I really hope the Bay Area keeps this attitude, and that other places adopt it if they haven't already:
"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.
I live here too. I'm biased, but 1) this place is not full of awesome engineers, it's mostly full of overworked contractors and newbies with eighth grader syndrome. And 2) you can't just walk up to them and ask them to explain everything about their project. That's a huge security issue and if it were true it would be a lot easier to social engineer places today. Not to say that it isn't possible, but this comment paints an unproductive, idealized, and inaccurate view of the bay.
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 didn't mean people who work at Uber explaining how their load-balancing works.
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.
Whay do u mean i called Elon he said sure cmon over we smoked weed and made a cool double decker car and drove it to Tim Apples house and he hired me to work on m5 chip. its still like that.
I don't know. I think the younger 20-somethings all have this same kind of dream, but the older people get, the more comfortable they seem hiding behind NDAs at FAANGs or staying in "stealth mode." They really don't owe anyone anything.
You don't "hide behind" NDAs. Either you have one or you don't. Whatever your position is on the NDAs in general, you really shouldn't break one you accepted.
That note about manufacturing is very interesting. It is indeed very difficult to make 10s, 100s, or 1,000's of things. Let alone millions.
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.
Nice. I've thought of various similar applications (probably because I saw such somewhere). For example conferences require lanyards with passes attached. Most contract with some company to handle all their creation, then also require you (more or less) to use their app to get a schedule, etc. Why not create a generic, re-usable pass (like OP) that attaches to your lanyard, has some basic features at a glance (schedule, your favorite emoji), and could of course be used to track or facilitate flash-gatherings as needed. IIRC defcom did something like this, I'm thinking more generic.
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.
This! Now make them required at conferences (easily done because professional societies), someone sell the service. We have to pay $600 just to go to present our papers, make it cost less by $50 if you come with your own.
Is this really better than physical cards? There are electronics here, and electronics tend to go obsolete fast. If the old one is obsolete in a year or two there was so little reuse that everyone is better off with old fashioned paper/plastic. You would have to commit to not coming up with a better model every year - but if you do that someone else will compete by coming out with the better model instead. Which is to say you can't win.
I completely agree. Thinking more along the lines of- whether or not something is better may not drive a market, people loved Tamagotchi but vanilla stuffed animals last generations... but Tamagotchi still work for many.
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.
Can you really put a price on fun? No fun allowed? Why do we even need playing cards in the first place that's a waste of good paper.
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.
Don't forget the e-waste aspect... You can recycle paper easily, but several rare earth metals and e-ink all mashed together are much more difficult, and require a lot more energy to produce.
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.
I know of CyberBadge from Poland, which is making a very primitive version of what you're describing. They don't have a screen, just an array of programmable led lights. People use them at events. https://cyberbadge.net/
Cool. Badges, commemorative pins, small tradable items are mainstays at cons, conferences etc., their market doesn't need to be created, it's their to be fed.
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!.
Just curious, is there really a "trading" aspect or is it more for deck-building type games?
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?
Hi, Wyldcard creator here, thanks to HowToWare for the interview :)
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
That sounds more like a legacy style board game than an actual trading card game.
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.
IIUC (and I haven't RTFA but from my recollection of my conversations with Jonah around that same time frame) there is not really a game yet, it's more of a platform, with "trading" intended to be a possible feature of some games.
I'm aware that mentioning this tends to get you crucified on HN, but making something like this fun is a good use for blockchain technology.
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.
Why is digital scarcity a good thing? Why is scarcity at all a good thing? Is there any reason for this, outside of trying to sell them at an ever higher price? And how does sharing a read-only e-ink card benefit over a regular card, or a card with an NFC tag in it?
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?
Yes, all cards will be like this soon. So if you wish to keep your rare baseball card collection, you'll have to continue to pay your subscription price. If you miss a payment, you might be temporarily locked out of the collection, but repeated missed payments risk the collection being deleted entirely.
Neat project. As an aside, the following is a great creative starting point insight:
> 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!"
So what's the plan for this hardware when it's no longer considered useful or operable?
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.
To set the record straight, I was the one that reached out to the creator to get his story, because I thought the cards were cool. He would not have spent the time doing this interview if I hadn't asked him to.
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.
I don't have much business being in this thread but I wanted to add that I appreciate the inclusion of lesser-seen details like the sacred geometry in the board.
>"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."
People sometimes mock how in Star Trek they'd occasionally have a bunch of PADDs splayed out on a table, almost using the futuristic tablets as if they were clipboards instead of how someone might use a real computer or tablet.
Then we get projects like this, which I see as a step towards that future.
I don't know why someone would mock that in the first place. Surely a starship with a built in matter replicator would use as many tablets as they found convenient.
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.
Couldn't you make the same argument that any of us on this forum using more than 1 monitor at our desk, doesn't really understand the benefits of our technology and are using our monitors like 19th century chalk boards?
I'm sure this could be done, today, much more elegantly, flexible e-paper is available without being attached to some heavy clunky PCB, and flexible PCBs are easily do-able, you only need a fairly small/simple mcu and power the whole thing by inductive loops. I reckon you could probably get something close to the size/feel of a credit card, if not more bendy/flexible.
(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.
I've heard that switching to all of that will add 20-40 seconds of dead time waiting for the display to change, as the NFC transfers power to run the whole procedure. That'd be too long an interaction time with no feedback.
Since nobody in this or the original thread has asked this and I can't find any reference to it in the post - why is there a cable that connects the device to itself?
Wyldcard creator here, thanks to HowToWare for the interview.
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.
I have an idea for such an e-ink display. Are there pre-made e-ink displays out there with maybe a couple of buttons of input and maybe wifi for software update? I imagine it could be running something like Pico-W and have an e-ink display? Any ideas?
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.
Saw this at OpenSauce this weekend. Very cool concept. Obviously the price per unit (card) of the DevKit is a bit...steep. But at mass production scales it could be very reasonable. Especially if there were a dozen or more card games you could plan on it?
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.
looks like there is still a pcb within the enclosure?
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
The pcb on the card is just a charge pump that the display demands in order to regulate its voltage. If I shipped that off the card and onto the base, I'd need more contacts.
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
This is really cool. Sorry to change the topic a bit, but I have been thinking about adapting something like this for a screen that you can place on your desk or work bench to use it as a physical "away message" so that people know where you are when you are not at your desk (i.e. @lunch, @meeting, @microscope, etc..) Ideally, it would connect to wifi so that you can update it remotely.
Can't you just put it on your calendar? Or use a sticky note? Bonus: a sticky note doesn't need a battery. Alternatively, your coworkers are adults, and can simply wait an hour for you to eat lunch. They won't go into hysterics if they can't find you.
It reminds me of the old West End Games / Legends description of the game sabacc in Star Wars. Instead of being played with normal paper cards as seen in Solo, the players received cards with screens on them At certain parts in the game, the cards would randomize. '
A completely baroque way of playing, but fits with a world where actively powered antigravity technology has replaced wheels.
Wyldcard creator here, thanks to HowToWare for the interview.
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.
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
These look really good, I love the style. Don't know if I'm interested in them as trading cards but posters or "stickers" with this style actually seem like a very cool idea. Instead of traditional paper stuff you get a display thing which you can change and make better or fit your taste more.
> I drew inspiration from the fictional games I wished existed when I was in school, like Yu-gi-oh
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
I know everyone who dares to say anthing about NFTs gets downvoted, but I'll do it. In this case, making the cards an NFT can make this really cool. Some sort of global immortal database where the rarity etc. is defined. Could also have nothing todo with crypto if the dev/publisher pays for the servers.
I really hope the Bay Area keeps this attitude, and that other places adopt it if they haven't already:
"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.
I live here too. I'm biased, but 1) this place is not full of awesome engineers, it's mostly full of overworked contractors and newbies with eighth grader syndrome. And 2) you can't just walk up to them and ask them to explain everything about their project. That's a huge security issue and if it were true it would be a lot easier to social engineer places today. Not to say that it isn't possible, but this comment paints an unproductive, idealized, and inaccurate view of the bay.
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 didn't mean people who work at Uber explaining how their load-balancing works.
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.
2 replies →
Whay do u mean i called Elon he said sure cmon over we smoked weed and made a cool double decker car and drove it to Tim Apples house and he hired me to work on m5 chip. its still like that.
What is "eighth grader syndrome?"
3 replies →
I don't know. I think the younger 20-somethings all have this same kind of dream, but the older people get, the more comfortable they seem hiding behind NDAs at FAANGs or staying in "stealth mode." They really don't owe anyone anything.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the younger 20-somethings.
You don't "hide behind" NDAs. Either you have one or you don't. Whatever your position is on the NDAs in general, you really shouldn't break one you accepted.
2 replies →
That note about manufacturing is very interesting. It is indeed very difficult to make 10s, 100s, or 1,000's of things. Let alone millions.
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.
Nice. I've thought of various similar applications (probably because I saw such somewhere). For example conferences require lanyards with passes attached. Most contract with some company to handle all their creation, then also require you (more or less) to use their app to get a schedule, etc. Why not create a generic, re-usable pass (like OP) that attaches to your lanyard, has some basic features at a glance (schedule, your favorite emoji), and could of course be used to track or facilitate flash-gatherings as needed. IIRC defcom did something like this, I'm thinking more generic.
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.
Have you heard of our lord and saviour the Pimoroni Badger? https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/badger-2040?variant=39752... I have one and it's awesome. They upgraded it recently with wifi: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/badger-2040-w?variant=405...
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...
This looks really neat. Now I'm tempted to see if I can get one and have a way to render a conference schedule on it. :D
This! Now make them required at conferences (easily done because professional societies), someone sell the service. We have to pay $600 just to go to present our papers, make it cost less by $50 if you come with your own.
I for one welcome our new badger overlords.
Is this really better than physical cards? There are electronics here, and electronics tend to go obsolete fast. If the old one is obsolete in a year or two there was so little reuse that everyone is better off with old fashioned paper/plastic. You would have to commit to not coming up with a better model every year - but if you do that someone else will compete by coming out with the better model instead. Which is to say you can't win.
I completely agree. Thinking more along the lines of- whether or not something is better may not drive a market, people loved Tamagotchi but vanilla stuffed animals last generations... but Tamagotchi still work for many.
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.
2 replies →
Can you really put a price on fun? No fun allowed? Why do we even need playing cards in the first place that's a waste of good paper.
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.
Don't forget the e-waste aspect... You can recycle paper easily, but several rare earth metals and e-ink all mashed together are much more difficult, and require a lot more energy to produce.
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.
7 replies →
Make it hackable and they'll probably be around forever.
I know of CyberBadge from Poland, which is making a very primitive version of what you're describing. They don't have a screen, just an array of programmable led lights. People use them at events. https://cyberbadge.net/
Cool. Badges, commemorative pins, small tradable items are mainstays at cons, conferences etc., their market doesn't need to be created, it's their to be fed.
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!.
Just curious, is there really a "trading" aspect or is it more for deck-building type games?
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?
Hi, Wyldcard creator here, thanks to HowToWare for the interview :)
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
That sounds more like a legacy style board game than an actual trading card game.
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.
8 replies →
IIUC (and I haven't RTFA but from my recollection of my conversations with Jonah around that same time frame) there is not really a game yet, it's more of a platform, with "trading" intended to be a possible feature of some games.
:wave:
Yes, still no game, I spent the last year delivering the crowdfunded devkits.
2 replies →
I'm aware that mentioning this tends to get you crucified on HN, but making something like this fun is a good use for blockchain technology.
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.
> decentralized digital scarcity, which is a useful property
Complete loss of control over your game's ecosystem is, in fact, not a useful property.
10 replies →
Why is digital scarcity a good thing? Why is scarcity at all a good thing? Is there any reason for this, outside of trying to sell them at an ever higher price? And how does sharing a read-only e-ink card benefit over a regular card, or a card with an NFC tag in it?
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?
2 replies →
Why choose this approach over a traditional centralized database?
1 reply →
Yes, all cards will be like this soon. So if you wish to keep your rare baseball card collection, you'll have to continue to pay your subscription price. If you miss a payment, you might be temporarily locked out of the collection, but repeated missed payments risk the collection being deleted entirely.
I'm hoping to monetize the Shadow Realm
Great. the DIVX(tm) of collectible cards. I don't foresee a large uptake of this.
I imagine:
Hardware side: custom card frames and boards.
Software side: cards with custom images and games.
See also:
Show HN: Trading cards made with e-ink displays https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33795296 (1149 points | Nov 30, 2022 | 291 comments)
Neat project. As an aside, the following is a great creative starting point insight:
> 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!"
$5 to best all your friends in this hand! $20 to win all night long!
So what's the plan for this hardware when it's no longer considered useful or operable?
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.
It just seems like a bit much for not enough.
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.
To set the record straight, I was the one that reached out to the creator to get his story, because I thought the cards were cool. He would not have spent the time doing this interview if I hadn't asked him to.
And that's fair enough.
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.
3 replies →
It's a super poorly thought out idea, but it is cool that's for sure.
I don't have much business being in this thread but I wanted to add that I appreciate the inclusion of lesser-seen details like the sacred geometry in the board.
I personally find it creepy and offputting. I guess to each its own.
Why? Is it because it's esoteric, not meant for all?
7 replies →
I am reminded of Paul Kingsnorth's _The Basilisk_: https://emergencemagazine.org/fiction/the-basilisk/ (Quick read, styled after the Screwtape Letters, but about the internet)
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."
People sometimes mock how in Star Trek they'd occasionally have a bunch of PADDs splayed out on a table, almost using the futuristic tablets as if they were clipboards instead of how someone might use a real computer or tablet.
Then we get projects like this, which I see as a step towards that future.
I don't know why someone would mock that in the first place. Surely a starship with a built in matter replicator would use as many tablets as they found convenient.
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.
Couldn't you make the same argument that any of us on this forum using more than 1 monitor at our desk, doesn't really understand the benefits of our technology and are using our monitors like 19th century chalk boards?
For those interested in novel and quirky uses of e-ink displays, you might also want to see these: https://lightnote.cardonabits.com
Disclaimer: I design and build these. And I'm also a big fan of jonahss work.
The lightnote is so cool, and the design is perfection
I'm sure this could be done, today, much more elegantly, flexible e-paper is available without being attached to some heavy clunky PCB, and flexible PCBs are easily do-able, you only need a fairly small/simple mcu and power the whole thing by inductive loops. I reckon you could probably get something close to the size/feel of a credit card, if not more bendy/flexible.
(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.
I've heard that switching to all of that will add 20-40 seconds of dead time waiting for the display to change, as the NFC transfers power to run the whole procedure. That'd be too long an interaction time with no feedback.
And of course the cost goes way up.
Show HN: from the dev https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33795296
Since nobody in this or the original thread has asked this and I can't find any reference to it in the post - why is there a cable that connects the device to itself?
Wyldcard creator here, thanks to HowToWare for the interview.
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.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
What a great low-cost idea for multiplayer games.
Is that the tree of life printed on the PCBs?
I should have asked if he was influenced by Evangelion, because I'm a fan of the show.
I'd imagine this is a direct Kabbalah reference since they goes on to talk about implementing Tarot.
Definitely looks like one and now I really want to know why.
I have an idea for such an e-ink display. Are there pre-made e-ink displays out there with maybe a couple of buttons of input and maybe wifi for software update? I imagine it could be running something like Pico-W and have an e-ink display? Any ideas?
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...
Hi, I make this display:
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.
It looks beautiful!!
I've been tempted to buy this one more than once: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-...
I've thought about this concept a lot.
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.
Saw this at OpenSauce this weekend. Very cool concept. Obviously the price per unit (card) of the DevKit is a bit...steep. But at mass production scales it could be very reasonable. Especially if there were a dozen or more card games you could plan on it?
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.
looks like there is still a pcb within the enclosure?
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
The pcb on the card is just a charge pump that the display demands in order to regulate its voltage. If I shipped that off the card and onto the base, I'd need more contacts.
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
This is really cool. Sorry to change the topic a bit, but I have been thinking about adapting something like this for a screen that you can place on your desk or work bench to use it as a physical "away message" so that people know where you are when you are not at your desk (i.e. @lunch, @meeting, @microscope, etc..) Ideally, it would connect to wifi so that you can update it remotely.
I make this eink smart screen: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
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.
This is really cool. A little bit overkill for my needs, but would definitely solve the problem.
Can't you just put it on your calendar? Or use a sticky note? Bonus: a sticky note doesn't need a battery. Alternatively, your coworkers are adults, and can simply wait an hour for you to eat lunch. They won't go into hysterics if they can't find you.
You may be interested in this E-Ink Smart Screen: https://www.invisible-computers.com/
It reminds me of the old West End Games / Legends description of the game sabacc in Star Wars. Instead of being played with normal paper cards as seen in Solo, the players received cards with screens on them At certain parts in the game, the cards would randomize. '
A completely baroque way of playing, but fits with a world where actively powered antigravity technology has replaced wheels.
That's very cool. Love seeing these types of things.
If they were thinner and wider, I suspect that an almost unlimited number of uses could open up for them.
Wyldcard creator here, thanks to HowToWare for the interview.
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.
I was wondering where you found some place to do custom screen sizes. Nice use of an existing product shape.
Konstantin Schubert has created a wider E-Ink Smart Screen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26216357
Hi, that's me!
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...
Interesting choice for the layout of the contacts, the "10 Sfirot"
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/52/db/70/52db70262ac28239669a45d88...
He doesn't mention it in TFA
These look really good, I love the style. Don't know if I'm interested in them as trading cards but posters or "stickers" with this style actually seem like a very cool idea. Instead of traditional paper stuff you get a display thing which you can change and make better or fit your taste more.
> I drew inspiration from the fictional games I wished existed when I was in school, like Yu-gi-oh
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
No way, the real Yu-gi-oh is played with hologram projectors and the cards have personalities. Plus the rules aren't ever quite explained.
Nice layout of the connection pins, though I question your number assignments. :)
Haha, guilty. But! The actual wires assigned to each pin correspond to the Sephirot. Keter is VCC and Malkhut is GND, etc etc :P
Awrite that makes up for that then. :)
This is cool. I hope the cost of eink plummets so this is actually viable.
4.2" three color modules are 12 USD on AliExpress without volume discounts. How much cheaper does it have to become to make it viable?
Cheaper than that.
What version of the 10 Sefirot is the pin pattern?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefirot
I really hope he patent this. This is a very unique way of using e-ink screens. I could totally see this blowing up in the games world.
This is so cool and potentially has a nice overlap with badge life enthusiasts.
For the uninitiated:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbne9a/a-history-of-badgelif...
is there a way to make this thinner like an actual trading card?
I know everyone who dares to say anthing about NFTs gets downvoted, but I'll do it. In this case, making the cards an NFT can make this really cool. Some sort of global immortal database where the rarity etc. is defined. Could also have nothing todo with crypto if the dev/publisher pays for the servers.