[HN Gopher] Reasonably priced color e-ink display
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Reasonably priced color e-ink display
Author : zdw
Score : 271 points
Date : 2020-07-20 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.waveshare.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.waveshare.com)
| rglover wrote:
| Does anybody know of a decent micro controller that could be
| paired with one of these on the form factor/scale of a Kindle?
| derefr wrote:
| So, why exactly is it that color e-ink displays try to make every
| micro-capsule capable of switching to any of the supported
| colors; rather than laying (groups of) CMYK micro-capsules out in
| a subpixel-like arrangement, and then wiring them to the
| substrate such that each of the CMYK "bitplanes" forms an
| independently-addressed display signal?
|
| Sure, it'd look like badly-registered offset printing, but that
| only matters for small up-close displays, not large far-away
| displays. (And you could fix the registration with a precisely-
| cast diffuser layer, convolving each subpixel-cluster.)
|
| If this was for reading rather than imagery, and you wanted to
| have true blacks, you could also just step _one_ level forward in
| e-ink technology, and have the colored micro-capsule groups be
| _just_ dual-tone (the capsule 's color plus black), giving you
| {C+K, Y+K, M+K, K} bitplanes.
|
| Are e-ink display manufacturers just imprecise in the way they
| deposit the capsules into the panel, making it impossible to
| address individual capsules? (If so, that seems like something
| that could be solved pretty easily with modern photolithography
| processes, e.g. etching onto the backing electrode a grid of
| "buckets" for individual micro-capsules to fall into.)
| amelius wrote:
| > And you could fix the registration with a precisely-cast
| diffuser layer, convolving each subpixel-cluster.
|
| Would that still look like paper, though?
| bearbin wrote:
| As a reflective display, you want to optimise for the
| percentage of useful light reflected back to the user.
| Switching the white (or black) out for another colour will
| necessarily reduce the contrast ratio of the display, which is
| of course not ideal when you don't have much light to work with
| in the first place (as it's a reflective display after all).
| That's why reflective LCD displays were pretty much a disaster,
| since the LCDs require a polarisng filter which absorbs a large
| portion of the light, and reflective colour LCDs more so,
| because that multiplies with the effect of the colour filters.
|
| Of course, you could simply make a matrix of tri-tone capsules,
| with white, black and colour. Then you have the contrast ratio
| and the colour space advantages. I don't know why this hasn't
| been done, I'm not an expert on e-Ink!
| NoodleIncident wrote:
| Colored e-ink displays are discussed at around 8:00 in this
| video; there are probably better sources, but this is the one
| I'm familiar with, so I figured I'd link it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw
|
| The microcapsules are not individually wired up to anything, so
| I don't think it's feasible to make each color channel
| independently addressable. Instead, a grid of wires behind the
| capsules are either positively or negatively charged, in order
| to attract or repel the charged colored particles in each
| capsule. There are only 2 charges, but by using different sizes
| of particles for different colors, you can finagle it so that
| the color you want ends up on top.
|
| If they could address capsules individually, that would also
| increase the possible resolution of a black-and-white display;
| they'd do it if they could. But since the mechanism is about
| attracting and repelling charged particles, there's probably a
| pretty hard limit on how much you can increase the resolution
| before there is interference between neighboring pixels.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Yes, modern e-ink capsules are not precise. In fact, they're
| not intended to be.
|
| If you look at an e-ink display under a microscope you'll see
| that the "pixels" are more like "shards" of variously-shaped
| cells.
|
| https://twitter.com/sqfmi/status/1178018736684580865
|
| The "pixels" are made of the actual addressing grid that
| creates the currents that attract the pigment in the capsules.
|
| This is part of what ends up giving the appearance of a higher-
| resolution display when rendering text, as you get some softer
| edges "for free." (And it's what makes the display look
| 'blurry' for some viewers.)
|
| So, to your question, there's currently no attempt with the
| technology to precisely place the colors on the display. The
| capsules are just spread all over, and the grid does the work.
| Waterfall wrote:
| The contrast ratio will never make it good for text. I have
| used the so called high res ones and I would take a 720p LCD
| any day. They are trash.
| naravara wrote:
| This makes me sad. Based on what you're describing it's
| sounding like my dream of having eReaders that are anywhere
| near sharp enough to do visually rich, full color, documents
| justice (e.g. nature photography, comic books and graphic
| novels, well illuminated manuscripts) will never come to
| fruition. Barring some kind of transformative breakthrough,
| of course.
| Waterfall wrote:
| eink should die already. There are other options rather
| than eink, microLED and some of the newer low refresh LCDs
| (Clearilk comes to mind) should be much better.
| https://www.displaydaily.com/article/press-
| releases/clearink... Lenovo is interested and made a
| thinkpad with eink so it shouldn't come from a weird no
| name company in the future.
| ajuc wrote:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/C
| o...
|
| Rods in eyes aren't on a regular grid anyway, why should it
| matter how the pixels are distributed as long as they cover
| the plane and are mostly uniform?
| oceanswave wrote:
| Who designed these 'eye' things anyway, sounds like they
| took a lot of engineering shortcuts and amassed a metric
| boat-ton of technical debt
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Let it thus be observed that a truly intelligent designer
| understands how to live comfortably with technical debt.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If I was all-knowing and omnipotent, I'd be OK with that
| in my code as well.
| falcolas wrote:
| Isn't tech debt a sign of not being all knowing and
| omnipotent?
| ineedasername wrote:
| There's always tech debt. It starts to day you build
| something and ends when it stops being used. How many
| thousands of python 2.7 programs had "no" tech debt when
| developed bit now have tons. Tech debt isn't binary, it's
| a sliding scale.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I don't know.
| throwanem wrote:
| "How did we justify this whole 'cancer' thing being
| SEV-1? I really don't see the urgency."
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Because of what was mentioned way up in the original
| question: The capsules not being precisely arranged means
| that they can't be individually addressable. Meaning that
| you can't use the trick that non-epaper screens typically
| use where each "pixel" is actually a tightly packed
| cluster of individual red, green and blue sources that
| are individually controlled.
|
| So instead, each cell is capable of displaying any color,
| and they've got a more complicated refresh mechanism that
| they use to "write" to them.
|
| And the upshot of _that_ is listed in the specifications
| from the linked page: The refresh time on this display is
| 15 seconds. Which is far, far away from where it would
| need to be in order to be a practical option for color
| e-readers.
| bduerst wrote:
| Except you can do multiple colors, by introducing
| differently charged pigments inside the capsules:
|
| -
| https://www.eink.com/assets/img/technology/GIF_Cup_E.gif
|
| -
| https://www.eink.com/assets/img/technology/GIF_ACeP_E.gif
|
| Refresh rate was always an issue, but it is gradually
| improving. For static reading it's not a problem.
| samwillis wrote:
| I think the solution is a dual eink and oled display.
| Overlay a "transparent" oled on top of an epaper screen and
| use the oled to display colour images and video while using
| the epaper for static monochrome regions.
|
| I'm not sure that current "transparent" oled technology is
| transparent and thin enough though.
| kaendfinger wrote:
| This sounds really similar to
| https://www.mobvoi.com/us/pages/ticwatchpro which is a
| Smartwatch with a dual layer display, one of them is
| e-ink, the other is an AMOLED display.
| efreak wrote:
| Do a search for hybrid eink LCD display; Apple and others
| were looking into this 10 years ago; the Pixel Qi's 3qi
| displays were apparently manufactured and used in at
| least some products, then Apple applied for a more
| complex patent as well. As far as I can tell, both
| systems seem to use a layered display.
|
| https://www.pcworld.com/article/165724/bye_bye_kindle_net
| boo...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/04/apple-exploring-
| hybr...
| justincormack wrote:
| colour printing is often made from randomised dot screens,
| so long as they are small enough its fine.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| Although nobody implemented this yet, I'm guessing someone did
| patent it already ...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Waveshare is really great for making eInk accessible to makers.
| I've got several of their products and I love them. Design and
| documentation are excellent. For most products they even provide
| libraries and/or sample code. I usually order from them directly,
| though it comes from China it's fairly fast compared to
| aliexpress and the like (think more like 2 weeks than 2 months)
|
| By the way, one thing I don't get is why the pictures have such
| low saturation but the "demo" view shows really excellent
| saturation. Are there constraints when mixing colours perhaps?
|
| Edit: This was explained below by sparker72678:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23900165 . I didn't know
| they worked this way.
| caleb-allen wrote:
| If you are having issues with the site loading you can try this
| archive link
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200717131125/https://www.waves...
| vikramkr wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Looks like they've been hugged to death at
| the moment.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| How difficult would it be for a maker type to cobble together a
| portable vim editor using one of these?
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Great video on these sorts of displays, what they're capable
| of, and perhaps some inspiration for any hobby projects:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw&t=617s
| donaltroddyn wrote:
| The 7-colour version doesn't support partial refresh and has a
| 15s refresh time (~0.067Hz refresh rate), so you'd want to be a
| _really_ confident touch typist.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Sounds like it's time to learn ed.
| jrockway wrote:
| ed echoes back the characters you input as you type them.
| This display would not be able to do that.
| tzs wrote:
| Put a one or two line black and white LCD on the bottom
| to show your ed-like commands, with the e-ink just
| showing the results of edits.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Thanks...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Mind, the black and white e-ink screens would still work for
| this.
| bradly wrote:
| Not e-ink, but you can get a RasperryPi case with a built-in
| display along with battery pack. Pairing with a 40% keyboard
| gives a nice, portable environment.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| I was chasing down this route a while ago with a Waveshare
| touch screen and a RPI3. I was wiring stuff up on a breadboard
| and was so stoked when things worked. The next level is that
| you send a schematic into a custom circuit board company and
| they send you back a PCB. The future is that we custom print
| open source PCB designs, solder our RPIs and Touch Screens on
| and bam we have custom brewed machines.
| hedora wrote:
| The Freescale i.MX508 controller can do 8fps. It seems
| completely capable of displaying vim, but is monochrome. Here's
| a video:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0DVlGZ3_d3Q
|
| I'd love one of these with a full keyboard, wifi and enough of
| a terminal emulator to ssh somewhere.
| ianai wrote:
| From a decade ago. Seems odd how this tech has so few
| applications.
| mark-r wrote:
| The small sizes, extreme update times, and high prices make
| it very noncompetitive with LCD.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| 15s refresh time. Not bad I guess for certain applications.
| abetusk wrote:
| Not directly related but there's an awesome "Open Book" project
| which is an open source hardware e-book reader [1].
|
| [1] https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book
| orlandohill wrote:
| I've been using a 13.3" Dasung Paperlike HD-FT monitor for a few
| months. I use it without the front light, and set the display to
| 2x magnification. I'd highly recommend it to anyone having
| problems with LCD screens. http://dasungtech.com/
| zcrar70 wrote:
| How have you been finding it? Do you use it as your main
| monitor? (Or only at specific times / alongside a traditional
| monitor?)
| Waterfall wrote:
| For that price might as well get a ThinkBook Plus.
| https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/01/07/lenovo-put-an-e-
| in...
| matmann2001 wrote:
| I wonder what the refresh time on this looks like. I recently
| finished a project with a red/black/white e-ink display, and the
| docs for it listed a worst-case refresh time of up to 14 seconds.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| The docs say 15 seconds per refresh.
| [deleted]
| staycoolboy wrote:
| I did NOT expect this to be under US$100. Definitely going for
| low power with SPI interface, but I don't get their refresh
| claim. SPI tops out around 1MB/s... 600x448x7 is ~235KB or 4 fps
| at 1MBps... but 15fps? That'd be 7MB/s, which is nigh impossible
| on SPI.
|
| EDIT: 15 SECONDS PER FRAME, not 15fps. Thanks everyone for
| pointing that out. Still, amazingly cheap ... and almost no
| standby current after programming.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > _FULL REFRESH TIME 15s_
|
| That's 15 seconds per frame, or 0.067 fps.
|
| That refresh rate is fine if you're using it to show the price
| of a rack of clothing, or various sensors - but you're not
| going to get smooth-scrolling text with it. The low-power
| interface is for those same battery-backed retail signage
| applications, where you're driving this, the microcontroller,
| and the wireless receiver with 3.7v from a coin cell.
|
| Glad to see these becoming available for consumers and hackers!
| They've been hard to come by for years.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Or a "magic mirror" showing weather, calendar, time: you
| know, hours and minutes only :).
| SahAssar wrote:
| "Magic mirrors" don't work with e-ink since they require a
| lit display to shine through the mirror.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Good point. I suppose it just becomes a display then,
| rather than mirror -- but with similar data.
|
| More like the ubiquitous readouts in the "2001" Discovery
| ship.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I read the spec (column "FULL REFRESH TIME (S)") as saying 15
| seconds per refresh not 15 refreshes per second. So 4 frames
| per minute which falls well within your calculation.
|
| edit: Fixed to be 4 frames per minute not 4 frames per second.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Wouldn't that be 4fpm (frames per minute)? Which is no
| problem for signage, but not really practical as a secondary
| display...
| marcinzm wrote:
| Yes, my bad, it'd be 4 frames per minute.
| tqi wrote:
| I think its actually 15 seconds per frame, not frames per
| second
| [deleted]
| fulafel wrote:
| It's seven color, not 7-bit. Also there might be just a "set
| color" command followed by 1-bit pixel data instead of a 4-bit
| pixel representation, or something.
| Coffeewine wrote:
| I have a three color model from waveshare, and the way it
| works for it is you have to send a black and white bitmap,
| followed by a color and white bitmap. It's possible for these
| guys you need to repeat that five times.
| ds wrote:
| Havent looked into this much- What is the maximum 'refresh' rate
| you can get out of something like this?
| criddell wrote:
| The page says 15s.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| That is what the page says, but can that possibly be right? I
| know e-ink tends to have very low refresh rates but taking a
| full 15 seconds to redraw seems excessive. I have found sites
| like this often have pretty obvious errors on them, is it
| likely this is correct or a typo?
| hadlock wrote:
| E-ink is commonly used in signage where it won't need to
| change again for a week or more. 15 seconds is fine when
| your required average refresh time is measure in days.
|
| I am really looking forward to the day when high refresh
| rate e-ink displays are common. The B&N Nook from about 8
| years ago could be modified to successfully play flappy
| bird at about 10hz, but it was pretty ugly to use,
| requiring a black/white full clear of the screen to zero
| out the image every 30 frames or so.
| BeefySwain wrote:
| My understanding is that the refresh time tends to increase
| significantly with the number of colors displayed.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| 15 seconds doesn't make sense for a handheld reader. Are
| there other scenarios where it does make sense?
| criddell wrote:
| Information displays in retail.
| itronitron wrote:
| Event specific signage such as 'Donner Party' in
| Conference Room C could be useful for many hotels and
| convention centers.
| detaro wrote:
| I think colored ones typically change the colors in
| sequence, so it seems like that could be correct.
| kaslai wrote:
| That's actually not too bad for a multi-color e-ink
| display. The last color e-ink display I looked at had an
| even longer refresh interval.
| Luc wrote:
| Some months ago I saw a larger one that took half a minute
| of cycling through different states to fully display the
| final image. So 15s seems reasonable.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| For single or double-color displays, you can do pretty
| decently. This Applied Sciences video on YT goes over what's
| possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw
| grzeczko wrote:
| Are there any e-ink displays that are touchscreen? I did a whole
| lot of searching and couldn't find any.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Clearly it's possible to manufacture such a thing, but I
| haven't seen any available for sale (as a stand alone item)
| that have a touch layer.
| martin-adams wrote:
| Like the Kindle? I'd imagine the tech exists somewhere.
| drdebug wrote:
| Both the Onyx Boox Max Pro 2 and 3 have a 13.3" e-ink touch
| screen and run Android. On my Boox Max Pro 2 when in monitor
| mode (HDMI input) however the touch information is not
| forwarded to the host PC when connected with USB. I guess in
| theory an android app could do that though.
| Animats wrote:
| It's still 3x as expensive as an LCD display of the same size.
| The LCD display has full color, too.[1] The E-Ink display offers
| only 7 faded colors.
|
| [1] https://www.buydisplay.com/5-inch-lcd-screen-tft-
| module-800x...
| filleduchaos wrote:
| They're not competitors.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Sunlight readable though.
| Waterfall wrote:
| Never used a b+w monochrome display before? I remember the
| non color iPods were great in the sun.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| I am desperately waiting for semi-high refresh rate (20Hz-30Hz)
| e-ink displays so that I can replace my traditional HD display
| with them.
|
| They're significantly easier on the eyes and they're a joy to
| use. I don't particularly care about color. One thing I'm
| wondering though, is what are the technical challenges behind
| building such a display?
|
| Ideally, I'd like to be able to use an Android device that
| renders onto e-ink. I don't particularly care for watching videos
| and such - most of my time on my phone is spent sending and
| reading IM's (Signal, text, e-mail) rather than viewing media, so
| lower refresh rates is not something I really care about.
|
| Where are the shortcomings causing e-ink displays to have very
| low refresh rate? Does it have to do with modern rendering
| technology being so well optimized for color displays that they
| simply are not performant for e-ink?
| tetraca wrote:
| As far as I understand the technology, it's slow because you
| are physically pushing/pulling pigments around in little cells.
| It's simply not as fast a process as passing voltage across a
| crystal or shooting an electron beam.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Here's how these work:
|
| 1) Take a fluid, color it mostly white(ish).
|
| 2) Suspend a bunch of tiny black "balls" inside this fluid. The
| balls need to be charged so they can be attracted to an
| electric field.
|
| 3) Squish this fluid between some glass.
|
| 4) Put a grid of electrodes on the back that you can address.
|
| 5) Now, using some clever AC patterns, you can address any
| "pixel" on your grid, and apply a charge there, that will
| attract or repel the little balls.
|
| 6) When you attract the balls, that spot turns black, because
| you just see the balls above the fluid.
|
| 7) When you repel the balls, that spot turns "white" because
| you just see the fluid, not the balls.
|
| The trick is that moving the balls back and forth (6/7) is a
| physical process, and requires time. They _have_ to move a
| physical distance, and if that fluid lets them move too easily
| then they won't keep their color. The balls will move and
| they'll just drift back to some middle ground.
|
| Also, if you're not careful with your approach, you can mess
| with the charge of the balls, and they'll no longer respond to
| the field the way you want. This is burn-in. (And it's why
| displays do full-black-to-full-white refreshes from time to
| time)
|
| So until we can figure out how to move those balls faster in
| the fluid, we really aren't going to dramatically improve
| refresh rates with this technology.
|
| Note: "Balls" is a simplification.
| iAmAPencilYo wrote:
| Thank you for the simple explanation of this tech!
| andeee23 wrote:
| I wonder if it will be possible in the future to apply a
| similar concept for for a 3d e ink desplay where the grid
| pulls cells through a 3d medium.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Thanks for this explanation, really interesting
| deng wrote:
| Take a look at the Onyx Boox Max series:
|
| https://onyxboox.com/boox_max3
|
| They're 13.3" displays, work with Android and you can use them
| as an external HDMI display. However, the refresh rate is still
| poor, not nearly 20-30Hz. The Technology Connections Youtube
| channel has made two very interesting videos, showing the many
| caveats of the device (it's an older model, but I'd guess most
| of it still applies). The main issues are poor software and
| slow CPU:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NfX0vlCa4k
| abawany wrote:
| I recommend going to https://mobileread.com/forums to read
| about user experiences with Onyx and other makers. They are
| interesting devices but the support level is not at the same
| level as a Kobo/Nook/Kindle. I used to have a Boyue Likebook
| Mimas, which was a great ereader hobbled by a slow processor
| and itchy software.
| efreak wrote:
| > Suitable For Price Tags, Asset/Equipment Tags, Shelf Labels,
| Conference Name Tags...
|
| Maybe it's just me, but this seems quite expensive for a price
| tag. It also seems quite large for a name tag. I get that eink is
| useful in general for these cases, but this doesn't seem to be
| the best example.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Wait a sec, they have multi-color e-ink now and not just red or
| green? I cannot wait until we can get large versions of these
| that can hang on my walls! I'd love to put them in frames and
| have different paintings rotate in and out.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I've been considering building a 2-way mirror display with a
| regular lcd myself. Would prefer a larger e-ink, but they just
| seem too expensive for what they are.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Who knows how to reasonably get power to stuff like these on
| walls with unobtrusive cables? Anyone have any arrangements at
| home that make these look nice or if not, unnoticeable?
| nanomonkey wrote:
| There is flat cable that you can mud and paint over, usually
| only good for cables that don't need shielding such as power
| cables. Data can be sent wireless using an esp32 on the
| receiving end if you don't already have that capability. There
| are also cable covers that look like molding.
| pi-rat wrote:
| - Pull power inside the wall. Drill a hole on top, another one
| on the bottom, use one of those magnetic cable pullers. Wires
| for 5v requires two tiny holes in drywall that's easy to patch
| later. There's also pretty kits made for TVs, but those require
| bigger holes (for HDMI, power, etc).
|
| - Pull power from the room behind the wall. Maybe it's more out
| of view here.
|
| - Place it next to a door, remove part of the frame, run wires
| inside the door frame.
|
| - Cable channel exists in many different shapes and sizes, not
| only the boring box ones.
|
| - Go the opposite route, why hide your cable? Make it stand
| out. Like those wall lamps with a brightly coloured / patterned
| cable hanging in loops down the wall. Turn it into wall art.
|
| You can find some pretty wall mounted tablets in the
| homeautomation and homeassistant reddits :)
| ilaksh wrote:
| I hope that one day truly large scale e-ink systems become
| somewhat affordable. I think it could be revolutionary for
| architecture.
|
| The appearance of buildings would no longer necessarily be
| static.
|
| More generally, I believe that the extreme minimalism,
| "tranquility" (or blandness) and simplicity of more contemporary
| styles may some day become unpopular.
|
| So I expect that we will see trends in the opposite direction
| eventually. More colors. Maybe a changing facade with e-ink.
| Rather than simple, boxy shapes, more intricate and more organic
| shapes. Large-scale 3d printing could make the use of such forms
| more practical.
|
| I also expect to see architecture that is more dynamic in that it
| will automatically reconfigure itself in response to weather
| changes or the day/night cycle, winter/summer, etc.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| There are serious trade-offs in these things:
|
| * In monochrome panels, you can get 16 shades, and a full refresh
| in under a second (with partial refresh much faster, as tight as
| very few milliseconds for small areas, or commonly 30fps full-
| screen update if you're willing to compromise a bit on image
| quality).
|
| * In colour panels, you don't seem to get shades or rapid
| refresh: seven colours means you get a seven colour palette, so
| you'll have to use dithering to get any in-between colours; and
| you don't get partial updates at all: even the fastest coloured
| panels take a couple of seconds to update the image, and the more
| colours you add the slower it is.
|
| If I'm wrong about these and there _are_ colour panels with more
| interesting colour or partial refresh, I'm interested to hear. I
| just haven't seen any, and have done _some_ looking.
|
| The long and the short of it is that colour e-ink displays are
| only useful for display use, not for individual devices like
| ebook readers or computer displays.
| vikeri wrote:
| Was just about to ask the refresh time, I specifically chose
| this one due to it's faster refresh time (1 s) compared to
| color displays: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-
| what?variant=2121402...
| RL_Quine wrote:
| You pretty much do two full refreshes, and then some. The
| first one drives the pigment (red,yellow) layers, and then
| the black ones.
| zestyping wrote:
| Why does the refresh time depend on the size of the region
| updated? Forgive my ignorance--I'm imagining that the limiting
| factor would be the time it takes for the grains to physically
| flip over, because they all flip concurrently.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Hypothesizing a bit here: maybe it's like flash, where
| erasing is slow and has to be done in large chunks, but once
| a large chunk is erased small chunks can be written (once)
| quickly.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| And the dithering isn't even that great, as not all color
| combinations are easily-mixed, given their varied densities.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| 600x448px resolution makes it very limied for most applications.
| And it's too expensive to be used as a tag in a store.
| dubcanada wrote:
| What I really would like is a touchscreen version of this. I
| think the idea of a "panel" is amazing, but I'd like either a
| touch overlap or touch screen built in.
|
| Anyone know of any e-ink with touch built in? can be black and
| white.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| The Amazon Kindle has a touch e-ink screen. You can use it to
| read books (mobi format) or browse the web (albeit in a very
| limited fashion - but I use it to browse HN and works fine).
| dubcanada wrote:
| I guess I should have been more specific, I meant one I could
| modify/make a custom app for/what ever.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| I've never seen a stand alone item that included a touch
| layer. I think you're stuck repurposing another device to
| pull this off.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nook Simple Touch. Rootable, then you can Android it.
| thekyle wrote:
| I use my Kindle as a dedicated Reddit and HN machine before
| bed and it is pretty great.
| Waterfall wrote:
| https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/01/07/lenovo-put-an-e-in...
| hansjorg wrote:
| The reMarkable (https://remarkable.com/og) has a touch screen
| and runs Linux. Supposedly it's possible to run generic desktop
| Linux distributions on it as well.
| pfrench42 wrote:
| Is it just me or should this be four color CMYK like a regular
| printer?
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Turns out that e-ink displays typically don't mix colors this
| way. In order to get multiple colors in a single display, they
| use sort of colored-balls of various densities suspended in a
| fluid. Then, using the known viscosities of the fluid in the
| capsules, they can vary the charge of the electrodes very
| quickly to sort of _drag_ a color up to the top.
|
| But when you do this, you're dragging a _single_ color.
|
| _All_ the colors are in the capsule, but you can only truly
| pull a single one at a time, a true pigment-like mixing isn't
| possible. If you pull the Cyan up, you're necessarily losing
| the Magenta, for example.
|
| If you had a high enough resolution addressable grid, you might
| be able to put the pixels close enough that you couldn't tell,
| but you'd still be basically doing sub-pixel color at that
| point, not truly mixing the various colors at the base level.
|
| Maybe there are other e-ink displays doing something else, but
| all the ones I've seen are doing some form of this approach.
|
| Here's a fascinating video on how these displays work, and how
| you can modify the firmware of the driver to get faster refresh
| rates (with an increased risk of burn-in).
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw
| vikramkr wrote:
| An area of research I've heard a bit about for next gen
| e-paper displays is to use electrowetting[1] which is a
| different approach that looks intersting
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrowetting#Applications
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Oh, fascinating! This looks really interesting!
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Interesting question.
|
| My understanding is that modern printers actually mix those
| four different inks together on the page to achieve a wide
| range of colors. That isn't possible with a display where
| colors have to remain within their own separate (sub)pixels and
| can't actually mix together.
|
| With a high enough resolution that might not matter, as your
| eyes would be unable to discern individual subpixels, but this
| display is only 600x448, and that's with only one subpixel per
| pixel. (A CMYK display would need 4; maybe slightly less
| depending on subpixel layout.)
|
| Furthermore, modern sRGB displays can output 255 different
| brightness values for each subpixel. This display can only
| output 7 values for each pixel. That further reduces the number
| of possible colors which would be possible in a CMYK subpixel-
| based display.
|
| Provided all those issues could be solved though; maybe it
| would work? There could be other considerations I'm missing.
| (E.g. Can subtractive color mixing even work with subpixels in
| the first place?)
| thegagne wrote:
| Hm, I think the challenge is the pixel density is rather low,
| and unlike ink you don't get any ink mixing.
|
| Good printers are 600dpi, and 300dpi is passable, but this
| thing is 600x448 pixels on 5.65inch screen.
|
| I think when pixel count is low, using rgb is more efficient.
|
| I'm not an expert in any of this so this is just guesswork.
| non-entity wrote:
| Perhaps someone more familiar with the technology can help me
| understand. Why are e-ink displays either tiny (tablet-sized or
| smaller) or huge (for digital signage)? I always thought it would
| be cool to have an x-teen or 20 something inch e-ink monitor to
| make reading docs, specs, etc. much easier. I realize the refresh
| rate on these things is pretty low, but I've read accounts of
| some screens being clocked to around 20hz which may not be enough
| to watch videos or play games, but it would be ok for reading and
| scrolling.
|
| OTOH I did see a 30 something inch e-ink development board for
| sale once and wondered if I could hack one together. It was
| expensive, but that didn't particularly matter because the
| company made it clear they wouldn't sell to consumers or
| hobbyists.
| caleb-allen wrote:
| I found this 10.3 inch monitor on their site, it's quite
| expensive though
| https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/eink-disp...
| ianai wrote:
| I wonder how well that works in practice. At 15hz refresh I
| think it'd be fine for vi.
| falcolas wrote:
| In contrast with sibling comments, I think it would be just
| fine. VIM was designed for high latency, and even the
| modern versions do pretty well with a second or two of lag.
| Issue a command, wait for the response.
|
| The big thing is not depending on the screen keeping in
| perfect sync with your typing. I know this causes an issue
| for me when it's related to talking - an echo off by a
| hundred or more milliseconds will absolutely throw me off
| the rails - but it doesn't bother me so much when typing. A
| mental relic of writing code in terminals connected to
| distant servers, I'm sure.
| jalgos_eminator wrote:
| Not for me. I regularly have vi sessions running over 3-4
| cascaded ssh sessions (and a couple VPN connections in
| there too). Its usable, but the delay messes with your
| brain if you are an experienced vi user.
| toast0 wrote:
| If the delay is consistent, it shouldn't be too bad. I
| spent 3 weeks on a business trip to Europe, when my
| devserver was in Sunnyvale, and did all my editing via
| ssh as I usually do (in joe, not vi, but pretty similar)
| and it was mostly fine --- I do recall doing some
| tunneling to reduce the latency a bit though. It was not
| as fine when they sent me to India with the same
| development setup, so there's a limit... But it's closer
| to 200ms than 100ms, so 15hz should be ok in my mind.
| 6c696e7578 wrote:
| Somehow as I'm very used to respsonsiveness in vi, anything
| less would feel quite sluggish.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Typing at 15hz would be miserable (personally).
| lowdose wrote:
| > because the company made it clear they wouldn't sell to
| consumers or hobbyists.
|
| But if you have a business address it always allowed to request
| a sample.
| csours wrote:
| I've been wondering that for a while myself ;)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13771203
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827833
| Groxx wrote:
| Dasung has been selling a 13-inch-ish for a while:
| https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Paperlike-Front-Light-Touch-Mo...
|
| But that's still within the "arguably a tablet screen" size
| range.
| cosmie wrote:
| > It was expensive, but that didn't particularly matter because
| the company made it clear they wouldn't sell to consumers or
| hobbyists.
|
| I created an LLC a few years ago to route my moonlighting
| consulting work through.
|
| Even if my need for it dries up eventually, I'd still probably
| keep it around. Single greatest benefit of having it is ease of
| access to the commercial and industrial supply chain and
| slipping through these sorts of "no consumer or hobbyists
| allowed" sales positions.
| [deleted]
| sparker72678 wrote:
| There're a few things going on that contribute to this.
|
| 1) The rumors are that some of the display manufacturers have
| contracts with big device makers to not sell panels direct to
| consumer. I don't have evidence to verify this, though.
|
| 2) There aren't a lot of displays that exist _at all_ outside
| of the small/eReader/Big Sign categories. So there probably
| just aren't the production lines out there to push those out.
|
| 3) Since refresh rates in even the best cases aren't great,
| it's unlikely to get a lot of traction in most markets, so I
| don't think anyone is pursuing it heavily.
|
| 4) eInk (the company) seems very uninterested in the hobby
| market at all. They seem to want a few big contracts, and
| that's all they're interested in.
| amelius wrote:
| > The rumors are that some of the display manufacturers have
| contracts with big device makers to not sell panels direct to
| consumer.
|
| Would that be legal?
| mertd wrote:
| How would it be illegal?
| nitrogen wrote:
| Some otherwise fine anti-competitive behaviors are
| illegal when committed by monopolies.
| j88439h84 wrote:
| What do you mean by 2? Monitors and TV screens fit that
| range, no?
| nemo wrote:
| A monitor sized e-ink display would be unusable as, say, a
| PC display. E-ink refresh rates makes e-ink useless for
| video, scrolling, etc. I have a feeling one's really come
| up with applications where a monitor/TV sized very slowly
| refreshing screen was useful so there's no demand.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > E-ink refresh rates makes e-ink useless for video,
| scrolling, etc.
|
| Or even simpler -- a _mouse cursor_ is essentially
| unusable on an e-ink display. Much like an old passive-
| matrix LCD, you 'd need to implement nasty workarounds
| like cursor trails to restore any semblance of usability.
| totony wrote:
| I use a tilling window manager and would love to just pop
| a window into an external eink display.
|
| Works for other types of wms too, just use a main display
| to browse and the eink to read.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| I meant no one is currently making E-ink displays of those
| sizes in bulk. Sorry for the confusion.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| I believe the question you were answering was asking why
| that is.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| My point was that there's no current wide-spread use of
| low-refresh displays in that size category, because all
| the obvious use cases slide around it, so there isn't
| going to be spillover into a new use-case when there's
| nothing there to spill out of.
|
| I'm probably just muddying the waters at this point.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Why would you want a monitor or a tv screen with a refresh
| rate of 7 fps? And that's monochrome. For actual RGB
| output, you need three refreshes, and the RGB ones are
| slower, so you might get a frame per second.
| reificator wrote:
| I'd be ecstatic with a monochrome 20"+ eink monitor for
| use after 8:00PM or so. With the F.lux settings I use on
| my normal monitor it's practically monochrome anyway.
|
| 7FPS is probably not quite high enough, but I've seen
| 10-13" displays with 15-20FPS, and that would be fine for
| normal computing.
|
| I'd probably swap my scrollwheel for PageUp/PageDown to
| make full page refreshes a little more pleasant though.
| andai wrote:
| There was a brief interest in transflective LCD
| technology in the 2000s and early 2010s but it seems to
| have died off (at least for consumer products), which
| means sunlight-readable (or candle-readable, for the
| evenings) LCD with high refresh rates.
|
| There was even one company (edit: Pixel Qi) putting solar
| cells in the displays themselves, so the device recharged
| while being used in sunlight.
|
| YouTube video comparing Pixel Qi in sunlight with normal
| backlit LCD
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1mD6vhp3U8#t=1m45s
| (around 01:45)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 7 pfs are not a showstopper for a console
|
| I don't know why one would want a huge daylight visible
| console, but it's one of those things where I'm just not
| creative enough.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _I don 't know why one would want a huge daylight visible
| console, but it's one of those things where I'm just not
| creative enough._
|
| Not exactly a command line terminal, but there was an
| ambient signage project on HN recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323
|
| Also https://onezero.medium.com/meet-accent-352cfa95813a
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Because I use that monitor to read and write text. Lots
| and lots of text, very little video. 7 fps is abundantly
| adequate for reading text if you only interact with it by
| hitting 'page down' every 30 seconds, and if your typing
| is accurate enough that 150ms delay between hitting the
| key and seeing the character doesn't cause errors it's
| fine for writing text.
|
| I don't need 30, 60, 120, or 144 Hz refresh rates to work
| with text. It would probably be impossible to see the
| difference. What I need is contrast and brightness
| settings to limit eye fatigue, and that's where e-ink
| would be great.
| vikramkr wrote:
| For point 4, that could be a pretty smart move on their part
| and the reason they're able to keep going. Selling directly
| to consumers/setting up the distribution and marketing for
| that etc would be really difficult and a lot of D2C hardware
| companies have not done too well recently. It's unfortunate
| that it results in it being difficult to access for hobby
| markets, but relying on large, stable contracts from a lot of
| big manufacturers that already built up marketing and
| distribution over decades of operations is probably one of
| the better ways to commercialize a hardware innovation today.
| hedora wrote:
| I feel eInk's marketing strategy has really held the
| technology back. They seem to want to force the technology
| into a few well-defined verticals that they came up with
| themselves instead of letting an army of smaller companies
| innovate rapidly.
|
| They were founded in 1997, so their earliest patents have
| probably expired. I wonder when the clones will arrive.
| Maybe they'll have a better marketing and sales strategy.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Those don't seem like valid reasons not to offer for sale
| to consumers. Distribution is a non-issue. Literally ship
| in a case of them to FBA or one of the countless other
| fulfillment operations and put up a listing. Amazon handles
| the customer service.
|
| As for the marketing, just don't do any. Let the hobby
| market find it on their own and then just set a minimum
| order for anyone that wants to work directly with the
| company for their small project.
|
| I think getting into the hobby market would amount to a
| huge long tail market of kickstarter style projects and
| other small products with potential to blow up.
|
| I really don't see how their current strategy could be that
| great considering how rare it is to see products out there
| that are e-ink.
| bsder wrote:
| > I think getting into the hobby market would amount to a
| huge long tail market of kickstarter style projects and
| other small products with potential to blow up.
|
| I'm trying to think of a single kickstarter-style project
| that generated a volume above even 100K units let alone a
| million. I can't think of _any_.
|
| BeatBuddy is probably the most successful by unit volume
| project I can think of, and they're probably under 10,000
| units.
|
| So, the evidence is that the hobbyist market is
| _completely_ useless to manufacturers.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Well yeah, but that's not where the money is in selling
| to hobbyists.
|
| If you want someone to invent something that uses them,
| you'll have to have them in the hands of people that
| invent stuff. Maybe you only break even on your small
| scale sales to hobbyists, but eventually one of those
| hobbyists will be the one to invent the next big thing.
| bsder wrote:
| My point was that over the last 5-10 years, we have seen
| _ZERO_ hobbyists create the Next Big Thing(tm) out of a
| kickstarter-like.
|
| And, I would argue, for two good reasons.
|
| 1) When you think about things like the Homebrew Computer
| Club or the Tech Model Railroad Club, the point is that
| the membership were _engineers_. Yes, they were
| hobbyists, but they were already professionals in the
| field. Kickstarters don 't seem to attract that
| engineering crowd.
|
| 2) Anybody with _actual_ knowledge of hardware laughs at
| the amounts that kickstarters raise. Most engineering
| professionals can personally move the amounts of money
| that most kickstarters can raise.
|
| The combination of the two is death for the Next Big
| Thing(tm) coming out of a kickstarter.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _Kickstarters don 't seem to attract that engineering
| crowd._
|
| As an engineer whose project proposal (with proof of
| feasibility in the form of working and one-at-a-time
| manufacturable fully functional prototypes) was rejected
| by Kickstarter back in 2017, maybe their selection
| criteria are the reason.
| bsder wrote:
| Interesting. I didn't even know kickstarter _had_
| selection criteria given the amount of pure slop I 've
| seen on there.
|
| But, yeah, if they do, that's simply going to kill the
| feedthrough as nobody can predict what's going to become
| big.
| delecti wrote:
| Oculus and Pebble maybe aren't "Next Big Thing", but both
| were major hardware Kickstarter projects. Pebble was the
| first mainstream smartwatch, and the VR landscape would
| be significantly different if not for Oculus. It's
| probably fair to say that neither was iPhone level of
| industry revolutionary, but it's a mistake to discount
| them entirely.
| falcolas wrote:
| IMO, Point 3 is not really a problem, at least in the
| e-reader usecase. Even typing isn't too bad when partial
| refresh is enabled. Something like VIM on a black&white panel
| with kindle-grade refresh options seems quite reasonable.
|
| Now then, with the linked screen's 15 second refresh time,
| this is obviously not the case. But it (naively) seems like a
| compromise to keep the cost low, since the added tech and
| software to enable partial refreshes would add to both price
| and complexity.
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| The Onyx Boox line has a 13.3" display version. They mainly
| cater to musicians using them for sheet music but I have a
| friend that consumes textbook PDFs at a pace of about 3 per
| week that swears by his.
| kps wrote:
| For those who care, there have been recent reports that Onyx
| are actively and deliberately violating GPL.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin.
| ..
| Jolter wrote:
| Sony makes one, too, but it seems to hobbled by not running a
| real OS to make it useful. All it does is read PDF files.
| owenshen24 wrote:
| I also have one of these and I really like the 13" screen.
| Recommended, though pricey.
| [deleted]
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'm still sad that the Mirasol displays
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometric_modulator_disp...)
| never made it into mainstream products. They seemed to be the
| best of both worlds: high refresh rates, colour, and no power
| consumption when not refreshing.
| elcritch wrote:
| Me too, the demos looked fantastic! Maybe after the patents
| expire other companies will pick up the tech.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I had one of the qualcomm toqs (which used a small mirasol
| display).
|
| It didn't look that much better (or distinguishable, for the
| matter) than one of those reflective LCDs (e.g. Pebble's). And
| reflective "memory" LCDs also have almost negligible -- though
| not zero -- power consumption. Except for maybe signage
| products most people don't care about this difference, and LCD
| is way cheaper and mainstream, so...
|
| It's no surprise that many manufacturers just put an LCD and
| try to get away by calling it "ePaper". There is a lot of geek
| appeal here, but I'm not really sure if we really need any new
| technology for "mainstream".
| matmann2001 wrote:
| Also had a Toq. Probably one of my favorite smartwatches, and
| would have loved to see it live long enough to run Android
| Wear. Unfortunately, Qualcomm isn't a product company and the
| Toq was essentially a proof of concept for both Mirasol and
| their new (at the time) line of smartwatch-focused Snapdragon
| chips. They managed to convince most of the major real
| smartwatch OEMs to use Snapdragon but the Mirasol just never
| got off the ground. Apparently manufacturing was very
| difficult, as you might imagine, and they were hitting
| limitations on pushing the color depth.
| Groxx wrote:
| Sounds like low saturation tho? I wonder if they lost out to
| transflective LCD (at least in mind-share, since those haven't
| been shipped much either, though there are a handful of
| products using them), as keeping an LCD "set" is cheap enough
| to often not be an issue.
|
| That is a really neat technique though, I hadn't read up on the
| details before.
| fulafel wrote:
| Anyone know how tolerant these are of UV, how long will it
| survive in frequent direct sunlight?
| sparker72678 wrote:
| I don't know about UV itself, but the spec sheet on my 7"
| Waveshare eInk display says to avoid direct sunlight and
| extreme heat.
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