frith

a new picture every time the rack comes on

18 HP

A blank panel with an e-paper window. Each time the rack comes on it draws the next picture off its pile in gold dots on black, and keeps it with the power off.

The FRITH panel: plain black, with a tall window in the middle edged by a thin white line, frith in gold over it and daylight noise in gold under it. No jacks, no knobs, no lights.

Switch on and it draws the next picture, over about fourteen seconds. Switch off and the picture stays.

The rack's power. On, FRITH wakes and draws; off, it leaves the picture where it is.

These are the pictures FRITH comes with, screened by its own sums, dot for dot what the module prints, and drawn at the screen's own pace. The module also waits three minutes between pictures; the page doesn't.

Waking

Switched on, FRITH wakes, takes the next picture off its pile and draws it. For about fourteen seconds the screen flashes its inks over the last picture, then the new one comes up, and FRITH goes back to sleep until the rack is next switched on.

The pile: every picture comes round once, shuffled, before any comes round again.
Cut short: switched off mid-picture, it draws the same one next time.
A quick off-and-on, under three minutes, changes nothing.
A long day: left on for a day, it draws the same picture again to keep the screen fresh.

Keeping

E-paper needs no power to hold a picture. Switched off, FRITH keeps the last one it drew, for days, so the rack always shows the picture from the last time it was played.

Nothing to patch: no jacks, no knobs, no lights. The window and its picture are the panel.
The inks: black, white, a mustard yellow and a brick red, printed by the screen itself. The yellow reads as the line's gold.

The pictures

It comes with the line's own art, a picture a module. FRITH screens each one itself as it draws it: cropped to fill the window, then gold dots on black, the brightest highlights white and strong reds red.