Clay Bavor
claybavor.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2010
Clay Bavor writes about personal projects, including making a screen look like a real framed picture, plus mosaic and neural-generated prints.
What HN saysCommenters repeatedly link his canvas-of-pixels post as an impressive example of a realistic LCD photo frame, praising its photodiode brightness matching.
19HN people shared it
12linked it in comments
9stories submitted
560story points
2 years agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1A Canvas Made of Pixels10 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 2A Canvas Made of Pixels5 people · 532 points · first shared 2015 · 105 comments on HN
- 3A digital skylight (from a 65“ TV)2 people · 3 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 4The Google Logo in 884 4×6 Photographs1 people · 18 points · first shared 2010 · 2 comments on HN
- 5Neural-Generated Botanical Prints (2022)1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 6Mosaic Maker1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
reportingsjr · 2016-05-25
Here is an amazing blog post where someone did exactly this!
https://www.claybavor.com/?p=407
Obviously they took a pretty expensive and power intensive route, but the end result is absolutely phenomenal
peterclary · 2016-09-09
Clay Bavor addressed that problem using photodiodes so that the picture never seemed brighter than the surroundings. It really helped sell that it was a normal picture.
https://www.claybavor.com/?p=407
jmiserez · 2016-04-22
It's not a new idea, but a very effective one. There was an article on here a while ago where someone converted a 5K iMac screen into a "real" picture hanging on the wall, complete with wooden frame and white point shifting:
http://www.claybavor.com/?p=407
discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900439
hawski · 2023-07-07
You kinda can, but there are no 32" iPads and none will look like E-Ink.
The closest I think you could go for is to have a monitor with precise brightness control and measure the wall brightness and adjust the monitor brightness to fit. Something like this was posted once and I'm sure it was done by more people, but here is an example: https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
qiqitori · 2021-08-19
Here's someone who put in a lot of effort into making a realistic-looking photo frame using an LCD: https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
(Covered on HN in 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900439)
jnwatson · 2021-08-18
See 1 for an innovative example of auto-calibrating brightness and white balance.
1. https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
contravariant · 2020-12-26
I had to search for a bit but I managed to find it: https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
It's been referenced on HN a few times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&q…
jeffbee · 2020-11-11
I've seen this hack in person and it is very convincing. The way to avoid the backlight problem is to frontlight the whole scene.
This embedded imac also has the cool feature of never changing if someone is looking at it.
https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
keanzu · 2020-04-10
"A year ago over the holiday break, I created a large-scale digital “canvas”" posted December 27, 2015
https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
He claims to have invented it prior to Apple, but he didn't publish before they got their patent in.
acidburnNSA · 2020-04-10
Looks like updated link is https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels
totetsu · 2020-04-10
this digital-skylight could have renewed interest with people in lockdown.
https://www.claybavor.com/blog/digital-skylight
cnasc · 2020-01-09
Someone did something like this with a torn-apart 5k iMac, mounting the display in a gilded frame and having it cycle through various images of fine art but only when the camera determined that nobody was looking at it.
https://www.claybavor.com/blog/a-canvas-made-of-pixels