste (if conferences can be roped in to adopting them). Level them up with rare editions (conference awardees could be given titanium frames to swap over), etc. and you have a playing-card-esque market for professionals who go to 3-5 conferences a year, and a flashy feature that conferences would like to offer, etc.
Another use- digital cards that can help care practitioners communicate with their audience: "can you hand me the cards the tell me how you feel?" (cards that describe your symptoms). Customize those pictures, icons, graphics on the card as needed, on the fly, per patient type, etc. Think everything from kids bullied at school to medical and law offices where communication can be a barrier.
Trading card games usually have a notion of rarity, collection, and, well, trading. It is a controversial aspect so I understand that you want to stay away from that as much as possible. But if you embrace this aspect, how would it be implemented?
Show HN: Trading cards made with e-ink displays https://www.wyldcard.io/blog/introducing-wyldcard
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33795296 (1149 points | Nov 30, 2022 | 291 comments)
> At one point, I grabbed a stack of iPhones and splayed them out like a hand of cards. I had the idea that, if each phone displayed the image of a card, you could shuffle the deck just by pressing a button, no physical movement necessary.
But it could also lead to funny "tech thinking". For example: "Imagine we could take the messy hassle out of human conception, and monetize it as an app!"
It's awful when your mom tosses your baseball cards collection but at least it will be recyclable given fairly trivial and widely-implemented processes. Not so for computer components.
You are asking each player to carry around this "plinth" and however many cards would be necessary to play the game in question. Do the cards start on the plinth, then go to a common area? Are games played with connected plinths?
You say "MTG meets Yu-gi-oh meets Pokemon meets Tamagotchi" but I don't really see that here. You're putting pictures on plastic cards.
And with no actual game in the two years this has popped up here, you have a real problem. Because it looks like you have a toy rather than a game. And not a great toy either, to be honest. I'd focus less on marketing and articles and more on coming up with at least one proof-of-concept game.
Because the game is what's going to sell the hardware. There's no way you're going to push many units with only the promise of game(s) in the future.
The larger point of having a platform without a product still exists.
And I think this is still something where the idea is cooler than the current reality. Mostly because you can vaguely imagine the coolest version of this and you aren't being asked to put anything on the line for it.
Is there some version of this that's genuinely fun and engaging? Maybe so. The potential of non-destructive persistent changes to physical game pieces you own is pretty appealing.
Would I spend $300 for it? Hard no. Especially since the plinth has four slots, but they only give you cards in sets of three. I'd add a fourth card to the base sets and sell the cards in single units and in sets of 4. Three is really weird. It's a hot dog/bun situation.
But that doesn't even address the core issue. For the same price, I can get a game console. I can also get an Android tablet and a couple hundred NFC tags. The only thing you lose is the ability for the card itself to be a small pixelated image.
They claim they've raised $7277, which comes out to 21 base sets at $299 ($6279) and 2 deluxe sets at $499 ($998). And then he spent the last year delivering those 23 units. He claims 25 units sold, but I can't make the math work for that. 25 units at $299 would be $7475, so I'm going to have to guess that the prices have changed over the course of time. Which is normally fine, but that means the cost of these things have already gone up.
It just seems that from every angle I look at this thing, I see clear problems with bringing it to market as a viable product.
Some quotes:
>"Something else is happening. It is as if these screens are a portal to something. As if something is using them to get to us: to change, to remake, to control us."
...
>"There is a reason they call it “the web,” Bridget; a reason they call it “the net.” It is a trap. We have built the means of our own enslavement, at their suggestion. Now we are all carrying a portal to the underworld in our back pockets and handbags, and we are entirely unguarded against whoever chooses to step through it."
...
>"It’s not demons messing with our minds, Uncle. It’s fairies. ... They steal children, Uncle! That was what grabbed me. ... The fairies would steal babies and leave fairies in their places, and there would always be something strange, something lost about them."
...
>"That’s the thing, you see, Uncle. Fairies aren’t like demons. They’re not evil. They mind their own business, and they usually leave people alone unless they’re offended. But we’ve gone and cut down their thorns on a global scale. So what if they’re driving us mad on the same scale?"
...
>"If this is the revenge of the nature spirits, Uncle, maybe they’re winning—and maybe they should be. We’ve got power way beyond our ability to control it. We can’t even control ourselves. Maybe it’s better this way."
Then we get projects like this, which I see as a step towards that future.
Owning like six iPads wouldn't be a good use of the resources that would represent for me, personally. But I could do useful things with them, and if I could politely request a magic box to give me one, I'd have at least six around already.
Disclaimer: I design and build these. And I'm also a big fan of jonahss work.
(you might even be able to get away with a tiny capacitance to hold enough power to reset the display to a 'back pattern' when it's removed from the inductive loop 'board', depends on the mcu I guess).
A button to update the card shouldn't be needed, you can detect it via whatever NFC you're using.
And of course the cost goes way up.
It's a link cable to connect your base to your friend's when you play against them. I link it into itself just to keep it tidy and it doubles as a strap to carry it by.
What a great low-cost idea for multiplayer games.
Edit: turns out someone had already posted about this widget called a "Pimoroni Badger" and it fits the bill nicely: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/badger-2040-w?variant=405...
https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
You can play your own content to it as an image, by serving it on an internet-accessible URL.
It can also render any website you point it to. (The results vary, it's a black-and-white display!)
And it has a built-in calendar app and picture frame app.
Cards are kind of tricky because you probably have a good number of them that will require many updates, and I suspect having a configurable board would actually unlock more cool stuff. Something like RFID cards that an EInk board could detect when placed and render game impacts would be nifty.
Smart cards (and of course just plain old video games) let you do a bit of fun stuff like interact with piles without everyone seeing that you interacted with a specific pile.
My real dream is to have it on dice to have on the fly configurable distributions of outcomes.
I hate "lets make it electronic just for the sake of electronics" because ewaste. But if you can take something and make it into "buy once, use forever(ish)"... that's awesome.
not sure exactly how e-phoretic screens are driven, but I wonder if you could remove the controller entirely? have just a loose eink screen with a zif that you pass around
like this thing is 0.25mm thick https://www.adafruit.com/product/4262#technical-details
Those flat flex displays are awesome, though way pricier. Then I'd lose the nice stiff pcb board which allows all the contacts on the back to mate. I could go wireless, but then the power delivery needs to charge a capacitor and the delay between button press and display refresh will go to 30 seconds or beyond
If you build a small website that shows your status message, you could then point the smart screen to it and it will display your away message.
If they were thinner and wider, I suspect that an almost unlimited number of uses could open up for them.
Since the intention is a children's toy, I'm trying to get the price as low as possible. This display size is cheap because it's intended for grocery store price tags ;)
Flat Flex e-paper displays are available but much more expensive. Plus, the magnets in the cards which let them mate to the base take up most of the thickness. I'd have to rethink that physical interface entirely if they needed to be much thinner. My next step will be to design an actual game and then I can come back to size for a v2.
Also see his HN post: Feedback Welcome: I am developing an e-paper calendar as a consumer product (2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26216357
It is an eink smart screen. The calendar app supports Google calendar and anything that can provide an .ics event feed. I just added a new "Picture Frame" app, though admittedly enjoying your photos on black-and-white eink is a niche taste :D
https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
A completely baroque way of playing, but fits with a world where actively powered antigravity technology has replaced wheels.
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/52/db/70/52db70262ac28239669a45d88...
He doesn't mention it in TFA
Yu-gi-oh exists though, there are lots of tournaments around the world and even world championships. The game is pretty similar to the one played in the anime, if not the same
They have similarly-shaped stuff in color too, like the Tufty https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tufty-2040?variant=400369... and the Inky https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-frame-5-7?variant=40...
I for one welcome our new badger overlords.
Something that has dirt simple utility (you have a visual que that can be rotated that indicates to staff processing thousands of people an hour that you're payed) without requiring a phone that can do all that and more maybe be generically useful.
I get the argument here but you really should keep things in perspective. E-waste is a real and massive problem. This is a tiny tiny project it is neither here nor there.
Say it blows up and becomes extremely popular (it won't)? Like any other piece of electronics solutions will be available. Cross that bridge when you get there.
The fun and education aspect is in fact better than physical cards and worthwhile.
Also if we really think deeply about it this project may end up being better for the environment not worse.
Honestly, this is exactly the kind of overconsumption that got us to where we are. I don't care what someone's favorite emoji is, quite frankly, and I don't think it's worth strip mining the Congo just to do a Neat Thing. Use a printer, do it for the sake of your grandchildren's future.
So make this type of thing work across time and you have created value to someone, which means a marketable product, at least in the Slashdot sense of ?, ?, 3... profit!.
The cards can store data, and I imagine that things which happen to the card during a game leave a lasting impact, which is carried from game to game. The cards grow and change over time, and so when you trade one, you're trading an entire legacy :D
Which seems to me like the better implementation of this technology, anything else due to its digital nature just feels like it is going to be exploited making any value disappear completely.
I think this would be an amazing idea for a legacy style game, especially since it opens up the possibility of resetting the game and it really simplifies picking up and playing later.
But I really don't think it will work as a TCG.
Yes, still no game, I spent the last year delivering the crowdfunded devkits.
Blockchains create digital scarcity, and in fact, are the only decentralized way to have digital scarcity. So having the "cards" represent tokens on e.g. Ethereum would be a clever way to do that, I'm sure the processors can provide a secp256k1 signature, and the rest is read-only. I'd suggest not keeping your playing cards on the same wallet as other valuable stuff though.
I think some of the deep antipathy which certain commenters on this site exhibit towards the blockchain, is a hangover from the proof of work days. Sure, Bitcoin still uses it, but Ethereum doesn't. So it's decentralized digital scarcity, which is a useful property, at a reasonable environmental price.
There's plenty left to criticize about some uses of Ethereum, sure, but this wouldn't be one of those uses.
Complete loss of control over your game's ecosystem is, in fact, not a useful property.
I get the feeling people think because things are scarce already, scarcity is good. but... it really isn't. outside of a store-of-value, there is no real benefit to it, is there?
Hardware side: custom card frames and boards.
Software side: cards with custom images and games.
With a blockchain, you pay to modify it, so moving stuff around costs cybercoins, but even if no one wants to mint blocks anymore, you can still read your copy, which has your cards in it. And in that event, if you want to move stuff around, you still can, because anyone can set up a validator, even if they're the only one interested in keeping it going.
But I think this is reasonably unlikely to happen to any of the top blockchains on a reasonable timeframe. Whereas a game company shutting off its servers is virtually assured.
Very unique idea, very unique feeling, I still dont even know how it is mass produced actually... Kind of mediocre game to me, but thats just personal taste. It is special enough that any board gamer should give it a play at least a couple times to feel it
https://theotakubox.com/blogs/articles/chuunibyou-eighth-gra...
I'm reading it as developing a level of capability which may (or may not) be genuinely accomplished but lacks requisite perspective and humility regarding its limits. Young teens (as in the 8th grade range) are famous for displaying this, and of course capable adults find it an easy mistake to make at many points in life.
The recent OpenAI non-disparagement agreement ex-employees were forced to sign was itself covered by a non-disclosure agreement. Which current employees thus naturally had no idea about... until they were leaked to the press. Would it really have been better for these not to have been leaked?
The context here is sharing general technical knowledge, not the openai internal backstabbing.
Have you connected with folks like board game geek or other groups that might be a way to shift towards a large platform?
I'm also confused why you think receipt that can be rotated is somehow a difference maker, have you ever encountered on that can't be?
Agreed. Just like re-usable plastic bags are now possibly worse than 1-time use unless they themselves are used many times.
> A receipt that can be rotated is somehow a difference maker
This is the concept behind metro bus services in many places I've experienced, the driver glances at the color of your ticket and knows it's nature and whether you can keep riding or not. Don't know if that's a difference maker for conferences.
Looking for "badgers", or a syncronized icon instead of time/date etc., possibly coming at you in many different forms (phone, paper forms, etc) seems like it might be quicker. It might also cut down on people losing their badges (they are more valuable to them) and requiring re-prints ... which happens a lot, this is grasping.
Well the internet liked the idea, and saw some of the same promise in it that I did (plus HN is a sucker for e-ink). With all the interest, and people asking how they can get their hands on one, I ran a crowdfunding campaign to make devkits for everyone who wanted.
Turns out making 25 of something is way more work than making 2 of a thing. The supplier changed the display firmware on me, I had to make things to more exact measurements so parts were interchangeable, I had to write docs and make videos, etc etc. Took a whole year.
Now the pressure is off and I don't owe people products after they gave me money for them, so I can take a break to clear out my backlog of minor projects, then get onto designing my own game, using my own devkit :)
Once I have an actually fun game, I could increase volume and bring down the costs. My goal is to make the game accessible for $80. I'll need the e-ink price to come down a little, and use injection molding instead of resin casting and wood. Plus the base won't need a Raspberry Pi, that's just for my quick iteration. Final product will need to be embedded.
(Almost all the devkits sold were to friends and family, with only a few going to actual game designers. CrowdSupply itself puts in an order for more units along with the campaign, so that they can stock them after the campaign ends and initial delivery is over. Except they negotiate a different price for those because the margins work differently)
As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have committed to hardware until I had the game sketched out. You have constrained yourself to certain choices before you know the implications of those choices.
Is color going to hinder it?
Is this really a board game where the tiles are eink devices? In which case, you’d want the connections on the edges instead of the back.
Do you need more space for text?
Do the cards need to remain in the board?
And so on. You’ve already effectively made these decisions without knowing how they’ll affect game development.
You should’ve come up with a game, then developed the hardware prototype around that game. Even if the initial hardware would have cost more with your current setup. Because, as you’ve noted, when you’re ready to go to manufacturing, you be able to take advantage of proper tooling and economies of scale.
I really think the lack of a game is the thing that’s going to be your major roadblock.
Yeah, the goal is to make a cool thing, and then make a fun game.
My initial thought process evolved from coming back from yet another conference, and tossing yet another lanyard (colorful plastic, metal clips) and plastic covering into the garbage. I have done this probably around 50 times. So think replacing 100-200 of these for an academic, far, far more for con staff, sales vendors, etc.
Let's say all the organizers are convinced...why not use a common, non-electronic badge instead, since you have everyone agreeing to a common standard anyway? Perhaps something simple where the conference organizers can print out a paper slip (recycled paper even!) that you insert so they get some customization.
Smaller meetings provide markers for name-tags all the time, that's different from the conference-provided ID I'm required to wear in a conference of 6k+ people.
Perhaps if you explain what you mean, I'll understand the point you're attempting to make.
the contract developer would still have knobs and levers for adjusting rarity, issuing new cards, etc.
they wouldn't control the secondary market, but that's no different from Magic The Gathering or Pokemon or good old fashioned baseball cards.
I've personally never been drawn to the rare collectible genre of game, but they're quite popular, one of the services offered is balancing rarity and power. People who like these games enjoy the lottery aspect of buying a sight-unseen pack, opening it, and hoping to score a rare card, they like participating in an aftermarket, and they like putting together decks which other people don't have. All of which can be auditably provided using a blockchain, without having to check for counterfeits, and with players able to confirm that a card is actually scarce just by examining the state of the contract.
There are two reasons not to just make it a centralized system. One I addressed in another comment, the other is that with a decentralized system, it's possible to get the same properties as a physical collectible playing card game.
Namely: the creators control the properties of cards, how many are issued, and enjoy the profits of the first sale. But after that sale, the cards/token belong to whomever purchased them, and that person can sell them to whomever they like.
It's also possible to attach royalties to additional sales, or even retain the right to destroy tokens, but I would advise against this on business grounds, since those decisions would be unpopular ones for customers and players.
Of course, a centralized system would allow the issuers to confiscate the assets at any time, or forbid their transfer, or change the arrangement so that people are lured in with the premise that they can freely resell their cards, and then impose some cut of the resale price ex post facto. Plus if the company goes out of business, and shuts down the database and servers, that's the end of all that, your supposedly scarce bits are now useless.
So if your definition of losing control involves not being able to abuse your customers in that way, I can see why a centralized database might be preferable.
If it doesn't, then a centralized database is clearly inferior in every way that matters, for this application. Of course, someone starting with a thesis that blockchains are useless by definition, is going to begin with the conclusion, and work their way backward looking for reasons that conclusion is true.
To paraphrase another unsavoury person, when I see this kind of stuff I put my hand on the revolver.
My elevator pitch usually goes something like: MTG meets Yu-gi-oh meets Pokemon (the RPG) meets Tamagotchi.
These were originally implemented as buttons that you could pin on your shirt. There was a game convention long ago where sometimes you'd find two random people wearing them have a "hey! Let's play a game" moment since it also advertised playing the game. Break out the dice that you've already got, sit down and play in a minute or two (with no weird rules you everything ran real fast).
Likewise, you could have the "this is the game" clipped on one's shirt and then playing a digital game with your selected character.
Could you do a janky version of "Street Fighter" where your dude (and assistant/second character) both had permanent stats + inventory + needing to "rest" or "heal over time" to recover after the battle? Same, but it's more of an RPG "character card + inventory card" vs. "opponent character + opponent inventory"?
The concept of 1x$100 base, and 4x$15 playing cards seems approachable (vis: MTG booster packs).
Definitely look to have some sort of replaceable / lay-in play mat (see the little cards on this toy: https://www.amazon.com/VTech-80-178200-Drill-Learn-Toolbox/d... ). You could have a "Street Fighter" 2v2 playmat, or "Texas Hold-em" flop/turn/river mat. "Scan the QR Code, bluetooth connect to the base, load the 'game' into the device's memory", and then you're phone-free (forever) to negotiate between the base and the cards.
You're "missing" some sort of cover/door on the cards themselves (eg: configure the base station for texas hold'em, and how do you "shuffle" the two player cards w/o revealing their values to others?
Actually, what you should do is to put some sort of pin-pattern on the top that can be accessed from the front or the back (eg: four pins "as rivets" on left and right sides, two pins on top/bottom), so you could "load" or "shuffle" the card face up or face down.
Face-Up + buttons 1/2/3 => the display changes, you take your action, etc.
Face-Down + buttons 1/2/3 => the display changes, but the result is "hidden until revealed".
Another useful tool would be to allow some sort of spinners/selectors on the "cards" themselves (vis: el-grande's spinners: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/105293/el-grande ).
Being able to have some sort of dumb switches or a rotating selector on the cards themselves that are then "read" by the base station will let people do their thinking and take their turns "in their own hand" is super powerful (eg: let people select punch/kick/block on the cards in their hands vs. having to "dock" the card and only then being able to select punch/kick/block) is super-important to enable a smooth-flowing game instead of a novelty toy.
Overall, there's tons of cool options with it!
One of the ideas I’ve been chasing for a decade as a personal project is a set of figures, not unlike SkyLanders or the Disney Infinity figures. They would operate in a Pokémon-like game but retain memories of their interactions I haven’t ever quite gotten it done, but it remains one of my favorite projects to tackle.
But "value" is critical to a TCG when the first word is "trading". Otherwise what are you trading?
Otherwise, you just have a board game with cards (which exists). Which is fine! But that isn't a TCG.
That is (aside from sponsors, who want their logo there) a reason why it looks as it looks and having it somewhat different from event to event.
A shared programmable batch would require scanning them while entering each room, which creates bottlenecks at doors and more effort as each door needs staff and tech (and as soon as you have staff and tech at each door you can also provide all information there, thus the gain of being able to share information into the badge is gone) and you get to privacy issues.
And then half the badges people bring are broken and most participanta didn't ever have one/lost it/forgot it.
The plastic ones can already be forged, switching to paper wouldnt make it any easier as long as you don't publicize what it will look like in advance.
This is the only thing that matters buisiness-wise, its what I'd expect people who frequent HN do routinely, pitch. It doesn't have to be logical, fun, environmentally friendly, it just has to make it to their level of control. I've seen very illogical things become "standard" with little or no questioning for why it is now this way for no other reason than someone was very good at expressing "this is the way it is and should be" (i.e. they where very good at BS).
