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Show HN: Self-generated custom art for your home or Airbnb (eliotand.me)
644 points by sdubois on Jan 23, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 166 comments



It's very nice, I just wanted to wish you the best in this venture. It's functional, well-priced, addresses a need, doesn't claim to be more than it really is, and is pulled off very nicely.

Suggestion for more layouts.


Thanks for the kind words and the suggestion. We will add a landscape format and new styles (color schemes) in the near future. Which style is your favorite?


I would love an option for a darker colour scheme. A blueprint-style white on a dark blue would be cool.


Love it! Added to the list.


Could you add a contrasting colour for the "Zoomed In" portion of the map? The would provide a nice juxtaposition.


I love this. Thanks for adding the free image export option!

A word of warning: Your Foursquare API client ID and Secret are completely visible to anyone and can easily be abused. [1]

Also, currently the client ID is exceeding its rate limit, so I cannot add my own locations.

[1] You are making these kinds of requests: https://api.foursquare.com/v2/venues/suggestCompletion?query...


Possible solution:

Maybe proxy your Foursquare API requests via https://www.eliotand.me/airbnb-poster/search or a similar API endpoint you'd create. Disallow CORS on that new API endpoint. You can keep the API call signature but remove the client ID and secret.

On your backend you can then make those Foursquare API requests and add the client ID and secret to the request.


I built a microservice that does something similar[0] for Mailchimp. They have an API that requires a secret key, but we didn't want to keep a server running for it (and obviously didn't want anyone on the internet playing with our key). So I set up a little python service that serves a page and 'proxies' the API to the end user.

[0] https://github.com/sasha42/Mailchimp-utility


Very nice!

You could also do this simply by running on Azure Functions (free consumption plan). All you need to deploy is a simple proxies.json, see [1].

On the AWS side it appears you can entirely use API Gateway. Here [2] is a Swagger 2.0 definition file I just wrote which upon import creates an API endpoint that should proxy requests to an external API while adding your secret credentials.

[1]: https://aka.ms/apiproxy [2]: https://gist.github.com/berndverst/b59fa0b38544f13c05ae0b77f...


And for posterity, here is to create this kind of API proxy in Azure Functions. It's even easier!

https://gist.github.com/berndverst/37d87570418bbee77641777e1...


Very nice! I downloaded the web (png) version for my brother's little guest house outside US. I'd love to be able to

1. Change/remove various texts on the poster (e.g., even if we have no rules, it still adds 'House Rules').

2. Download a bigger png file for a little charge to print locally (to avoid international shipping charges).

But this is nice as it is!


This is a great idea and I’m going to order one for my parent’s rental house. Really nice job!

As constructive feedback I really wish the favorite places list showed the address of each location rather than the location type. I think the address would be much more useful information and the type is obvious from the name for each location I added so it’s kind of superfluous. I also wish this secondary text didn’t awkwardly wrap onto a new line when the location name is long—I think ideally each place would have its name on its own line followed by its address on a new line directly underneath it.

But that’s just a quibble—this is awesome!


It would be nice to have an option to remove the House Rules / Contact section. I just want one for my home.


Yep. I’d like to get a series of these for something like “where Mom and Dad met”, “where you were born” etc. for my sons room.


Actually for the air BnB rental, I think it would be real sweet to think of some way you can make procedural inputs from suggestions from the current guests, and send the resulting design to them in a choice of mug or mouse mat or tea cloth or what have you. The dates of their stay and so on . . But be sure to advertise on the output, naturally. Anything you can do to multiply good word of mouth is (deductable) pennies well spent.


Particularly, I actually want to remove all sections and titles and just have the map.

Would it be possible to not show headings if there is no content in that section?


Maybe https://www.mapiful.com/ works by you? Disclaimer: never actually used it, but it looks nice.


Maybe you could use https://www.cartida.com/, they offer more 'bland' maps.


We added that to our feature list.


True that! As not only airbnbers wanna use this neat app...


This is fantastic! One feature request would be to reduce the size of the "You are here" circle; it's covering many blocks surrounding my place and I'd love to make it smaller, more of a pin so it's clear what block you're on.


I'd love some options to let me use this for my office. Different icon, "guest wifi" instead of "house rules", etc.


I really like the concept, but in addition to the free png (which is nice!) what about offering a stack of handy portable map-sized ones?

I could imagine a stack (maybe fused at the top like a post-it note pad) to let sit out on a table so people can take one, etc...


Thanks for the suggestion, this is something we were already considering.


Cool! I'd definitely order something along those lines. I love handing out little guides to guests, and this would make it super easy.


+1, I would also use something like that for my rental property.


Also an SVG export.


You are violating licenses. "© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap © Leaflet" is not appropriate. Including a copyright mark for Leaflet suggests that you have no idea why, so make sure you really understand whose data and art you use and how you are allowed to do so.


Having trouble finding this and am curious, if anyone could point it out -


Finding what?


We fixed that.


Great idea!

Handling of favorite places is done really good.

I would choose the second or the fourth style as default. The first one is to "monochrome".

If I change the size to 18x24 the circle around the "You are here" gets stretched to a oval.

This is so cool, it deserves his own domain.


That's perfect for the office too! A nice looking poster highlighting all the nice 5-7 meeting spots is really cool.

I wish we could edit the "House rules" title for something more corporate.


Added to the list.


Wow very nice! I don't AirBnB my house but could see using this in a corporate office esp. where hosting people from out of town for meetings, etc. Might be cool if you could highlight a route - 'to the airport' 'to the beach' etc.


Re: Highlighting a route. Great suggestion. Added to the list.


Awesome work!! I want to order one for our new corporate HQ office we are moving to..

Wish list: - ability to change the "home" icon, - remove some of the headings (house rules, etc) - less priority: upload logos (not really necessary, but would look awesome)..


Thanks for the feedback. We are making the titles "house rules" etc... customizable. Coming soon. What would you like to the change the home icon to? You company logo?


Thats a good idea, or allow for a "work office" icon...


Could turn it into a family map -- home, mom work, dad work, kid 1 school, grandma's house, etc.


That's a really nice result. A few customization options would go a long way to making it useful even beyond just airbnb rentals. I was considering buying one for a foreign exchange student who's visiting. Though, airbnb owners are probably easier to service and less price sensitive than me. Seems like you targeted that product really well.


Great idea and great website. I am jealous of your design skills!

It would be great to be able to move and resize the zoomed bubble. Even a quick toggle between the corners would do.


I like the toggle idea. Added to the list and thanks for the suggestion. I think we'll probably introduce different formats/configurations.


This is awesome. Since you are on HN, I imagine you are looking for feedback. It would be great if you could easily reorder the list under favorite places.


One way to do that(not ideal) is to add the places in the right order.


The ability to edit/pan the map by hand afterwords is really nicely done. Excellent work!


What a fantastic idea!

I wish you and your team all the best.

My only quibble is that the location data for one of my "Favourite Places" is wrong - it would be nice to be able to manually move the location bubbles.


Thanks for the feedback. Added to the list.


We created the Hospitality art to help people and hosts share useful info with guests, like favorite places, house rules, WIFI, contact info etc... all that packaged in a beautiful poster.


It's a bit silly, but I love that you can zoom out the circle map to make it more of an overview of your location in the larger context of a city or country even.

It's a nice little touch.


This is awesome. My first thought was I wish I could make this map for all the key places for my wedding, although forcing the "House Rules" and "Contact" section make that awkward. Also wish I could adjust where the zoom bubble is located.


We're are making the "House rules"/"Contact" titles editable. Coming soon... Moving the bubble will be a bit trickier, you can pan the map though.


Seems like a copy of https://www.tiltmaps.com/


There are a lot of websites like this. First and most successful being http://mapiful.com.


As much as tiltmaps.com is a copy of google maps.


There's a similar service for multilayered depth maps of lakes that I've always thought was pretty cool. Although the UI here is much slicker.

http://lake-art.com


This is a great idea! Clear target market, well implemented. I feel like investment in advertisement will be a certain ROI.


I love this! Great use of technology to build a great product.

Can you talk more about the procurement pipeline? Who actually does the printing and shipping/handling? Did you outsource that to someone else, and if so, who?


Could be something like Printful. They have APIs for to order prints and delivery


What are you using to generate the default "favourite places" list? it picked some pretty good ones.


This is nice, simple and easy to use. I run a small print shop and have an idea to build something like this, where my customers can upload their design and order from our site.

Is it possible to build something like this without back-end work? Can I build this on static site? I know little bit of JavaScript. We build our static site with Jekyll and GitHub.

Edit: No need to edit the file. They can only upload and order (maybe send it as an email when they push "order"?). That's it, nothing else. Thanks!


This is great. For adding favorite places, would it be possible to show the addresses in the autocomplete? There are more than one Safeway or Starbucks in my area, for example.


Good point, added to the list.


Keeps getting error now with address lookup. "Oops, something went wrong"


Probably api quota limits?


It fixed now. We had some issues when we reached the #2 spot on the HN homepage.


I love the idea, and I'd be interested in buying with a few tweaks.

- I tried both a high-density (Manhattan) and a low-density (Very small, rural town) location. I had trouble finding a good balance between the zoom level on the large and small maps for both. For the dense location, I'd like the option to remove the smaller map and just have a big map of the immediate neighborhood.

- The numbers for locations across the street from each other overlap and one isn't readable. I cant' choose between suggesting the best brunch nearby and the best chocolate chip cookies in the whole city!

- Landscape mode would be a huge improvement.

- It looks like numbers are assigned to the small or large map without considering the zoom level. When I zoom in on the small map, numbers that move outside the boundaries should show up on the large map, not just dissappear.

- I can't change the section titles. For example, I'd like to change "My Favorite Places" to "Our Favorite Hangouts"

- For the rural location, only the first color option draws the roads correctly in the big map. The other three themes omit the roads!


Nice, simple, functional. Does a single job and does it well.

I would second the suggestion for some extra layout options (particularly a landscape variant which would work much better for some areas), though take care not to go OTT or you'll complicate the nice simple interface and put off more users than you help with the changes. Perhaps have one or two extra options (the most significant ones like landscape/portrait) and hide others being an "advanced options" click. That way most people get the simple interface but those that want to be more fussy are catered for too. Though as always don't try to please everyone, the really fussy users will never be entirely happy and you are better off recommending that they produce their own posters by hand!

Also, do look into the potential licensing issues mentioned by anc84. Some effort here and now ensuring that you are compliant (either because you just are or by negotiating different use rights with these or alternate services) may save you a lot of hassle and expense later down the line.


I have a unique requirement for this sort of thing without any of the locational information but a region of the map highlighted (like a zone map). It’s probably not something you can help with, but these maps are beautiful.. is the tech stack open source?


Maybe it could be nice to be able to upload a picture and have it embedded somewhere on the main map? I am thinking of stuff like... floorplans. Or a pic of the facade/entrance... or maype a picture of the view from the place itself?


I like the idea, but it would be nice to see pricing info without first having to create one


Great idea! This is something hat seems so obvious after the fact, but I would have never thought of it.

I would suggest that you enable a more responsive preview. Viewing it on a 1440p monitor, the map preview could be about double in size.


Very neat, I've seen a few websites like this pop up over the past year.

Some feedback: it would be nice if the order details were part of the URL structure so I can easily share it with people.


We'll fix that very soon. In the meantime, you can use the following trick : Click on "get this poster" button, on the checkout page, there's an edit button, click on it. It will send you back to the edit page with a deeplink to your configuration, you can share this link.


Cool idea and great execution. Just a heads up, it looks like there's some padding on the house icon in the blown up map that can cover up nearby roads at some zoom levels


This was done on purpose :) to make the home icon more noticeable.


Awesome idea but is there any way to remove some of the sections like 'House Rules'? Maybe have custom sections? I don't rent my place out but love the concept.


I don't rent my place either but instead I wrote the name of the guest wifi under house rules. And in the big textarea I entered two line breaks so that I can paste a sticker with the current password on it.


Love it! One request: the ability to move the house icon. It's not completely correct on google maps, and it would be nice to manually move it to the correct place.


Thanks for the feedback. Added to the list.


First, very cool! It'd be tempting to get something like this even if I'm not an AirBNB host.

I'm sure one could find loads of strange visual artifacts given this covers the whole world(?), but here's one:

Some of the map styles fail to render sections of the Chicago River and North Branch Channel. See 5500 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60625 as an example.

Maybe it's an issue that affects waterways in general.


Can you try again? I tried this address and it worked fine for me.


Yep issue persists. Only the orange and blue style correctly renders the waterway fully. The others omit a portion of it. In that section I believe there is a park on either side so perhaps that's got something to do with it.

I'll share a screen shot later.


This is really cool, and something I will definitely want to buy whenever I own a home and have Airbnb guests. Nice job!


FYI: I keep getting "Oops, something went wrong" with any address that I try in chrome and firefox.

Looks really cool though!


I immediately wanted to order one, just for my home, no airbnb.

But I'm unable to add new places. I've deleted most of the pre-selected places and tried entereing a few different ones in the field but nothing happens. If I click done I just see the one I didn't delete on the map and no new ones.

FF 57.0 (64-bit) on Fedora 26.


Kinda sounds like they've hit api quota limits? Perhaps try later?


Could you try in Chrome? I didn't test the site with Fedora.


Fedora is a linux distro. FF = Firefox


In Chromium it worked.


This is amazing, I hope you make millions!


That is very cool. These are the kinds of fun novel ideas that got me interested in making web applications.


When panning the zoomed-in circle, the "You are here" sign should also move around the big map (i.e. should stay accurate); doesn't seem to behave so for me.

Also, it would be nice if reordering of items on the list would be possible.

That said, it's obviously an awesome MVP already :)


Just wondering what sort of Mapbox account you're using for this? I previously enquired about doing something similar with Mapbox, and was told if you intend to use the images commercially for printing you'd be capped at 2,000 prints and it'd cost you up to $5k annually.


Just use https://openmaptiles.org/ for a fraction of the cost (512USD) and no restrictions on how you use them commercially.


AFAICS, you do still need to provide attribution to OpenMapTiles?


To OpenStreetMap and OpenMapTiles. https://openmaptiles.com/terms/


Mapbox use OSM data. You can download it here ( http://planet.openstreetmap.org/ ). If you know how to process it, you can use it any way you want (subject to the liberal OSM licence)


> subject to the liberal OSM licence

Not to piss on the OP's parade, but, while liberal, the OSM license does require you to to give proper attribution to OSM in such a way than users are likely to notice it - I don't see that here.

Would be nice to get the OP's comments on this?


I see "(c) Mapbox (c) OpenStreetMap" in the bottom right of the map preview, so I assume it will also be part of the export/print. "OpenStreetMap contributors" and another clickable link in the footer would be better but I see reasonable effort in/on the end product.

edit: reading through other comments it's possible the author added the attribution only recently (after OPs comment)


The poster generator isn't working for me. Chrome 63, El Capitan, from Canada, using uBlock Origin but I turned it off. Here's what I get. https://imgur.com/a/qYoFV


Check out https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/4679 Also try on a different browser.


Congrats, really clever! How are you getting data from Airbnb? Just scrapping or using any available API? I was trying to create a service based on Airbnb data as well but didn't find any available API to get the data


Very nice idea but it took me far too long to find the YOU ARE HERE circle that presumably corresponds to the detail circle. There should be some clear obvious connecting element so I can find YOU ARE HERE much more easily. Good luck with this!


Lovely idea. I bought one for my home, but the email confirm I received had an image that looked much different than the one that I customized. The text was much bigger and overlapped, even though I had customized it to not be like that.


The actually print will look the same as what you saw on the site, while editing. This screenshot in the confirmation email is just an approximation. We'll fix that in the future. Thanks for pointing that out.


Might be missing something, but I'm fairly certain that Mapbox requires you to include attribution here. They also prohibit printing for commercial purposes, although that's lifted for enterprise plans, which you might have.


This is using Mapbox vector tiles with a style custom designed by the ellotand, right? Does Mapbox really prohibit using a product created that way on their platform and can they?


I don't know what the law is, but in principle at least, the selection of the data to include in the tiles (in general and for specific scales) and processing like generalization are both "cartography" at least as much as they are "database queries".


Was quite certain of this too. To cover something like this website is quite expensive too, and as this is a side project I highly doubt he's covered those costs.


Good idea and execution. Hope you succeed.

I noticed one bug: If I edit and move the position inside of the "zoom-in" area, "You are here" circle position on the big map remains on its original place.


Is the instant autocomplete in the address box ("whereInput") part of the Mapbox API or offered directly by google? What is that called because I can't find it by searching? It's very nice.


We use google autocomplete for this.


Is this from Google Maps or somewhere else? How do you handle the copyrights?


The footer mentions OpenStreetMap.


Generated PNG does not mention OpenStreetMap. It seems that it violates OpenStreetMap requirements laid in http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright/en:

"How to credit OpenStreetMap

We require that you use the credit “© OpenStreetMap contributors”."


There's also slightly more requirements than that. The credit must be placed so a reasonable user will see it. This is important if you have (say) an app. You cannot just bury the credit deep in the settings screen.


The OSM licence (the ODbL 1.0[1]) requires this of the attribution:

> You must include a notice associated with > the Produced Work reasonably calculated to make any Person that uses, > views, accesses, interacts with, or is otherwise exposed to the Produced > Work aware that Content was obtained from the Database, ... and that it > is available under this License.

i.e. the notice must be such that regular people using this site will know about this.

There must also be a similar notice on the produced map.

[1] https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/


Very nice! Bought one immediately (not even for an AirBnB listing, btw).


Neat! Btw with my monitor in portrait half the example poster is cut off


Thanks, will fix.


Love it! And Balthazar is awesome too :)

Best wishes, this is such an awesome idea.


it looks really good! The printed map would be nice even as a gift.


What is the source of the autogenerated favorite places? Is it looking for the most+highest rated places or something? I ask because I was impressed with what it came up with



FYI : We just added the ability to customize titles and remove sections (if you delete all data in a section). This was the most requested feature.


Doesn't seem to work in Firefox 57 on Linux. I disabled uMatrix, but do have Privacy Badger & uBlock running.

Also, checkout says 'Get your hospitality poster.'

Looks awesome though!


Love this but saw a small typo.

When you select free, the modal that appears to enter in an email says "Get yout hospitality poster".

It should be "Get your hospitality poster"


Thanks, will fix.


This is a great idea. I've sent it to several people I know that rent out their homes.

Are you printing yourself or outsourcing it? If you're outsourcing it, to whom?


We are using a local company for now, but might switch to a service to handle high volume.


Minor suggestion - would be nice to be able to rotate map to align street grid (eg, NYC) to top vs true North as used.


Nice, but some base set of of notable (and editable) landmarks would bring it from "meh" to "yeah".


You add/edit landmarks already. Just click on the map.


What about overseas customers and shipping options? Could it be printed in Europe or a PDF be had instead somehow.


We are shipping to Europe for a fee. See booking page


Honestly, shipping to Europe is prohibitive (at least for me) right now. I'd happily pay for a super HD pdf to print at my local print shop !


It should hide "House Rules" and "Contact" headings when the inputs for those sections are empty.


We're changing that in the next few days.


What service do you use for printing? Been interested in prototyping some similar ideas with on demand printed work


Amazing !! Three out of five restaurants are the ones I would recommend. Is this from yelp or google maps ?


We use foursquare. BTW, you can customize the list if you'd like. Just click on the map.


Wow, this is a great idea! Congrats!


Wow this is beautiful and well-done. Are you getting the top 5 things to do data from Yelp?


Cool, you should integrate with levelframes.com to offer people framed versions too!


Frankly, this looks like something that was created by a company, not an artist.



Yes, it's a company. But that doesn't mean that the artwork should have a corporate style. I suspect most people here like this style because of professional involvement, but most people will not experience this as art, not by a long shot.


It would be great if you could re-arrange your favorite places and add notes


Nice idea


My place is in the middle of nowhere, there is nothing detailed to show in the circle, so although the circle is the fanciest feature of the poster it would still be nice if there was a way to disable the circle. That would make it useful to me.


put in my address and got "oops something went wrong?"


We had some server issues earlier today. This is fixed.


Bravo! This is very well done. Thank you for sharing.


"Hapiness guaranty" is wrong spelling.


My favorite style is the retro looking one.


Email web/png not working for me


Can you try again? We had to restart the servers to push a fix.


This is great, I’m ordering one!


Very nice


"or Airbnb"? what?


Serious question: if you care about your privacy how can you stay in an Airbnb with little way of thoroughly checking whether the owner has put a camera in the bedroom, bathroom, etc?


A little faith in humanity and in your ability to judge character. If you’re absolutely paranoid about this sort of thing, how do you even use a public restroom? How do you know your own house doesn’t have cameras watching you? Even James Bond lets his guard down now and then.


Well I’m asking because there have been news stories about this exact practice. And those are only the ones that have been found.


Install Fing which is an iOS app that scans the network, and look for cameras, but it is not so useful anymore since Apple removed the possibility for apps to read mac-addresses.

There is a talk here from Defcon which gives other tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJgCDH1v9PY


Don't think this is related to the topic of this thread. This question belongs somewhere else.




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