Trolling My Mom With an E-Paper Picture

Ben, over at Applied Science made a video on e-paper displays and got me hooked on this thing.

Here is the module:

[kritsadventures]

The smart thing to do with this is to take the same photo and make subtle and terrifying changes to it over the course of the entire two years to make the person feel like they're going insane or the thing is haunted.

[ilusions]

all that work for your mom to be mildly impressed

[swc]

1:04 the way this changes on this particular photo looks awesome... it looks like the light is turning on and illuminating the scene

[costascostas]

The fact that she realised it changed means she really liked it and put it on display where she would be able to look at it everyday ❤️

[kaustubhumak]

"Mom look what I made" is a feeling, same for kids of all ages.

[TymexComputing]

Your Mom is a great user - she knew exactly that it has changed itself after 24 hours and only asked you for a single "Yes Mum!" :)

[floogulinc]

This is actually a really good implementation of a digital photo frame. The use of e-ink and only changing the photo every 24 hours (or more) makes it much more unobtrusive than the ones that were such a fad over a decade ago.

[AsymptoteInverse]

When I saw the title and the thumbnail, I thought you were making a picture frame that, when your mother was visiting, displayed an edited version of a picture with some family member she didn't get along with edited out.

I'm very pleased that the actual project was so much more wholesome, and that it worked so well, and that your mom didn't seem remotely surprised that you made something like this. Cheers!

[foogod]

I really think what you should have done was have a series of the same picture, but edited more and more with Photoshop so that it diverged more and more from reality over time (change the position of people, fiddle with hairstyles, change the color of clothing, etc), and saw how long it took her to notice that something wasn't right...

[yelowpunk]

10 minutes of Ben being a technical wizard and a bonus minute of Ben's mom being twice as smart as he is. ❤

[dontpokejosh]

was half hoping each day was a subtly different edited picture and after 2 months its a completely different picture... and now i'm imagining frames from a video that progressively gets weirder

amazing idea and really sweet execution

[Maxjoker]

Floyd-Steinberg dithering is awesome. I like how simple it is, and that it only looks ahead in the buffer, not requiring a second buffer for final image storage("In-place").

[cooltop]

For anyone that's thinking of making something like this today, there's this company called Pimoroni that has made a board with an eink display, rpi pico w, SD card reader, and some other features built right in. They also have custom firmware that makes setting pictures super easy. Highly recommend if you want something more simple and easy to set up

[BoomBrush]

You say moving forward your videos wont be as in depth? I really loved the depth of this project and i think its a really cool idea

[spacemanmat]

What would be a bit more tricky would be to load it with a number of almost identical shots. Usually for family photos you’d take maybe 6 shots and the choose the best, imagine check the photo each morning and wondering if that expression on someone’s face was the same as yesterday?

[Jennn]

My Gosh! I clicked on this just because the Title was Interesting. The level of Detail and all the technical Knowledge you provided to us is just Phenominal. Thank You for taking the time!

[RobertShippey]

I had no ida there was a 7 colour display like this. It honestly looks really good. Cool project too, it's funny how mum's are pleased even if they don't understand it haha.

[wiiu]

I think a lot of people would rather have something like this because it's less distracting when you have it in your living room. It's also cool to see it change if it changes every hour or so. You can have all your memories in one house now!

[alecwhatshisname]

Bro wears a mask programming alone in his house 😂
With glasses, I could never

[Gameplayer]

Your mum has a great son, actually.

Your code is optimised (in first look), and you always do great job with all of your projects.