I am curious if one, something like this exists, and two what the cost might be? I am looking for a screen, I assume an e-ink is the best/cheapest option and I want it to be as close as possible to the size of a playing card, ideally not thicker than 2MM. But I think up to 5mm could work.
Basically the idea is to use and or eventually create very thin cheap e-reader screens to make programmable playing card games. I have no idea if the screens are even that small, when I go to look for them I get results that are very far from what I am looking for.
Anyone know if what I want exists, and if not, if it would even be possible to manufacture for cheap?
Edit: I wonder how hard it would be to repurpose something like this?
The idea is that all the “cards” would be inserted into a carring case that acts as a dock to update the cards. Once you pick your game, all of the cards refresh to whatever game you picked. I would want to make the games open so anyone can design a game for people to play.
Even if you find screens that thin, all the electronics you’re going to need to make them usable will add considerable thickness.
But once the display is updated, the circuitry isn’t really necessary. Maybe you could reduce the thickness and the duplication of circuitry by having a “dock” with the circuitry where you insert the card to update it.
That’s exactly the idea! They would have pins somewhere on the buttom, you would plug all your “cards” into a dock that would act as a carrying case. There would be an open source website where people can design different games and then you choose one of the games and it refreshes all the cards to whatever game you want to play.
That’s the idea anyway, whether it’s feasible for something people are willing to pay is a different question.
Is certainly in the realm of feasibility, at least in a technological level. You can get flexible e-ink displays that are less than a mm in thickness. Typically the hardware that changes the display is the bottleneck on size.
That being said, I have doubts about the idea of “manufacturing for cheap” as even small e-ink displays can cost $20+.
I did find some 1mm price tags on Alibaba for 3-5$ which could possibly be repurposed. The issue is I really would like to get the price driven down to $2-1, maybe even less… I want this thing to be able to mimic any kind of card game, and some of them have up to 300 cards… I think the plan would be to have 150 card sets. That would cover a lot of games, and if your playing a really nerdy game that does need 250+ cards or something there is a chance your friend might also have a set.
If you could get the price tag $300 or less you could probably get a lot of hard-core tabletop card gamers. I know thats a huge price tag, but the product isn’t meant for the masses.
Try finding it on AliExpress. Just search “e ink display” or "e ink screen. The webiste is hot garbage but their app is ok.
Thanks I did try before, but now I had success. I stumbled upon those little price tags stores use to digitally update prices. Those could possibly work for this.
good luck
your project sounds really interesting, make sure you post an update when its done
I think your best bet is to look for an appropriately sized electronic shelf labels, there are companies that specialise in them and they are already quite thin, battery powered and have bluetooth or nfc connectivity to change images.
For an e-ink display to work you need 4 things.
- the display itself.
- a display driver that connects to that flat ribbon cable to the display.
- a MCU or computer to host your programming and send commands to the display driver
- power, wether it’s battery, USB, or induction…
You can separate the screen from the driver and have the e paper show the last image. The one thing I’d be worried about is how fragile the components are on the side of the rapper display itself as well as the ribbon cable.
Also, you mention 150+ cards. Think of the time it would take to change each one separately with a dock. Connecting the display to the driver is not hot pluggable you would likely need to power cycle the whole thing at every card. Plus the damage risk of constantly connecting the fragile connectors.
Thanks, I was aware of some of those obstacles. But this adds a little more detail, to the point where I don’t think it would be economical to repurpose this for this. It sounds like my idea may be possible with current off the shelf tags, but I think the dock would end up being way larger than I was initially imagining. It also seems like I am looking at like a minimum of $500 in parts for a prototype, even if I were somehow able to get the tags for $2 a piece.
You misunderstand the dock interface. The plan would be to insert the ribbon into something more durablee to bridge into the dock to be more like a cartridge. The dock will be expensive as I would plan for either all or most of the “cards” to be docked at once. It wouldn’t be a insert, wait, insert wait, instead it would be insert all the cards into their slots after play.
I also realized that the dock will need to be a little more complex then I originally thought as well. A lot of games have extensive burn and draw mechanisms leading to an extensive set of cards. What you could do is only have the amount of cards you would need in the base set for most of these games that are actually in play at any given time. The rest of the “cards” could be held in the “docks” memory, then “printed” when you draw a new card. It would add a little bit of time to the games, but you could dramatically cut the amount of physical “cards” or tags you need for many games.
You could potentially modify a game to work with those cards. Making cards able to change state or add extra states (that would usually be extra cards) to a single screen. I like your idea. Maybe the idea would not be a retro fitting but a ground up new mechanics for the mage?
