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.
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.