Tag: epaper

Building your own private cloud?

Head in the clouds

I recently saw this from Gizmodo Australia, and read it with lots of interest.

Movies and TV shows come and go on Netflix on a regular basis, which means you might be half way through your favourite flick when it gets yanked from the service. The solution? Buy all your own content and set up your own private cloud-based streaming service you can get at from any computer or device.

The stand-out contender here is Plex, which we’ve recommended before. It’s new Plex Cloud service, now in beta, lets you use an Amazon cloud locker to store all your movies and shows and stream them from anywhere.

Previously, you had to host the files yourself, so that meant leaving a computer or network drive switched on all the time to get at your content over the web. With Plex Cloud that’s no longer necessary, though you do need to pay for a Plex Pass(from $US4.99 ($7) a month) and sign up for some Amazon storage (it’s $US59.99 ($79) a year for unlimited storage).

We’ve included a couple of other options if you’re not taken by Plex Cloud. They’re not quite as Netflix-like as Plex Cloud, but if you already pay for storage on these services then they’re good alternatives to consider.

Interestingly there was no mention of the friends sharing option which I have been using without the plex pass or plex cloud service. Its the advantage of self-hosting and having plenty of bandwidth at my disposal, but I like the fact you can also switch to have support from them too. Useful if your server goes down or something. This represents a more ideal solution.

I’ve always been interested in what happens when things are much more distributed. Plex is just the start, I already started looking into Emby and some other solutions for media. But for a long while I have been thinking about replacing some of the services I use which I believe I could run myself on my own server.

The whole owncloud thing has always interested me, but I’m weighing up having to be a sysadmin and my time. Although I found Docker which might take some of admin out of this in future. However I don’t want to replace everything, just the things I’m feeling less comfortable with (its about personal choice).

The ones I’m thinking about currently are Evernote, Last.FM and Instapaper.

Evernote I want to replace with something like simplenote (although I admit its not self hostable but my evernote’s recent restrictions have made me wonder why I pay for a pro account?). I looked at using Turtl but its not reliable and mature enough currently. On a related note, I’ve been tempted to install a GIT server at home. Then using a combination of Gitignore, Mindmup and some kind of GIT repository syncing between home install and Bitbucket; could be great for working on mindmups.

Last.FM with GNU.fm. I only use last.fm to scrobble/track my music playback. I also hooked up Libre.fm but noticed the actual server for libre.fm was just GNU.fm. It seems like a very simple service and useful when looking back for a song or podcast. Especially when placed in a calendar type system, it really triggers my memory. Its also worth noting the last.FM data lost recently has also made me wonder why I even need it. I mean I never use it for music discovery (as I found it rubbish) or anything else. I might as well dump my logs of usage to my google calendar?

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I just discovered Wallabag to replace Instapaper. Before I was using readitlater which became Pocket. I switched to Instapaper because of the deliver a mobil ebook to kindle every morning feature (heck I pay for this feature). But since i’m considering a epaper display android tablet which means it could read anything including PDF, RSS, ePub and Mobi. Plus I wouldn’t lose my kindle books because the Amazon app will run on it too. Having a smarter epaper device will squeeze out instapaper and likely mean I will read even more than I currently do (well worth the investment). I still far prefer to read longer stuff on a epaper display.

Theres no doubt I’ll start running more on my own server in future, already considered Open VPN and Zeronet. I think the money saved from certain subscriptions will easily pay for the electricity of hosting it myself?

Large scale epaper displays from Fluxuri

At long last after much much talk and some interesting developments from some of the bigger players. Fluxuri have showed their huge displays.

Fluxuri establishes a new type of innovative display technology that offers to affordably create mutable surfaces of any shape and size. It is a thin, highly flexible and reflective passive medium that only requires mechatronic or manual action to change its characteristics. In the former, special plotters and printers become feasible means even for very large areas. For the latter, hands and fingers themselves are amazing means enough to write and draw. Depending on their orientation, light strokes reveal different colours.

Fluxuri has a characteristic granular surface that is capable of variability in pixel sizes, densities and optical properties such as colour, finish, reflectivity, iridescence, fluorescence, phosphorescence, and more – and even in materials, with plastic used today, and other surface materials highly possible in the future. This makes Fluxuri a unique, sustainably versatile, and aesthetic medium.

Its fair to say I have been talking with Fluxuri, and although the video is blury. I have personally seen the display working close up. Its impressive and has plenty of great things which are certainly exciting at such sizes and so thin!

Expect to see them coming very soon…

Colour eink, but how large?

Colour Eink display

Collagues sent me a link to mashable piece about colour eink. Mainly because I have writtern about large eink/epaper screens in the past and still not had much of an answer.

E ink, the company behind the pigment-based, low-energy monochromatic displays found in many of today’s popular readers finally figured out how to create up to 32,000 colors in what is almost the exact same technology.

The new display, which E Ink will publicly demonstrate for the first time, is a 20-inch, 2500 x 1600 resolution display that actually shares monochrome E Ink’s impressive power capabilities. Mancini told Mashable that it’s equally power-efficient. He explained that it could be used in bus stop signage. “Bus stops are powered with solar cells, you could power this with solar cells,” he said.

He also noted that even though the prototype will be less than 2-feet wide, size is actually only limited by E Ink’s manufacturing capabilities.

It looks impressive although the question still remains about how big? 20inches isn’t bad but when they mention bus stop size, do they mean like the pervious stuff or actually what we all think about when mentioning bus stops. The glass wall currently reserved for posters and in some cases LCD screens?

 

Embracing e-paper displays in banners

Epaper bus stop

Read on BBC News that…

Transport for London is trialling e-paper bus stops that can display real-time travel information.

Fitted with solar-powered panels, they show how long passengers have to wait for the next buses, as well as route maps and timetables.

Although this is a small trial, it certainly indicates there might be more large scale use of epaper displays. To be fair its not the first time they have been used  Ideally I’d still like to see larger displays as I have talked about previously.

Of course display boards are nothing new in epaper. But what we really need is billboard size.

Its Pebble time…?

I do enjoy my pebble smartwatch. Just recently it starting supporting Android wear notifications and replies, making it much closer to the other smart watches you can buy on the market but still with 7 day battery life and a readable screen in bright sunlight.

But even with that, I was thinking it would be great if they just included a microphone, so you could reply instead of using prewritten messages or emoticons. Well its almost like they heard me and not only added a microphone but also a 64 colour epaper display in their new kickstarter project, Pebble time…

I’ll be interested to see the timeline interface in daily life too.

World’s largest e-paper sign

Some of you may remember I have been asking the question, why is there no large eink/epaper displays/screens? Then I came up with a solution which could scale (maybe) by creating a kindle array.

Well someone nicely pointed me in the direction of this article which claims to have the world biggest epaper sign. As you can see its really an array but its still pretty impressive.

Its also interesting to see where else epaper is being used.