
F21 Thread Screen - s0rce
http://f21threadscreen.com/
======
mattiasgunneras
Happy to see our screen here on hacker news! figured I'd post the behind the
scenes video here too since it could be of interest to someone on this site.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvDHNDkO-
Qo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvDHNDkO-Qo)

Cheers

~~~
joezydeco
Beautiful piece. I was also a big fan of the dot display you guys did
previously...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3jkoIyJgoc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3jkoIyJgoc)

Seriously, if you ever thought about mass-producing the dot module (or even a
split-flap character display), I'd buy them by the hundreds.

~~~
tomlongson
[http://www.flipdots.com/](http://www.flipdots.com/)

I had emailed them a while ago for a price quote... not cheap:

Flip-Dot Boards XY5 14 x 28: 420 EUR + shipping

[http://www.flipdots.com/flip-dot-boards-
xy5-14x28.html#.Va_i...](http://www.flipdots.com/flip-dot-boards-
xy5-14x28.html#.Va_iBxNVjC4)

~~~
joezydeco
Argh, didn't realize those were shopped out. Thanks.

------
startupfounder
This is very cool, the integration of hardware, software, social and marketing
is perfect. Many hours spent putting all the pieces together and testing and
tweaking, but it makes me wonder if we are wasting talent?

I love what BREAKFAST does as much as the next person and they are an
extremely talented team, but all of this amazing technology and innovation is
going towards selling products for a brand that totally disregards factory
workers wage rights so much so that F21 were "sued by the United States
Department of Labor for ignoring a subpoena requesting information on how much
the company’s suppliers pays the workers who make its clothes"[0]

This reminds me of the recent article posted on HN "Web Design: The First 100
Years"[1]. How many of these underpaid factory workers are the greatest minds
of our time? "We live in a world now where not millions but billions of people
work in rice fields, textile factories, where children grow up in appalling
poverty. Of those billions, how many are the greatest minds of our time? How
many deserve better than they get? What if instead of dreaming about changing
the world with tomorrow's technology, we used today's technology and let the
world change us? Why do we need to obsess on artificial intelligence, when
we're wasting so much natural intelligence?"[1]

[0]
[http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15799](http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15799)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9920121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9920121)

~~~
josu
While I understand the point you are making, I would argue that the textile
industry is a necessary evil for many countries. It's pretty well explained in
this article:

>According to the comprehensive “Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile
Workers,” a study of 21 countries over 350 years, nearly every nation suffered
through its T-shirt phase differently. Argentina’s brutal encomienda system
literally worked indigenous laborers to death. The Hapsburg monarchy’s T-shirt
phase coincided with its own collapse. Japan’s progress was slowed by a world
war; Germany’s was all but destroyed by two. New England’s textile workers had
it relatively good; if conditions didn’t improve, they could threaten to leave
for the frontier.

>All these countries, however, experienced the same broad phenomenon. Lex
Heerma van Voss, an editor of the “Ashgate Companion,” told me that the
T-shirt phase lasts only as long as there are large populations of farmers
with few options. This is known as a “race to the bottom.” Factory owners
compete by offering low prices, which are accomplished by paying workers tiny
wages. Cutting costs by a few pennies per shirt may sound trivial, but mass-
market brands find that even a slight increase in price destroys demand. And
those pennies at wholesale become dollars at retail.

>But once the factories have absorbed all these desperate farmers, they need
to find a new competitive advantage. That usually involves making better
products. When the T-shirt phase ends, a “race to the top” usually begins.
Factories often shift to finer clothes, like dress shirts, which require
skilled workers. This phase often involves the growth of unions and rising
wages. It’s typically followed by one in which factory owners, forced to pay
more, seek out ever more profitable lines of business. That can mean the move
to low-end electronics assembly, then auto plants and maybe even airplane
manufacturing. At the high end of the spectrum, you begin to see what the U.S.
manufacturing economy is going through now — expensive products, like medical
devices, which are often made by machines that are operated by highly skilled
workers.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/economic-
recovery...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/economic-recovery-
made-in-bangladesh.html)

As long as there is no slave work, this is, people are working in these
factories "voluntarily", it may be the best option they have. These are people
maximizing their utility and deciding to work for USD50-200/month with 6 day
weeks and 12 hour days. Yes, it sucks, and I wish they had other options, but
I'm not sure that boycotting F21 would work in their favor. As the article
sadly states, this seems like a necessary phase.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Ex post facto rationalization.

How is it voluntary (note, even you had to use quotes around this word) if
it's the best option they have and/or they have no other options?

Just because some humans in some part of the world at some time did something,
does not mean that many other humans also have to do it.

~~~
josu
It's voluntary because they can chose the second best option: Farming,
fishing... And the second best option would have nothing to do with F21 or any
other company that uses sweatshops. If you look at it from that vantage point,
F21 is giving them a new option that they didn't have before. However, that's
not the point I'm trying to make, since I believe that sweatshops have
negative externatilities that I haven't accounted for.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Choosing anything other than the best option is irrational. Why would I choose
second best over best? It's not really a choice, just a word game to
rationalize disturbing facts.

~~~
josu
I don't understand your point. You are arguing that working for 21F is the
best option, yet you oppose companies opening up sweatshops in developing
countries?

------
jccc
(Just for the benefit of anyone not familiar with the book, and meant only as
appreciation, not criticism.)

"Then the gas-lights guttered in their copper rings, and the orchestra swung
into a flat rendition of 'Come to the Bower.' With a huff, the limelight
flared, the curtain drew back before the kinotrope screen, the music covering
the clicking of kinobits spinning themselves into place."

[http://differencing.blogspot.com/2010/04/kinotrope-
clackers....](http://differencing.blogspot.com/2010/04/kinotrope-
clackers.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine)

------
llamascript
I wonder if their programs are ... Multithreaded?

------
Grue3
This feels like one of these Minecraft projects where somebody recreates a
computer screen with redstone blocks, except in real life.

------
jjhale
Looks like it was inspired by Devorah Sperber:

[http://www.devorahsperber.com/](http://www.devorahsperber.com/)

------
dperfect
Is there any technical significance in the "fade out" sequence that happens
between the "F21" image and the next Instagram photo? It looks like once it
gets to full black, a few pixels are "stuck" (or slipped I guess), and then
something seems to detect that and correct the pixels, so I'm wondering if
it's a kind of routine to zero out the pixels, or just an effect. The pattern
seems to be roughly the same on each run, suggesting that if it is a self-
correction algorithm, it's not persisting the offset/correction (or if the
same pixels keep slipping each time, perhaps the algorithm could account for
that by rolling those at a different speed).

Either way, this is really cool! I'd love to work on something like this as a
job :)

~~~
mendelk
Re the self-correction, perhaps it's this:

> Each ribbon also features a reflective strip which is scanned by an infrared
> sensor, which tells the machine the color each spool is currently showing,
> allowing for corrections for any slip that may occur.

Source: [http://breakfastny.com/f21-thread-screen-press-
release](http://breakfastny.com/f21-thread-screen-press-release)

~~~
famousactress
That's badass. I wondered about whether the machine would need constant
calibration due to the belts slipping or hopping a gear, etc. I really dig
solutions to problems like this.. I'm not sure how I'd categorize them, I
suppose solutions that involve observing reality as directly as possible
instead of relying on too many layers of abstraction.

EDIT: I guess now I'm curious... probably this is fast enough that you can
literally scroll until you see the right color. I wonder if that's what's
happening or if there's still an attempt to remember where on the belt it's
located and make an attempt to take the fastest path there. It'd only be
faster half the time though. I wonder if the overall experience would differ
much.

~~~
mcphage
Having to know where you are (and how far you move when you turn the spool)
requires a stepper motor, which makes everything more complicated. This way
you can just use a normal DC motor, and stop when you reach the right point.
And since spools probably slip a lot (given they're not designed to keep
things from moving), the stepper solution might just fail completely, since it
wouldn't have much confidence in what it thinks is showing.

------
tantalor
Those are bands, not threads.

Threads are 1 dimensional; bands are 2 dimensional.

~~~
jcwilde
If you look closely, the bands are covered in (multi-coloured) threads.

~~~
tantalor
That's irrelevant. The interesting functionality in this machine are the
spools which cycle bands of colored material. If that material were colored
with crayons or paint or threads would not change the behavior of the machine
or the effect. The texture of the material might slightly change the
appearance, but at the scale in the video I doubt it makes a difference, and
different textures (e.g., textile) can easily be simulated.

------
jcwilde
Seems some pixels are not displaying correct colours on the live feed (most
visible as white pixels when displaying the black background of the F21 logo).

I guess the spool belts have run out of alignment? I would have guessed they'd
have implemented closed-loop positioning for the colour-belt, but it appears
not to be the case.

~~~
mattiasgunneras
It would have been nice with some kind of closed loop feedback system for all
positions around the ribbons, but it became a cost problem. What we did
instead was to put an IR sensor on the motor controller behind each motor. The
fabric ribbons are fitted with a retroreflective strip for homing. This gives
us one absolute starting point on each pixel and then each color is just at a
fixed ustep offset from zero. But as you pointed out, some of the ribbons are
slipping a little bit so they are a color our two out of cal. The ribbons are
real fabric ribbons, not timing belts so that's why we do have some slip. We
periodically run the strip over the IR sensor to zero out the calibration so
bad pixels should re-align at least a little bit over time. If they are really
bad, we take them down and swap in a spare 32 pixel module while tightening
the belt on the bad ones.

~~~
tdicola
Very cool, have you thought about using a RGB color sensor (like a TCS34725)
to detect the color of the ribbon instead of finding an IR homing strip? That
might help with slip since you know the order of all the colors and could move
exactly until the right one is being displayed.

~~~
mattiasgunneras
Yes! we actually prototyped that.. didn't have great success unfortunately,
because of space constraints in our particular application, we have to have
our sensors look down a 1/8" passage (passed the motor) down onto the ribbons.
I feel like I tested every single optical sensor from digi-key before we
finally had to settle with an IR sensor. We use a pretty strong IR LED and
bouncing that off of a reflector on the ribbon. We simply could not separate
the signal from noise trying to read the actual color of the ribbon. Moving
the sensor off the PCB (closer to the ribbon) would have worked, but the cost
increase for 6400 pixels.. yeah, couldn't do it.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
You could have printed a quadrature pattern on the back for not much more
complexity. Just one additional sensor per strip. Even that wouldn't be an
absolute necessity since you know which direction the rotation is going. A
single series of bars with one skipped or widened for home would suffice. Then
you'd be able to compensate more readily for slippage and stretching.

------
xenadu02
This is the kind of marketing stunt I can appreciate. Does anyone know if they
only built one machine or will they deploy them at multiple stores?

~~~
ErikRogneby
just the one.

------
ape4
Of course the first computer was a loom.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom)

------
odiroot
Streaming is not available in Germany.

------
ricky54326
Wow, that's awesome! I always love seeing these types of things that are live.

------
peterwwillis
It weighs thousands of pounds (of aluminum!), using a 600-pound custom frame
and an even more massive support structure, using 6,400 thread spools,
comprising over 200,000 custom parts, and requires 24/7 temperature and
humidity control, all to display an 80x80 pixel 0.02k color image. This took a
year and a half to build, and it will only run for one week.

Kudos to the marketing department for giving BREAKFAST (WHY IS IT IN ALL
CAPS?) employees a super fun job for a year and a half, but holy cow, this is
a huge waste of time and money. They could have gotten more out of Facebook
ads.

~~~
Dylan16807
Well they actually built something unlike running an ad would do.

And I think you're lowballing the number of colors. Not that it needs a huge
amount.

------
dev-da0
Interesting, reminds me of the graffiti robot for some reason . [0] Would be a
neat follow on project to rapidly "print" via an actual loom to weave an
entire fabric panel as the display. The thread aspect is neat however it comes
off as an e-ink shortcut. It's quite an engineering feat that the majority of
it works reliably as it appears (only a few dead "pixel" of thousands).

0\. [https://youtu.be/qK0rrWFQKlQ](https://youtu.be/qK0rrWFQKlQ)

------
kbenson
I assume they have some moderation of the images selected for display by the
hashtag, otherwise that's a prank just waiting to happen. :)

------
Lanzaa
Very impressive. I'm sure people here would love to hear more about the
challenges you faced and what kind of things were surprisingly easy to get
working.

It looks like you followed the basic design of a Van de Graaf generator, so I
imagine you had a very difficult time with static eletricity.

How did you handle alignment of the colors? Maybe a gray code and optical
sensor on the back side of the bands?

------
lusterdome
cool, but maybe they should invest the money in fair labor practices instead.

~~~
voltagex_
I agree, but I don't think it'll happen until their consumers demand it.

------
mhb
Also see _Peter Wegner 's Monument to Change as It Changes_ at Stanford:

[http://peterwegner.com/work_detail.asp?id=212](http://peterwegner.com/work_detail.asp?id=212)

One video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHf2sezptLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHf2sezptLU)

------
xigency
I was hoping this would be on public display somewhere.

Still, I submitted a picture of Ada Lovelace.

~~~
xigency
[http://f21threadscreen.com/images/827302](http://f21threadscreen.com/images/827302)

------
thirdreplicator
I don't get it. What does it do and how does it work? The videonis cool but
the website is sparse on details.

------
vvpan
This here is content marketing.

------
eludwig
So excellent. It's a bit akin to a visual version of a Melotron.

------
kevin_thibedeau
I can't find an address anywhere. Is this publicly viewable?

------
mkoryak
what is preventing someone from goatse'ing this thing ?

------
antimora
All this trouble to see digital photos on my screen again but in a lower
resolution again? =D

Super cool but very wasteful I am sorry to say. I wish there was more creative
value added for people interacting with the device.

------
spot
Isn't this just a knockoff of Danny Rozin's mechanical mirrors?
[http://www.smoothware.com/danny/](http://www.smoothware.com/danny/)

~~~
sp332
How can it be a knockoff? It's not like he was the first ever to do it. His
non-LCD projects aren't in color. This is much bigger than any of those.

