Show HN: Trading cards made with e-ink displays

There are a lot of "electronic price tags" which are basically the same form factor as your trading cards, except they mass produce them (have nice plastic cases) and they usually include a 3-color eink (black-white-red or black-white-yellow) plus a wireless transmitter (usually proprietary protocol, but sometimes plain Bluetooth and/or NFC) for OTA updates and a 10-year battery (sometimes replaceable CR2032). Also, if you can grab them at $6 / piece, I imagine they're being produced for a lot less than that (random AliExpress link: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803094207083.html).

If you're thinking of mass-production might be worth reaching out to one of those manufacturers; you can buy in bulk if nothing else (but I'm sure they'd be open to customizing it a bit - maybe some branding on the plastic molding and whatnot).

This is absolutely awesome! I've had (terrible quality) 3-color e-ink displays and some associated electronics sitting in my office cupboard for a few years because I wanted to prototype this project, but I never did. I'm so glad you did this!

Since I just want this to come to fruition, I'll explain what my intended launch strategy was. I'm a developer (just a contractor, not owner) of Tabletop Simulator and do some stuff in that community where there's an overlap between physical tabletop and digital. My plan was to launch a card game (largely designed) and the e-ink cards simultaneously via Kickstarter. However, before that, a digital implementation of the game on TTS. Basically as much as I love this idea, I couldn't see it being monetisable on its own unless you can bring the cost down significantly. It also didn't seem like a defensible business on its own. But if the product is a game that uses said functionality, well, that'd be just swell.

Anyway, congrats, this is awesome!

The tray interface immediately reminded me of Harmonix's Dropmix.[1] A Dropmix-alike where you can program your own "cards" to store and play, or even just trigger, short loops on a playback device would be incredible.

Adventure card games,[2][3] which blend tabletop RPG and card game mechanics to play through a story and often rely on mutable and custom third-party or player-created cards, are another niche that could rock programmable cards. They don't rely on collectability or random card packs - everything to play comes in a base set, and expansions take the forms of additional classes or adventures. But they can be tedious to set up, card mutability means marking and smudging cards or sleeving them, and using third-party or player-made cards usually requires getting them printed to fit into the deck seamlessly - programmable cards can dodge all of those issues.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZLXSmq9s1A

2: https://www.strangeassembly.com/2019/review-pathfinder-adven...

3: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.obsidian.p...

This is very cool. I think you'll have a hard time finding a traditional board game publisher willing to put money into this (there might be one or two out there, but most will see this as prohibitively expensive for them), but you might be able to pull off a successful Kickstarter for them on your own.

Kind of like the Blinks game system, these little hexes with colored lights in them that each have a separate game in them and can 'teach' the other hexes they connect to.

One of the Blinks Kickstarters: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/move38/blinks-smart-boa...

Finally, a way to play physical Sabacc[1] in real life.

[1]: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sabacc

Seems like a bit of a solution waiting for a problem.

Given the current limitations in the system I would go with a monster battler game with a starter set of just 2 cards which would be yours and your opponents monster and then add a selection of power-ups/abilities these could be much cheaper components that could be played on the base station for an effect. These could be swipe cards or even just resistors basically anything that can be measured by the base station. With this hybrid system you could get the cool evolving over time monsters as well as lots of pieces to play with. Lots of scope for cool and hidden interactions. (Ideas taken from digimon tamers)

Super cool. Taking a crack at rules for a game using this.

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Sample game idea: CAKE DECORATION game - players have to try to decorate as many cakes as possible. Requires 10 cards.

One card is the 'design recipe' card and never leaves the base station. It shows an amount of ingredients, ex. "1 cup of buttercream, 3 shakes of sprinkles, 4 squirts of whipped cream".

Players start with either 3 blank cards or 3 random low-amount ingredient cards.

On a players turn, they select from three cards: each card is an ingredient, an amount, and a modifier. So cards could be "1 shake of sprinkles (2x)" "2 squirts of whipped cream (+1)" "1/4 cup of buttercream (+1/4)" (could make variations or add other kinds of things that might go on a cake)

The player draws a card, base station detects which card is missing, and the other two ingredient cards increase in amount based on the modifier value displayed on the card. ex. "1 shake of sprinkles with a 2x" will fully complete the recipe if not drawn for two turns (because 1 x2 x2 = 4 shakes, which is enough for the recipe)

With 4 cards in their hand, if the player can pay for the whole recipe, they win the round and get a point. On win, new recipe appears and all cards in the winning players hand and on the base station get rerolled to new low-amount ingredient cards. Score could be displayed on the margins of the recipe card.

If they cannot pay for the recipe, the player places a card back on the base station. And their turn is over. (Should ingredients be re-randomized when replaced on base station? Should that be a player decision whether to reroll it?)

First player to decorate N cakes wins the game.

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I think something like this could make for a viable game with a low number of cards, but could be more fun with a greater number (17 ideally?) which would allow for 3 active recipe targets (+2), using the 4th slot for another ingredient and displaying recipe as a disconnected piece(s) (+1), and larger hand sizes (5 -> +4) to allow for more complex recipes

An interesting game design question is how random you want the cards to be? Fair random would probably be viable, but since the 'deck' can know and make decisions based on the state of cards not connected to the base station, you could deal unfairly if less randomness would make the game more interesting or fun.

This is a really impressive project. That's an assload of new stuff to learn. Congrats on shipping.

That's actually interesting, and it's great that you decided to develop yourself in that field! Do you already have an insurance to protect your business? I can tell you that this type of policy is essential for running any type of business, and there are many sources of info like small business insurance twitter https://twitter.com/smallbizinsures acc that can help you with that. So I hope your business will flourish, good luck!

I guess the advantage of this setup, relative to playing a board game on an iPad, is that keeping info hidden from your opponent is more natural with cards. I suggest to exploit this, you either make the cards thin enough to hold in a hidden 'hand' the way someone might do in magic the gathering, or (much easier) have your plinth include a hidden hand prop section ala Scrabble.

In terms of product development, I think the best path would probably be to create or find an opensource game engine for cardgames and have a nice development environment plus API where a dev can write a game for the engine that either runs on a PC or runs on the cards, with no code changes required. (PC support makes debugging and iterating on game design much faster.)

I haven't read all the comments here yet, but I reckon this would be cool to use as a dungeon exploration game. Each card is a room and you can lay them out as you explore new rooms. When certain events are triggered you put the card back on the machine to be shuffled then placed back where it was. Get in, get as much loot as you can and get out without dying.

Honestly 2 of these per person and 5 for the turn,flop,river - and we have a texas holdem game without cards and shuffling - just chips...

so a 6 person game, 12 of these + 5 ~ 17 of these ~ $450 ~ about the cost of real nice chips and cards...

Very cool!

In terms of making a game with them, I think a design where the pins are on the face of the card may be useful. I want to be able to 'draw' a card without knowing what is on it.

Certainly can be useful with pins on the back (and I totally get how this orientation is probably more size-efficient), but I think front pins would be more 'playable'. Maybe a design could be achieved with holes that pass through all the way so it can be written with either orientation?

Being able to 'power up' an existing card in the upwards orientation could be really cool for situations where you kind of want 'counters' applied to a portable card. Could have a base-station that allows you to 'add' the qualities of one card to another target card, or 'evolve' a pokemon, etc.

If you could put even a single button on the "card" itself, then it'll open up a whole layer of game design.

This isn't an actual game, but I'm thinking it would be great to pick a card face up that's "red" and be able to make a decision to turn it into "cyan". Others could pick "green" and "blue" face up, but can click a button to turn it to something else, and then the game resolves itself when everyone reveals it. Like if everyone can discuss and if everyone reveals the primary colors everyone wins.

I'm sure there's interesting game mechanics you can come up with when you give a decision to the player.

Additionally, I think this could make an interesting programmable suite of games. You don't have to sell just one game.

I read a lot of these comments and people are thinking about traditional card games and electronic games of the past that are kinda sorta similar (but not really). They're missing the ONE HUGE ADVANTAGE of epaper displays: They don't need power.

It seems the big assumption everyone's making in the comments is that the displays will just stay there on the electronics box. The reality is that you can refresh the display and then take it back into your hand. You could even trade it with other players while disconnected.

Furthermore, these displays can be refreshed hundreds of thousands of times (some can do millions) and therefore can last a lot longer than regular cards. They're also stupidly cheap in bulk! Example of a cheap NFC-powered one: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803070283516.html (not the best example since it's kinda thick but you can get much thinner ones around the same price).

You just need to come up with some example games that take advantage of the trading dynamic. Also, if you're up to the engineering it would be neat if you could use one epaper "card" to modify another one. Much like how in many card games you can add an "enchantment" or "modifier" style card on top of another to give it additional capabilities.

I also recommend adding a cover or shutter to the cards so that they can be refreshed without the other players seeing what it is. Once the card is back in your hand you can move the cover out of the way and see what you got. Alternatively, you could make it so that the cards refresh their displays upside down. That way you can refresh it without anyone seeing what's there.

I really like this and look forward to future iterations.

For anyone curious, the symbol made by the contacts is the Tree of Life from the kabbalah

I love this. I dabble a bit in electronics as well as tabletop wargames and have always dreamed of having an interactive table with "moving" terrain, doors that open/close, LED's indicating some status of an objective, rotating walkways, that sort of thing. I think if you're plynth interface can be opensourced or licensed even, that you can do more than just play card games. How about track your games that support said interface? Wins, losses, draws, rewards. Not sure what the storage capacity is of the cards, but I see possibilities more in the form of combining Amiibo's with Steam's social features like achievements and the workshop.

This is very neat!

I don't think traditional board games would be interested unless you got the price down very very low ($2/unit or less).

I think you could make something happen if you marketed and packaged it as a "board game console" though. Like a fixed number of cards and larger boards, plus some sort of base station or phone app that'll flash everything to the starting state of a game of your choice. Then people buy new games digitally from you, same as a modern video game console.

(I'd be interested in the game dev facing API and writing some games for such a thing, so let me know if you're pursuing it and we can swap contact info.)

This is really cool.

When the pandemic started, it seemed like there was an opportunity to build games where you still are participating in physical space, but certain aspects of the game are shared across a network and then transform back into something that occupies physical space. I thought that could be something like AR but your cards open up other doors.

It would be fascinating to have a deck that shares cards in multiple distant places, with people playing the game from far away but connected through your cards.

Adding an element of time delay to the synchronization of the deck would be fun too.

Please provide a way to follow along on your progress, like a mailing list! Such a great project.

This is incredible! I'm so excited to see what you do with this in the future.

May I ask what e-ink displays you're using?

Trading or collectible card games that have cards that modify themselves with play would be great here. SolForge is the example I'm thinking of, but I'm sure other games do it too.

Can someone recommend some cheap ESL (as mentioned by other comments), that's easily hackable (as in a push an image to it without much troubles)? Many need proprietary base stations, some use NFC, but I'm looking for something with Bluetooth or ZigBee (or similar). Basically I want simple frame that would update with calendar events (or something), so NFC is not suitable and I don't want to buy expensive base station with lots of extra cruft (especially for one tag)

I can see this unlocking a new class of card games. Instead of buying a different set of cards, players would only need to buy one set of these e-ink cards, which could be used across a completely new marketplace of card games. They have the benefit of being more interactive and thus more immersive/engaging, albeit they seem a little unwieldy (the form factor could improve to make them thinner).

Can you file a patent for something like this? If you can, then I would explore that option.

Anyway to add NFC. I imagine a special gameboard which sends data to the cards based on game state.

Very impressive!

If this was a fully hackable product, it could be used for so much more than just playing games. Think the stuff that e-ink price tags are already used for, e.g. in product retail, plus so many uses in the office; no need to awkwardly write things down on post-its or simple slips of paper, when they can instead be shown on a trading card with information being reliably drawn from a single source of truth.

This is really cool! I had the same idea but dismissed it because e-inks were so expensive, it's really impressive you can get them down to $10. This enables you to make games that are digital and analog at the same time, which is in itself interesting. I think this tech combines well with NFTs to extend this functionality (if you need unique cards, unforgable etc.).

For anyone checking back here: Someone suggested I start a Discord server. Feel free to join: https://discord.gg/DXr2eWPk

The tree of life shaped connector is pretty awesome. It is very fitting with the tarot aesthetic.

There are so many wonderful applications of this! I am always interested in tabletop card games, but I don’t want to manage running calculations for things like my hp, or current stat buffs. Something like this could open up complex interactions and game state, without burdening the player.

ha! these are rad. But tbh they look more like electronic dominos. The docking station makes them less card like too (but love the way you've arranged the contacts)

This is amazing - but don't just limit yourself to table top games. While the killer app has not popped into my head I am sure there are business uses as well - from name tags to ... err - but just the very existence of these things means people will find new uses. fantastic

Could be a really cool way to play complex "choose your own adventure" games. Like "Hand of Fate" for example, you'd only need three or four cards. Could even do it with two. A game like "Reigns" you could even play with a single card

I never got into it, but I could see this having some use for AR D&D, and while it enables new games, show how it could be used in existing popular games today so that people can understand it and how it could enable/change existing games in new ways.

This is incredibly cool & inspiring. How familiar were you with Rust before starting? Any resources you can share for programming the circuit boards you use? I've had some embedded Rust ideas myself but am not sure where to start!

Sweet product! I always thought pet name tags would be a fantastic application for this!

Echoing everybody else here, really neat!

Questions:

Do the cards contain any battery? I’m wondering if they have always-running CPUs in there, or if all the compute happens in the base (and then it just writes to the screen).

I guess color eInk would probably be cost-prohibitive, huh?

I'm no expert on the subject, but wouldn't this be awesome as an addition to DnD or other tabletop RPGs? Like the card could be a great way to display and update player characters stats and information.

I REALLY love this idea. The way that this could combine the tactile nature of physical games with the benefits of digitization is awesome. The example you gave somewhere of the vampire card is so cool.

I applaud that you made a thing, and it's cool that you learned Rust, wrote a driver, did CAD, 3D printed... the works! It's far more than I can do.

But let's say all trading cards in the world were like the e-ink ones you invented, and then somebody came along and said, "I printed 52 trading cards on glossy card paper, in vibrant color. They are 1 millimeter thick, weigh practically nothing, and cost about a penny each to produce. The drawback is you have to shuffle them in your hands".

The paper version would be a massive upgrade in almost every sense.

Can I load up whatever images I want? The dream would be proxying Magic cards for playtesting. If you could load net-decks and shuffle via an app over NFC somehow, that'd be amazing as well!

Lots of possibilities here!

This looks pretty cool! I know that HN is very bearish on crypto, but I could see this or something like it be used by a crypto company to promote NFTs in conjunction with a card game or something like that.

Easily see game being game of something like these — or drumroll, NFTs.

I love it ! you should make a color version [1] !

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31191850

Amazing!! Are you taking orders? Have you considered setting up an Etsy where you can sell a few of them for $100 per tile when you feel like making a couple now and then?

Love it! I suppose it's possible to display animations right? If so it'd be very cool to play Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic with animated cards. Endless possibilities.

A very simple game could be Rock-Paper-Scissors if you can add a gyroscope or something to detect shaking and then show Rock, Paper or Scissor at random.

Sorry for adding more work. :)

I just noticed this project, Inkplate 2. Definitely more expensive but maybe some useful ideas there.

https://www.hackster.io/news/the-inkplate-2-is-a-tiny-self-c...

I think this is a really good idea. Just imagine being able to open source rulesets and cards and being able to load them into your deck on a moments notice, and your friends being able to do the same. I hope that you make this work, I would easily pay 200$ for a deck if there were a few games to choose from and a platform to build my own rulesets and cards and load them into the physical cards.

You should probably start talking to a patent attorney right about now. 99% chance this goes nowhere, 1% chance you're the next Gary Gygax.

This is so cool. I'm a sucker for card games and e-ink, so to get both in one serving is VERY exciting. Thanks for being an innovator :)

Very nice! Congratulations!

From a long time ago I'm trying to build a e-ink magnet for the fridge with relevant updated relevant information about some school programs.

But I haven't really found a cheap e-ink display.

Edit: I see that you answered it:

>Bought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags. Good Display GDEW029T5D Where do you get yours for $20?

This is huge. Are you going to sell these as kits?

Digital Tarot readings would be a possible use for this. You'd need to program the thing to randomly turn cards 180 degrees.

This is amazing! I’ve fantasized about doing something similar—-what resources did you use to pick up all of those skills?

Amazing project - I love the art on the "cards"! Who was your artist or where did you source it from?

This is really interesting jonahss, well done for completing it! Have you looked at the physical games and convention spaces?

Things like DnD roleplaying games or Megagames could both use something like this.

I'd personally be interested in both those applications, what kind of wireless communication can they do?

I know you probably have nothing besides the display in the card to keep it small, but that probably increases the number of Pogo pins you need if you need to run the entire display protocol over Pogo. If you had a demultiplexer in the card you could use only 3 Pogo pins.

That is a really cool idea! I really want to see what kind of new games that can be created from this.

This could actually replace mtg, which has run its course, jumped the shark and is on its deathbed.

Amazing and so many possibilities. Good luck for your future. Many good ideas here ...

Damn, impressive OP. This looks really nice. The design of everything is awesome.

My very first thought on seeing this was - hey, we could finally implement Sabaac as it's described in the Star Wars novels, with the morphing card mechanics and everything.

Off topic, but where are you getting e-ink display from. I could think of lot of usage for them if they don't require any refresh or power and is available for $10.

Dude, that’s a whole lot of accomplishments. Super impressive.

Looks awesome. I just want to use it to play three card monte.

This may be useful to generate random charactersistics / powers / hit's health cost (in case of a character card) or text for event based cards.

Ooooh, I love this! Are the design file available somewhere?

Really interesting idea and I can see many game mechanics that benefit. What do you think is the minimum thickness using any technology available?

My first thought is card battler

You could actually have a characters 'hitpoints' accurately reflected instead of having to keep track of, ala Hearthstone.

Does it needthe power source and logic? Could you have some kind of pogo pin or contact on the base and make them thinner/cheaper?

Great work, this is awesome. I’d love to connect and hear about your journey. I’ve always wanted to make a board game.

Kind of perfect for a travel mahjong set where you don't have a table to shuffle a bunch of tiles on!

This looks really great! Do you have any blog posts talking about the hardware design of the cards?

Was it intentional to have the pin layout be in the shape of the Sefirot? Either way, spooky!

Somehow this makes me think of the “Deck of Dragons” in “Malazan” because the faces can change.

Out of curiosity what connectors did you use between the card and the plinth?

Are they some sort of pogo pins?

Woah that's really impressive! What sort of microcontroller are they running? Why Rust?

I think marketing this more like a console and less like a game might be the way to go.

This is incredible! Nice job!!!

e-Ink is the coolest tech, edition 789 237

Btw that’s a great project OP. I really love it.

This is insanely cool.

Why not just use the phone as a virtual hand of cards?

This is absolutely incredible. Love this technology.

What would a board game made with these cost, $100?

I bet magicians would love such cards.

Wow! Very cool! Love the idea

No need to physically shuffle.

Very nice!

Hello Sabacc.

the big question is can it display NFTs?

Frefire

Why are the ports for the card bays Sephirot shaped? Does this game's lore have some Talmudic angelology inspiration?

I have a few qualms with this project:

1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting a 3D printer, designing and printing your own cards, and making your own circuit boards. From Windows or Mac, you can then just use whatever you made on Linux.

2. It doesn't actually replace physical cards. Most people I know e-mail cards to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to play games, but they still carry physical cards in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.

3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service (not buying, but also playing with the cards), is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?