Top AI Product

Hacker News front page today — 274 points, 49 comments. The maker (kelly) open-sourced the entire build: hardware list, software stack, mobile app. A physical display that clacks instead of glows.

What it actually is

Nine Alfazeta electromagnetic flip-disc panels tiled into an 84×42 grid. 3,528 metal discs, each flipping on a 24V pulse. Driving it: an Nvidia Orin Nano talking RS485 to the panels, plus an IMX708 camera and a Waveshare audio board bolted into an aluminum frame. Zero LEDs. Loud as hell when it refreshes — that’s part of the appeal. Retro hardware nobody had a reason to buy until now.

The agent angle

This is what HN is actually talking about. The Orin runs Google MediaPipe with PoseEmitter, GestureEmitter, and VoiceEmitter, so the wall reads humans. The Node side ships an npm package called flipdisc, a REST API with roughly 15 endpoints (GET /api/scenes, POST /api/queue, playback control), and a WebSocket live stream. Any AI agent can push scenes — todos, alerts, Spotify now-playing, weather, raw drawings — to a physical wall, and read gestures or voice back as input. There’s already an Expo iOS/Android app for remote control. An ambient AI display with a real I/O surface, not just an output sink.

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