Birbla

Discussion summary

Valve open-sourced the Steam Machine e-ink display design, allowing users to create their own. Discussions included the device's features, pricing, and modding possibilities.

What the discussion says

  • Some users are interested in making custom e-ink displays.
  • There is debate over whether the price is justified without the display.
  • Comments mention the device's modding capabilities and design.
  • Some users discuss the cultural and grammatical aspects of the article.
“Valve will not be making and providing their own e-ink display for the Steam Machine.”
— romaniv
“I want to make an actual eInk display myself, not just buy one.”
— Fokamul

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  • Hacker News
  • the part selection is appropriate for the current steam machine pricing, but i wonder if having this resource can help someone salvage eink displays from old kindles to achieve the same result.
    by rldjbpin
  • Is the Steam Machine a decently priced desktop compared to the "generic" ones?
    by rbanffy
  • Compared to buying from parts? No.

    Compared to an average prebuilt? You can probably find large tower PCs at a lower price, but they'll likely have a low quality motherboard or power supply.

    Compared to an average prebuilt that ships with Linux? Absolutely

    by weberer
  • For a small gaming box it is a good price.

    If you don’t care that much about size, HDMI-CEC or SteamOS there are faster alternatives for the price.

    by artisinal
  • Wildly depends where you live.

    For the same price I can get a prebuilt desktop PC with double the performance (Ryzen 7 5700 + RTX 5060 Ti)

    Even if you go mini ITX you can get a better PC with 50% more performance (Ryzen 7 5600x + RTX 5060) https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/498435-diy-45l-steam-m...

    by haunter
  • You can't build a machine which is as powerful, small, quiet, and cheap, nor can you take for granted that a machine you build can have a controller that can wake it from sleep, or which has HDMI-CEC (both are possible, but take extra work or hardware). You can rather easily build a machine with multiple of those attributes, but you'll have to pick ones to sacrifice in the name of the others.
    by delecti
  • Gamers Nexus did a very in depth review of the Steam Machine [1], which includes a comparison to a build yourself similar machine.

    The result is that for about 70 dollars less you can put together a somewhat more powerful PC than the Steam Machine, but not for that form factor, it would still be bigger.

    IMO, the Steam Machine is not a bad purchase if you are in the market for that type of product.

    [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=66QzlDewigE

    by oAlbe
  • e-ink is becoming the new hotness lately. There may soon be a time when you will look at every poster or menu on a wall and wonder if it is paper or an actual e-ink screen that will soon change to some other image. Airports, highway signs, etc.
    by deadbabe
  • And of course it will be used for advertising, creating massive externalities for barely any income for the land owner, but they won't care because its others that pay
    by iso1631
  • Is it even useful as a faceplate? An active display would be way more accurate at displaying hardware stats when the machine loses power (it'll shut down).
    by orbital-decay
  • That's an interesting case of a display being off actually indicating something ("loss of power") which can't be replicated with a bistable screen.

    On the other hand, you probably don't want that glow of an active screen all the time. Status LEDs are annoying enough.

    by cubefox
  • I would love to see an analysis of how valve's openness and goodwill affects their bottom line. Intuitively it should be a net positive for them, but there gotta be upfront costs, otherwise everyone would be doing it too.
    by tra3
  • They have a money printer that gives them nearly unlimited flexibility. Being a private company means Gabe can do long-term investments without concern.

    Steam has been an incredibly good steward of its position, but I fear for the day when capitalism finally sinks its claws into the platform.

    by 3eb7988a1663
  • Valve is one of the most efficient (revenue/staff) corporations there is. Far more so than most tech companies even. If that's how you measure goodwill then it seems like it works.
    by dismalaf
  • They have an infinite money glitch in Steam, it hardly matters for them even if it makes a loss as long as it propagates the ecosystem.
    by moffkalast
  • 1. Valve is a private company with a money printer (steam) 2. the point of these initiatives is to build an ecosystem with steam at the centre.

    A better way to look at this is valve is trying to hedge it's self against microsoft. By creating an ecosystem of devices and software that's full open so they're not reliant on Microsoft. The goal of Valve hardware ISN'T to make money. It's to encourage others to build devices free of Microsoft that Steam can be installed on.

    They have nothing to gain by being closed, and everything to gain by being open.

    by BunsanSpace
  • Hold on , i gotta recharge my front plate
    by ismaVQ
  • Looks like Waveshare has a E6 full color ePaper/eInk/EPD display in 3.6" and 7.3" but not yet in 5.83":

    "5.83inch E-Paper Display (G), E-ink Display, 648 × 480, Red/Yellow/Black/White, SPI Interface" https://www.waveshare.com/5.83inch-e-paper-g.htm?sku=32584

    by westurner
  • Full color, except for certain shades of blue
    by p2edwards
  • Anyone aware of an A5 sized (~10 inch diagonal) eInk screen that can use HDMI or USB-C as an input?
    by dv35z

  •     $700
    13.3-inch E Ink Carta ™ 1300 Display or E Ink Kaleido ™ 3 Display
    Touch support
    3200 x 2400 resolution (300 PPI)
    Up to 60 Hz refresh rate
    Sub-100 ms latency
    USB Type-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode
    https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-flow
    by utopiah
  • modos has a 6" kit and a 13" monitor, but not aware of any 10" screens

    https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-paper-monitor/#...

    https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-flow#products

    by Palomides
  • This is so cool! Coincidentally, I'm currently building something in a similar vein that pushes system metrics out to an Android app so an old phone or tablet can be used as a case screen. The app has widget plugins that expose a repo of metrics received and a GL surface, that can then be used to display fancy visualisations.

    Check it out here: https://github.com/xfoa/humours. It's not finished yet, but the basic functionality works. It just has one widget at the moment that draws a spinning cube with temps, etc.

    by foax
  • The main thing I'd worry about is long-term reliability
    by RataNova
  • I'd love to see an easy guide to doing this with the Framework Desktop form factor. I didn't buy any of the silly little squares for the front of mine since I figured I could 3D print some later, but six months in still haven't gotten around to it.
    by anticorporate
  • A little e-ink status tile for temps, build status, now playing, or just a static label would be much more interesting than most decorative inserts
    by RataNova
  • Same, but the front is important for airflow in the Framework Desktop, so I don't think covering it with an e-ink screen would work. But maybe with some space between the screen and the fan intake?
    by phren0logy
  • In case you're wondering and don't want to click around, the display is a standard Adafruit 5.83'' eInk panel: https://www.adafruit.com/product/6397
    by dgellow
  • so probably waveshare or some other ODM? got it.
    by darksim905
  • The real magic is the esp32, it talks to the steam box with Bluetooth. A Linux app sends metrics to the esp32 and it refreshes the display.
    by Lord_Zero