Comment by konschubert
3 years ago
Hi HN!
I 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 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Joan as a product is very thick, and also has terrible connectivity - no wifi-based configuration, needs out of date USB drivers downloaded in order to talk to it, etc.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.
Hey, thanks for the feedback.
I agree that the market for this particular product is very small.
200 euros is a lot. I own a remarkable tablet, and it can do a lot more with a bigger screen
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 totally see your point of view regarding the price. What price would you say is right?
> 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.
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.
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Hi there, I have a few recommendation:
- 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.
Hi, thanks for your comment. Those are good ideas.
I know someone who needs this.
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.
I agree.
> Much bigger would be nice too.
Totally.
What's the planned size of the display?
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?
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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.
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.
What price point would work better in your opinion?