[HN Gopher] E Ink Gallery 3
___________________________________________________________________
E Ink Gallery 3
Author : retSava
Score : 298 points
Date : 2022-04-28 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eink.com)
| hemreldop wrote:
| cycomanic wrote:
| There is also the technology used by the reinkstone.com. The big
| advantage is that they can turn color on and off, without getting
| the reduced contrast that eink gets. That said they just delayed
| their delivery to autumn I believe, so likely they have issues
| with production consistency or so. It's still not comparable to a
| proper color display, but I wouldnt mind one of these for readi g
| papers, where I can switch to color for graphs etc. It would also
| make highlighting etc much nicer.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Apparently I should have included "(Rollable)" in the title!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167290
| cubefox wrote:
| You shouldn't have, including it in the title is misleading
| here. As I said before, the rollability is not the innovation
| here.
| ortusdux wrote:
| It gets results though.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Somwhere around 3000 AC I'll get a laptop with color eink :/
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Get e.g. a SC1452-GHA 7.8'' Kaleido (btw with frontlight and
| touchscreen) and hook it to a laptop through the development
| kit, or get a device mounting it and connect to it through VNC
| or better. Maybe the dev-kit is better than a remote desktop
| session, maybe not: further info about it would be needed.
|
| I have worked on 8'' (not a Kaleido) and it's very doable if
| you accept the real estate compromise.
|
| You can have it already and spend maybe around 200u, plus your
| time to set it up.
| ushakov wrote:
| what does it cost and do they sell individual pieces?
| solarkraft wrote:
| They sell development kits at https://shopkits.eink.com/ under
| a funny condition:
|
| > PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE
| AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL
| NOT BE ACCEPTED
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Jesus, that pricing. 99$ for a single panel and 350$ for the
| accompanying driver board which is essentially a small MCU
| and a couple MOSFETs?
| throw10920 wrote:
| Sounds like a ripe opportunity for developing an open-
| source driver board!
| abraxas wrote:
| So we have a 21st century scroll? Another 2 millennia before eInk
| launches a codex version?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, I might be stupid, but is there anyone clamoring to fold
| their displays?
|
| Like flexible solar panels, I suspect 1) engineering tradeoffs,
| 2) shorter longevity (would that just be brevity?).
| dmix wrote:
| One thing that hasn't changed over the years is E-Ink never
| hiring a web designer to sell their products.
| tpmx wrote:
| It's the explicit letter-spacing in the CSS that makes the
| English language site look really odd. I suppose they add it to
| make the Chinese/etc variants of the site look better.
|
| It's a Taiwanese company.
| dmix wrote:
| The mobile version of the blog is all over the place as well.
| xwdv wrote:
| I just want to run my vim terminal on an E-Ink screen.
| pangaurdian wrote:
| i think you can do it on an Onyx ereader with a vim terminal
| android app. For sure, I've run Vim on an Onyx with a BT
| keyboard. Worked ok. Not sure about a full blown vim terminal.
| I know the apps exist on playstore.
| goldcd wrote:
| https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink...
| dotancohen wrote:
| Onyx is planning on shipping another 25" monitor next month,
| that's about 15% cheaper:
|
| https://onyxboox.com/boox_mirapro
|
| The problem is that it states "Windows, MacOS, Android and
| iOS operating systems" are supported. The Dasung specifically
| states that they support Linux, so that's probably the one
| that I'll order anyway despite the price.
| adisbladis wrote:
| https://github.com/leoluk/paperlike-go/ also exists for the
| Dasung and is FOSS.
| solarkraft wrote:
| There are many ways to do this, either fiddly or a little
| expensive. You can
|
| - use a Dasung screen or Boox Max with your desktop (expensive,
| plug and play)
|
| - use a hacked-up Linux e-reader (super cheap, fiddly)
|
| - build something with WaveShare kits and an Arduino/Raspberry
| Pi (moderately expensive and fiddly, but allows for interesting
| creations)
|
| - use some app (Termux) on an Android E-Reader (Boox,
| moderately expensive, quite versatile).
|
| The tech is a bit inaccessible, but not as much as it may seem.
| Just check out: https://hackaday.com/tag/e-ink/
| throw10920 wrote:
| Here's someone doing Emacs on a ReMarkable 2 through SSH:
| https://twitter.com/ianthehenry/status/1481376985129500679
| xwdv wrote:
| At the very least I think I'd need 16 color support though
| for syntax highlighting, in order for it to be practical.
| thrown12 wrote:
| I have a number of Dasung products and the results are
| spectacular. I can code for hours on end with no eye strain and
| my sleeping schedule is normal for the first time in 15 years.
| The lack of flashiness on the screen also lets me think more
| about what I'm doing.
| retSava wrote:
| Slightly edited title to emphasize that this epaper is rollable.
| Videos on that link.
| keikobadthebad wrote:
| The color updates are about 10x faster, and there's a 300ms
| black / white update mode too.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Is 300ms fast? I thought Remarkable and similar products had
| it down to 40ms.
| keikobadthebad wrote:
| Yes simpler panels have even faster BW update. But the old
| 7-colour panels took 15s to do anything... so being able to
| do partial updates in a region at 300ms is a huge upgrade
| for them.
| dTal wrote:
| That's not true. Here's a video of a Kindle Touch from
| 2012 playing a movie:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr52ZWEZH4Q
| keikobadthebad wrote:
| It looks like you missed the "old 7 colour panels" part.
| Like this (quoting <35s update across temperature)
|
| https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-Paper-Module-F.htm
| dTal wrote:
| Yes, I did - I read 7 colors as 7 level grayscale. My
| apologies.
| SekstiNi wrote:
| Depends on how much of the screen is being refreshed, among
| other factors, but for writing the rM2 is apparently down
| to 24ms. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5XUTnPQ5i4
| cubefox wrote:
| Including "(rollable)" is really misleading. The main
| innovation is the new subtractive color mixing technology. The
| rollability is nothing special.
| SamBam wrote:
| That video could have been rather improved on, for a marketing
| video... The display didn't update after the second "page
| flip," so the user flipped a third time, and then it turned out
| the page had flipped to page 3 while it was closed and
| immediately flipped to page 4.
|
| I get that that's how it will probably actually happen, but re-
| shoot for a little bit of polish...
|
| Also the webpage didn't correctly fit on my Android browser
| (both Firefox and Chrome).
| dmix wrote:
| Agreed. 16 second marketing videos doesn't "tease" anything
| it just makes you wonder what they are hiding.
| Izkata wrote:
| > I get that that's how it will probably actually happen
|
| I don't think that's what happened. The rollable video shows
| two of the same pages in the same order; it looks more like a
| slideshow they didn't time right.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Cool, but it doesn't matter yet. A lot of E-Ink announcements
| don't translate into unable consumer devices for years.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It matters because it means the technology exists and is
| therefore much more likely to come to a product at some point.
| fortran77 wrote:
| The black-white e-readers are doing a great job at a great
| price point. Color would have to have a similar battery life,
| resolution, and only an incremental price-increase to be
| appealing.
| mateo1 wrote:
| They're not doing that great. A4 (or letter) sized ereaders
| right now cost $800+, have a resolution of about 200dpi and
| only a few shades of gray, so they're practically monochrome.
| For that amount I can print thousands upon thousands of pages
| at 1200+ dpi on real paper which I prefer. I thought about it
| and bought a laser printer. When the technology matures a bit
| more, I'll be waiting. Less eagerly every year though, as
| I've been waiting for affordable large ereaders for 10+ years
| now. And I'm seeing a shift to tablet-like device features
| which I'm not fond of.
| chokma wrote:
| That sounds like an interesting idea - now I want to print
| ebooks in my favorite font size... but that feature is
| locked behind DRM. Still, for webnovels it may be viable.
| [deleted]
| ciupicri wrote:
| Are talkinkg about the tiny e-readers locked into Amazon's
| ecosystem?
| ta988 wrote:
| There are many others. Kobo for example doesn't lock you to
| anything and you can pretty much do whatever you want with
| the Linux on them.
| innocenat wrote:
| There are tons of e-reader out there, but if you aren't
| searching it's likely you will only know Kindle. Kobo is
| also very popular, but there're also PocketBook, Nook,
| Likebook, Onyx Boox, Bigme, etc.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I see TheVerge has an article about it:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23041407/e-ink-color-gall...
|
| ...And now for the rant: the opening:
|
| > _E Ink has a new version of color electronic paper, and, while
| it isn't as pretty as an OLED_
|
| These people must be those who use EPD at midnight and OLED at
| noon. (Of course it can be done, it just makes no general sense.)
| BbzzbB wrote:
| This is great, and I can't wait for it to commoditized, but I bet
| I'm way priced out.
|
| In general, I find e-ink displays relatively expensive for
| modestly sized ones (say 6 inch +). What's some of the best
| deals/value for e-ink displays for some personal projects? Broken
| e-readers for parts?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| For smaller displays than you're looking for (<4 inch),
| AliExpress has some pretty reasonable prices. Even for color
| displays.
|
| For larger ones, I think the best option is something like a
| recycled kindle. There was even a post on HN a few months ago
| from a company selling Kindle displays hooked up to breakout
| boards (may have even had on-onboard microcontroller, like an
| ESP-32?)
| roeles wrote:
| Kobo readers run Linux. I used kobo mini's as moving map
| display in my glider. The entire thing cost me about 60 euros
| from eBay. The root system is even an SD card, so you can just
| swap cards to restore the stock firmware.
| cubefox wrote:
| What's so innovative about E Ink Gallery is the fact that they
| apparently mix color similar to printed-on paper. This means they
| don't have to use additive subpixel color mixing, which darkens
| the display a lot, and which is the reason why colored e-paper
| isn't a thing in actual products.
|
| The problem was that E Ink Gallery was extremely slow to refresh,
| but with E Ink Gallery 3, the technology is now "just" slow
| instead of extremely slow. Though perhaps still a bit too slow to
| use it in actual e-reader devices.
| noasaservice wrote:
| This company has held back e-ink technology via patents. They
| refuse to talk to small/independent vendors, and try to squash
| anybody ordering components from abroad. Now, why does that
| matter? Cause the Chinese had 'full color eink' for years.
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002467730675.html?algo_e...
|
| And there's eink phones AND tablets both. Reasonably priced. Yet
| we see _none_ of that kind of innovation here... I guess we might
| in 5-7 years. If it 's profitable.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Given their previous track record of _rampant_ IP theft (from
| EU + Japan in addition to US), it 's rather likely that these
| Chinese companies "developed" this technology through IP theft,
| rather than greenfield development.
|
| That's also a contributing factor to their products being
| affordable - because they don't have any R&D costs to recoup,
| just those associated with espionage.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| It's wild how in 2022 there's nothing consumers can do to stop
| this "price gouging" - I guess it's a free market and it's a
| niche so they have little competition and kinda a monopoly?
|
| I don't understand the legal aspect of this stuff, but if the EU
| bureaucrats were able to impose USB-C standard instead of custom-
| charging-ports, surely they could do something about this too? Am
| I totally wrong? Seriously curious....
|
| One more thought: colored rollable e-ink can have so many good
| uses, from being used in education to cut back on paper-books to
| displaying advertising and more utilitarian uses in our every-day
| life. gatekeeping this tech is absurd to me.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I put "price gouging" into quotes - as a non-native, I can't
| think of a better word for it
| eigenvalue wrote:
| If you didn't have billions of people around the world buying
| them, the technology in your typical smartphone would cost many
| many thousands of dollars. Big markets with big demand can
| drive down cost curves almost unimaginably. It starts making
| sense to hire smart people to look at every aspect of how the
| thing works and is made, and to invest huge amounts of capital
| into equipment that can only be justified when the number of
| units is in the tens of millions. Something as niche as
| oversized passive e-ink screens will never attract that capital
| or expertise, since it could never recoup those costs.
| Eventually someone will either improve the technology enough
| for it to have a large end market (changing wallpaper in the
| home?) or it will stay niche until the patents run out and the
| tech can find more applications that currently don't make sense
| because the licensing fees would be too high.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > kinda a monopoly
|
| "thanks" to patents is 100% a monopoly.
|
| But maybe there is hope https://blog.the-ebook-
| reader.com/2015/03/02/german-court-fi...
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Why do you think this is price gouging and not just expensive
| to make? Plenty of things cost a heap of money even after years
| of development - I'm pretty sure you can buy a flying car if
| you have a billion lying around.
| spiderice wrote:
| > cut back on paper-books
|
| I read an article posted here on HN about how using an iPad to
| cut back on paper basically never becomes worth it (from an
| environmental perspective). If you already have an iPad, sure,
| use it for not taking and it will be better than using paper.
| But don't go buy an iPad specifically to save on paper, because
| that will make the problem worse.
|
| I wonder how much of that same principle applies to e-ink
| displays. They obviously use a lot less power, so maybe it
| would be worth it. I'm really not sure.
|
| edit: did a quick Google search. I believe this was the
| article: https://slate.com/technology/2011/09/paper-versus-the-
| ipad-i...
| [deleted]
| stevehawk wrote:
| what price gouging are we talking about?
| orliesaurus wrote:
| that's why I put it into quotes - I can't think of a better
| word for it
| boringg wrote:
| Can't wait for E Ink to make it to the masses at a reasonable
| price. I am suspect that it won't get surpassed by its
| competitors by that it gets there and everyone will have moved
| on. Would be sad but a high probability outcome.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| that refresh shimmer is brutally bad, is smooth refresh
| completely unsolvable for e-ink?
| cubefox wrote:
| It appears unsolvable by the electrophoresis displays which E
| Ink makes. Since it is based on moving solid particles through
| a viscous liquid, which is slow.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| ah exactly the detail I was wondering about, thank you
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I think it is purposeful in order to counteract ghosting.
|
| But indeed at the end of the day e-ink is suitable for slow
| changing content (mainly reading blocks of text).
| rychco wrote:
| Oddly enough, I kind of enjoy it.
| henriquecm8 wrote:
| It's similar to glitching we see in scifi/cyberpunk
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| oh sure, it's kind of cool if you're only seeing it
| occasionally... but not something I'd enjoy for anything that
| updates more often than a powerpoint presentation (which is
| fine as a known limitation)
| ramses0 wrote:
| Think of it like a split-flap display. It physically must
| "rotate" something to the right color. I'm no e-ink expert, but
| there may always be some level of "shimmer".
| robinsoh wrote:
| > It physically must "rotate" something to the right color.
| I'm no e-ink expert, but there may always be some level of
| "shimmer".
|
| You're thinking of gyricon where the balls rotate. That's
| different. The bulk of the industry now uses electrophoresis
| which is moving ink particles electrically.
| fortran77 wrote:
| They're still moving though. And that's always going to be
| slower than turning an LED on.
| serenitylater wrote:
| These results have to be sandbagged right? Is there any reason
| this stuff wasn't rolled out years ago except one company
| sandbagging technical development so they can sell 2008
| technology at 2022 prices?
| my123 wrote:
| Production readiness is a very hard thing to do. Not because
| you can make one unit you can make a bunch of them at
| acceptable yields.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Woo, black and white update time is down to about 3fps now! Three
| very flickery frames a second.
|
| _sigh_
|
| I have been wanting a color e-ink Mac I can work with under
| direct sunlight for so long now. I will be waiting many years
| longer.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| On the one hand, I would suggest if that laptop you are using
| can be charged with a "powerbank": that would increase your
| "mileage". On the other, I am suspecting you are referring to
| an OLED display: contrary to LCDs, I have not yet seen a
| natural light friendly OLED and I suspect it would be
| drastically power inefficient.
| daenz wrote:
| Honest question, why? Do you sit in direct sunlight often? Are
| you looking for extreme battery life?
| egypturnash wrote:
| I'm a freelance artist. I have a decent studio setup at home
| but I also really love taking my laptop out to a cafe or a
| park.
|
| When I'm under a tree in the park, there's no power (so yes,
| battery life helps - it's why I mostly use Mac Airs), and my
| screen has to fight the sunshine. Which makes battery life
| even worse because I've gotta run the backlight at full
| power. Sitting under a tree with a sunscreen attached to the
| computer helps some, but I would be _delighted_ if I could
| sit out under the sun.
| daenz wrote:
| Personally I'm worried about battery damage to my
| electronic devices when they get direct sunlight. I've had
| a phone cook its battery in the sun (battery swelled up),
| and my kindle gets pretty hot as well. Is that something
| you're worried about?
| egypturnash wrote:
| Nah, not really. The only heat problems I've ever had are
| the design flaw with my current 2016 Macbook Pro that
| makes it heat up its batteries when charging.
|
| I'm also probably not gonna sit out in the direct sun for
| hours on end, I tend to stay in one spot working 2h at
| the absolute most. Gotta get up and take a break to bike
| around the city every so often.
| srinathkrishna wrote:
| I have been very stoked with color epaper since the mirasol days
| and alas nothing has materialized yet out to the mainstream.
| Looking forward to see how this pans out.
| [deleted]
| mas-ev wrote:
| I was in the same position but ended up buying the Onyx Boox
| Nova 3 color. They recently released the Nova Air color which
| has a better body and warm light functional (wish I had that on
| mine for night time reading.)
|
| I love it for reading technical blogs, code, tech books. I
| wanted an ereader I could install android apps on and preserve
| color syntax highlighting.
|
| Disclaimer, these devices phone home to China so most people
| install apps like NetGuard to curate an Allowlist of apps that
| can access the internet.
|
| Some people push this stuff to the extreme and code on them. I
| would not enjoy that and do not recommend it but it is
| possible.
| chrisgp wrote:
| I remember this project from a while back:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726 Very cool idea but
| the screen used was $2k+, and two years later the price is the
| same.
|
| Seems like we're still a long way off from reasonably priced
| large e-ink displays -- very curious to see any progress in this
| space.
| xd1936 wrote:
| I too think about this project all the time. I wish I could
| have a wall-mounted raw display to use with a Pi or Arduino as
| a picture frame that didn't cost thousands of dollars for the
| panel.
| wakeupcall wrote:
| As written by others, probably due to eink the company itself.
|
| I love eink. I have several readers, a remarkable which I
| adore.
|
| I wouldn't mind using a slow-refresh display for coding. The
| price just makes it impossible. Having color for this task,
| even if washed out, would be an absolute boon.
|
| As for all eink announcements, they may have the tech, but they
| might make it so so expensive that nobody is going to translate
| it into mass production product. Without volume, we'll never
| get better prices.
|
| Been watching eink for a lifetime now. I read each announcement
| as a red herring at this point..
| mrandish wrote:
| > Been watching eink for a lifetime now.
|
| If it's been that long, do the blocking patents expire soon?
| voakbasda wrote:
| One modus operandi of such companies is to amass a lot of
| patentable ideas as trade secrets, which subsequently can
| be rolled out as sequential patents. This effectively
| extends their monopoly on the products as a whole, despite
| patents expiring that protect the initial innovations. They
| can always roll something out sooner if a competitor might
| be approaching their IP moat.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| If the devices are being embedded in consumer products
| like eink screens, is it really possible to treat the
| technology as a trade secret?
| lostcolony wrote:
| They only go out in devices after they've been patented.
|
| Think of 3 years of research. Rather than it leading to
| three years of progressively better consumer devices, you
| instead patent the first idea and use it to go to market,
| then sit on the rest. After X amount of time (where X <
| 20 years), you patent the next winning idea, and go to
| market with it. Etc.
|
| This presents a challenge to would be competitors; to go
| to market, you have to leapfrog the existing technology
| and patent (with as broad a language as patents tend to
| have), hope the incumbent doesn't have something that
| would immediately deprecate your product (or at least,
| relies itself on something you patented along the way),
| and then overcome the incumbent's existing advantage in
| in the market. And also be prepared for a legal fight,
| since almost assuredly one of you is going to accuse the
| other of infringing a patent.
| nicd wrote:
| One of my friends works on an e-ink product. My
| understanding is that one of the major trade secrets are
| the e-ink waveforms (the sequence of voltages used to
| print and erase content on the display). They are shared
| under NDA and baked into product firmware. Apparently the
| open-source versions are significantly worse.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _the open-source versions are significantly worse_
|
| That can be overcome, especially with sustained
| collaborative effort.
|
| But the production of the displays, controller software
| aside, will not be "cheap".
| ratmice wrote:
| Hearsay, but I've read in the past that these were
| tailored specifically to the display, so difficult to
| actually collaborate since each display is a little
| different.
| lostcolony wrote:
| If you want an e-ink device using 20 year old technology
| you can get a used one for cheaper than any would be
| competitor can produce one.
|
| If you want one using anything developed in the past 5
| years...oh, look, that's why eink still has a research
| division; they've been slowly improving things (not as fast
| as actual competition would cause, but enough to make it
| hard for someone to just leapfrog them using seed capital)
| and so would-be competitors are now running up against
| patents with 15+ years left.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Do they just not believe the pricing rules all other business
| is pretty much based on or what? With scale comes the real
| money, right?
| ineedasername wrote:
| It's possible they don't see much elasticity in the market,
| e.g. that a 50% decrease in cost would net them >= 50%
| increase in sales.
|
| In the very short term they're probably right, but I think
| they'd be wrong in the long term: once the price drops it
| might take time but I think people would come up with a
| variety of novel products and use cases. Amazon for example
| has made a big bet on digital comics w/comixology. I'm sure
| they'd love to offer an affordable color comic reader. Or
| cheap 8.5x11 tablets could become the default note taking
| devices for a lot of students, especially for many STEM
| classes.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think this is the real head-scratcher.
|
| Wondering if either they just fundamentally aren't capable
| of scaling up their business, so they are getting as much
| as they can out of what little they can make.
|
| Or maybe there's some confusing IP situation and they just
| want to create a minimal number of devices to keep some
| sort of... copyrights or patents alive or something (as far
| as I know they don't work that way in the US, but maybe
| other countries?)
|
| Or maybe this is, like, just the CEO's hobby project and
| and they don't realize that people want these things?
|
| Or maybe, actually, only a couple nerds like us want these
| E-ink screens. Assuming tech nerds are generally pretty
| well off overall, but a fairly small-ish group, maybe E-ink
| screens just end up being fairly price insensitive as a
| result?
|
| I dunno. Seems weird though.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Do they even manufacture the screens themselves? I though
| they mostly just did r&d and licensed things, in which
| case scale shouldn't really be an issue, at least on
| manufacturing the things.
| janekm wrote:
| I think it's the last one, the two proven applications
| are book readers and price labels (and a few niche
| applications like readable displays for long-life
| battery-operated devices, Remarkable). There's not many
| potential users clamouring for a dumb terminal "laptop"
| (the battery life advantage would disappear real quick if
| you tried to compile large code projects) with E-Ink
| screen. Not that many people would buy a laptop that
| can't play YouTube videos or go on Facebook. Even I
| wouldn't want to write code on a laptop with the display
| latency of e-ink...
| brewdad wrote:
| > Or maybe this is, like, just the CEO's hobby project
| and and they don't realize that people want these things?
|
| There was definitely a time when I really wanted a color
| e-ink screen. But now, with iPads having 10 hour battery
| life, I can get all day performance and better colors and
| refresh rates from that device, so my desire for color
| e-ink has greatly declined.
|
| I do love my b&w e-reader though and use it every day.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, is 10 hours really _that_ long? My SuperNote
| notebook lasts for days, my Kobo for weeks. I certainly
| have had flights longer than 10 hours. At least nowadays
| you sometimes have a USB-A charging port if you needed,
| or a 120V if you 're lucky.
| Cd00d wrote:
| > I wouldn't mind using a slow-refresh display for coding
|
| I've seen this sentiment a lot when eink displays are
| discussed here. But, I'm not _quite_ sure I get it.
|
| I've typed in platforms with significant lag between a
| keystroke and the character showing. It's horrible! So often,
| you think maybe you made a typo, but have to wait to see it
| and fix it, instead of a quick few backspaces and ONWARD! I
| find it really disruptive to my train of thought and it
| breaks the brain-interface link.
|
| Maybe the eink displays refresh fast enough to make this be a
| minimal issue, but my few years old Kindle Paperwhite doesn't
| have me confident that's true.
|
| Or, maybe I just type way worse than those of you that want
| an eink dev environment.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Been watching eink for a lifetime now. I read each
| announcement as a red herring at this point..
|
| I didn't even want to read the announcement, because I
| already know it's showcasing exactly the tech that I want but
| will never be made available. I've had half a dozen E-ink
| devices and I love them. But it seems like the company behind
| the tech has an active incentive to keep it out of consumers'
| hands.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Musk should buy them and put a fire under their asses.
| bipson wrote:
| Not sure if you're joking or not... :S
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> an active incentive to keep it out of consumers' hands._
|
| They seem to act that way, but what would be the actual
| incentive? (As apposed to just bad business acumen)
| mertd wrote:
| They are either impossibly incompetent or there is
| something about the technology that makes mass
| availability in different form factors not viable and our
| laymen understanding doesn't see it.
| derefr wrote:
| Conspiracy theory: it's because e-ink technology has
| military (stealth / penaid) applications. (See:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=499TkWOl4PM; then picture
| a "chameleon jet-fighter" that syncs its color to the
| surrounding sky; or better yet, a chameleon _missile_.
| Without losing range due to needing to power active
| panels.)
|
| I don't necessarily mean to imply that the military is
| restricting the tech for competitive reasons; but rather
| just that E Ink Corporation might be price-anchoring
| relative to what their biggest customer is willing to
| pay.
|
| (See also: why "holographic glitter" is so expensive,
| compared to other metallic glitters. Holo-glitter paint
| is an effective radar diffuser; and, more obviously, the
| glitter itself is literally
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure) !)
| h2odragon wrote:
| Another conspiracy theory: the LCD cartel has been paying
| them not to compete. Given any actual difficulties yet to
| be worked out for mass production of eink (and there's
| always something), they may just be making more money by
| threatening to compete with LCD displays than they could
| by actually doing so.
| xvector wrote:
| > a "chameleon jet-fighter" that syncs its color to the
| surrounding sky;
|
| would be largely worthless as visual isn't really the
| primary way we detect and destroy aircraft anymore.
| ggm wrote:
| Holo glitter works in the radar domain. So, its passive
| tech which has an effect.
|
| EInk has a refresh time. Which is a significant mismatch
| to the flight speed of devices which seek to mask
| themselves against changing background. More to the
| point, optical detection is the least worry in this
| space. by the time it's visible in motion, its already a
| problem. '
|
| For on-the-ground, its easier to put it under a canopy.
|
| EInk does nothing for radar, or thermal imaging. So your
| proposed conspiracy is to defeat human eyes, which rarely
| if ever are the first-spotters. The circumstances where
| using radar breaches your own privacy are understood. I
| would expect an ML vision system could defeat this
| anyway. (and I say that as a bit of a long-term non-
| believer in AI)
|
| I love a good conspiracy, but alas, I think this isn't
| it. The grassy knoll is just, after all, a patch of
| grass, and not an EInk facsimile, in my personal opinion.
| jve wrote:
| Yeah I wonder if price point is justified or not.
|
| Accessible pricing may result in eink screens taking
| consumers, businesses, hobbyists and whatnot by storm.
| But meh...
| robinsoh wrote:
| > They are either impossibly incompetent or there is
| something about the technology that makes mass
| availability in different form factors not viable and our
| laymen understanding doesn't see it.
|
| You are correct, it is the equivalent of me as a display
| engineer coming here and saying "Cray computers has an
| active incentive to keep it out of consumer's hands" or
| alleging "Microsoft is blocking progress in the operating
| system industry using their patent". If you examine my
| comment history, you'll see I've tried repeatedly before
| on HN to explain why the physics of electrophoresis is
| the dominant limitation in the industry but that is
| apparently harder to understand and harder to accept,
| whereas people saying things like "the company behind the
| tech has an active incentive to keep it out of consumers'
| hands." or "the technology is locked by a company that
| doesn't innovate nor mass produce their tech. " without
| citations or any evidence is accepted as the gospel
| truth. :-)
| haroldp wrote:
| Why does my 12 year old kindle-keyboard refresh so much
| faster and better than any eink hobby display that I can
| buy? Do you think there is any hope of this changing?
| maratc wrote:
| I would not assume any malicious intent. e-Ink is a
| wonderful solution looking for a problem.
|
| Anything with a mouse pointer can't use e-Ink because of
| slow refresh rates.
|
| Anything looking at a web page can't use e-Ink because of
| slow refresh rates.
|
| Anything playing video can't use e-Ink because of slow
| refresh rates.
|
| This leaves us with e-readers, but that market is very
| limited in size. Not everyone wants a dedicated book-
| reading device when a multipurpose device can, besides
| everything else, also read books.
|
| Even smaller markets are information kiosks and "smart"
| price tags in supermarkets.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Even smaller markets are information kiosks and
| "smart" price tags in supermarkets._
|
| That's not true. Electronic shelf labels sold to
| supermarket chains and retailers, far outnumber the
| number of e-book readers sold to consumers. Especially
| that electronic price tags usually have a fixed shelf-
| life (~3 years or even shorter if they get damaged), so
| they need to be replaced often, while consumers generally
| keep their e-book readers for many more years.
| maratc wrote:
| I haven't seen any chain that went fully eink, but I'm
| not from the US and the labor is not so expensive here,
| so the alternative (paying people to print labels and
| attach them) looks cheaper here.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I've seen them at many retailers in the EU, from Sweden,
| Norway, Germany, France all the way to Romania, so I'm
| curious where you're from that you haven't seen any.
| Ironically, I've never seen them in the US at all during
| my trips there.
| maratc wrote:
| I've certainly seen some combination of eInk and paper,
| but never a 100% eInk.
| t-3 wrote:
| I'm extremely confident that a US retailer using eink
| price tags would quickly find all their tags stolen or
| broken and then go back to paper.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The problem simply is: working with natural light with
| energy efficient systems on a mainly document-based flow.
|
| Of those notes: I have used mouse pointers with E-Ink and
| had little issue - only, I also had touchscreen so the
| mouse was in general unnecessary. That statement about
| hypertext is absurd: hypertext consumption is fine on
| E-Ink - provided your purpose is to read those
| hypertexts, instead of using the web in some "different"
| way, by the way alien from what it was intended. And
| video is usable, though suboptimal, if needed - the
| technology was not born for that, but just in case it can
| cope.
|
| The practical verification is given: there are people who
| have been using large E-Ink devices, coupled with
| keyboards, for a long time, to work on documents.
|
| And again let us suggest an important thing: if you
| actually have to work intellectually on a document, the
| same contents will remain in front of you for a
| relatively long time. This makes a technology "cheap on
| state retention, costly on state switch" the sensible
| solution.
| dylan-m wrote:
| > Not everyone wants a dedicated book-reading device when
| a multipurpose device can, besides everything else, also
| read books.
|
| Someone definitely flunked the messaging on this one, and
| I find it very disappointing :( The key advantage to an
| e-ink style of display is less eye strain, because you
| aren't staring into a bright light source that refreshes
| 60 times a second. (And battery life, of course; you can
| put your book down and forget about it until later). And
| that this limits the device is _fine_ : a lot of people
| do a lot of reading! People like reading! Alas, as more
| and more people grow up reading all sorts of things on
| LCDs, so the inconvenience and the discomfort is just a
| normal part of reading for them, that becomes a much
| harder sell.
| maratc wrote:
| You don't have to convince me (I bought the first
| commercially available reader, Sony PRS-500, for $350 the
| day it went on sale, and several others since), but for
| great many people their laptop does the job just fine,
| while many others enjoy the dead tree variety.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > because you aren't staring into a bright light source
| that refreshes 60 times a second
|
| LCDs _update_ 60 times per second (or more... 120 Hz
| displays are becoming more common) but they don 't
| _flicker_ the way CRTs used to, so there 's no reason to
| think this would contribute to eye strain. Brightness
| could be an issue but you can just lower the brightness
| of the screen to match the surroundings.
|
| As I see it the advantages of e-ink displays lie mainly
| in their visibility in direct sunlight and minimal idle
| power consumption.
| stormbrew wrote:
| This isn't entirely true. It's not the same intensity of
| flicker, but LCDs do have a small amount of flicker at
| about half their refresh rate to flip voltage and reduce
| the chance of burn-in. Also, the backlight itself may
| flicker depending on what kind of light source is used
| (especially if it's not an LED backlight, but cheap LED
| lights do flicker -- see christmas lights -- so it's
| possible some cheaper LED panels might have this effect
| too?).
| murderfs wrote:
| Cheap LED christmas lights flicker because they don't
| have a bridge rectifier, so half of the input waveform is
| zero, at 60Hz. You're not going to see that kind of
| flicker in anything that requires real DC power (PWM
| frequencies for brightness control are generally way
| higher than 60Hz).
|
| Some displays do this as a feature though (known as
| backlight strobing, motion blur reduction, etc.): LCDs
| take time to transition, so if you keep the backlight on
| at all times, you'll potentially see blurring from
| persistence of vision while the display is mid-
| transition. Instead, you can turn the backlight off until
| the screen has transitioned and then turn it back on so
| that you never show a partially transitioned image.
| roeles wrote:
| There's a whole range of applications where it makes
| sense. Since it is very well readable in full sunlight,
| e-ink is very suitable for low refresh aircraft displays.
| I suspect the same could apply for all kinds of HMIs
| which are used outdoors.
| maratc wrote:
| Aircraft displays need to work in full darkness too.
| e-Ink might make sense but its price, compared to some
| LCD screen, might not.
|
| Otherwise, I take from your comment that we're in
| agreement that "e-Ink is a solution looking for a
| problem".
| t-3 wrote:
| The main problems eink solves for me are eye strain and
| battery life. These might not be issues for you, but I
| often read 8+ hours in a day.
| roeles wrote:
| My experience is from gliders, which are only operated in
| VFR conditions (not more than 30 minutes before sunrise
| and not more than 30 minutes after sundown). VFR is
| nothing glider-specific though, so I can see them being
| useful in other VFR-operated aircraft too.
|
| In my experience e-ink displays reduce eye strain and
| attract less attention. This results in more attention
| being drawn to the outside world, which in turn is a good
| thing for safety.
|
| I am not at all in agreement with your statement. In some
| contexts price is not a big issue and the qualities that
| e-ink brings are worth the money.
| drooglyman wrote:
| Suggesting that e-ink can be useful for "low refresh rate
| displays in VFR aircraft" sure sounds like a solution
| searching for a problem.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Hypothesis: slow refresh is a feature of great value, if
| the goal is to moderate media consumption and disrupt the
| "engagement" drip.
|
| Slow refresh is a fine way of supporting healthy data
| dieting.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yep. Low temporal fidelity has its attractions. The items
| you mention are high on my personal preference lists.
| Shared404 wrote:
| This is why I want more availability of eink displays.
|
| There's lots of places I would like to put an information
| readout, but not have it be an attention draw through
| anything.
|
| More related to the fact that eink uses external lighting
| I suppose. Still.
|
| Also I wish I had an eink screen for code.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| You might be surprised at how many companies get
| comfortable servicing a commercial niche and just choose
| not to pursue consumer growth. Without pursuing it, the
| potential value is hypothetical and internally it can be
| hard to build a compelling case for mass marketization.
|
| There is a lot of effort required to scale up
| technologies to the point that it is affordable for
| consumers. In the software space I see it with solutions
| (think $500+/year/seat licensing) that could be broadly
| useful, but the company doesn't want to make intuitive or
| bug free (enterprise software users will tolerate a lot
| of abuse). In the hardware space, there is a risk of
| building a million units of something that doesn't sell
| (think Surface RT).
| jandrese wrote:
| It's like 3D printers back in the 90s and 2000s. There's a
| huge potential industry just waiting for the patents to
| finally run out because the early innovator only cares about
| tiny niche uses of the product and not undercutting those
| niches with affordable consumer goods.
| hemreldop wrote:
| m12k wrote:
| I just wish it was possible to build a version of the Frame TV
| that didn't still use 30% power while in "picture mode" but
| instead used a color e-ink display like this to cover the
| screen with art/photos when not in TV mode.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| It is a cool idea, but creating that would require you to put
| a color e-ink display over the normal display panel, which
| may cause it to look washed out/lose crispness.
|
| I think it is technically possible, I'm just not sure many
| would accept the cost/functionality trade-offs. But I may be
| wrong.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I think the idea parent comment had is to use the rollable
| technology from the article so that it only overlays when
| not in use.
| RoryH wrote:
| Yes! This is the perfect use case for Photo frames, or even
| for advertising billboards where there's no need to have
| humans change the advert.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > Seems like we're still a long way off from reasonably priced
| large e-ink displays -- very curious to see any progress in
| this space
|
| "reasonably priced"? It will always be more expensive than
| LCD/OLED because the volumes are completely different, like
| 1000x different.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Surely if it's much cheaper volumes also go up massively...
| goldcd wrote:
| Surely it's both.
|
| 1) Product has to exist - and now it does _tick_ 2) Has to
| be useful _tick_ 3) Has to have possibility of being make
| cheaper by mass production _no idea_ 4) Has to be put into
| mass production _depends on 3_
|
| So we're currently stuck on 3.
|
| Not sure there's much demand for a colour e-ink tablet -
| but maybe could be layered with a transparent OLED. I'd
| cough up an extra PS100 for that. Normal tablet - with
| reading mode. Spend a while looking at static image, OLED
| turns off, e-ink layer fires up. Scroll down and the OLED
| takes over.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > Surely if it's much cheaper volumes also go up
| massively...
|
| No, that's not true. If you're making a black and white
| screen, and you sell it at the same price as a color
| screen, nobody will buy it. Volumes won't change if your
| product isn't better than something equivalently priced.
| thrown12 wrote:
| I bought it and it's an amazing product for coding.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Either this makes little sense, or it is (or may be)
| unclear. <<Your product [must be] better than something
| equivalently priced>> /and that performs the same
| function/. Now we are talking about large bistable colour
| displays - which have no competition.
| dotancohen wrote:
| But the E-ink screen is much better in the regards that
| software developers want. Colour is not necessarily one
| of those regards.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I am so disappointed that Amazon doesn't invest more in the
| Kindle. They have deep pockets and a guaranteed market.
| Currently, I am still holding out for an upgrade of the
| Oasis, but would be willing to spend quite some money for
| upgraded Kindles and I think I am not alone (even if they
| just go to 8" and USB-C/Qi charging, it would be worth it).
| Of course a 10" Kindle would be nice and a true A4 Kindle
| just a dream.
| Kuinox wrote:
| The volumes are different because the technology is locked by
| a company that doesn't innovate nor mass produce their tech.
| There are tons of applications of low power screen. It could
| even outweighs the OLED in term of volume.
|
| Some companies in China, that ignore the patents, manage to
| produce 20 fps 23" eink screen. Add color to it and it's the
| perfect screen for a lot of computer work.
| varenc wrote:
| Awhile back the Founder of Visionect refuted this idea that
| patents are holding things back on hacker news:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25067824
|
| My personal take: E-Ink screens have too many drawbacks for
| 99% of consumers to be at all interested in them.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > Awhile back the Founder of Visionect refuted this idea
| that patents are holding things back on hacker news:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25067824
|
| Thank you for providing the link. I agree in general with
| that opinion as well.
| jessriedel wrote:
| That comment doesn't really have any evidence beyond the
| fact that it's the opinion of the founder of Visionect,
| it just makes assertions, so I wouldn't say "refuted".
|
| Color e-ink has a killer app: Changeable photo display in
| homes. This is much harder to achieve with alternative
| technologies (any display emitting light is an immediate
| no-go for just hanging on your wall). In contrast,
| e-readers have a significantly smaller advantage over the
| alternative of just reading on your phone or tablet, yet
| that seems to have been enough of a market for them to
| become cheap. And unlike e-readers, where you only really
| need one per person, there is hardly any limit to the
| number of displays people would put in their home if they
| do not emit light, have nice UI, and are cheap.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is that really a killer market, though?
|
| People have tried changeable photo displays before, with
| LCD or whatever. Of course, these require more power, but
| they are plugged in devices and I'm not convinced non-
| technical people think about the power consumption of
| their devices outside of really niche situation where
| everyone knows they supposed to care (large appliances
| like washing machines). And, even the best e-ink screen
| looks kind of washed out when displaying color, right?
|
| Like I'm all in for an E-ink terminal, latency be damned,
| if someone make a no-fuss one for less than a couple
| hundred dollars. But I can't imagine wanting an E-ink
| picture frame over (say) an OLED one (although I guess
| burn in would be a problem there).
| quirkot wrote:
| Think bigger. Not photo display like "pictures on the end
| table"... photo display like "teenager has band posters
| on the wall" or even like "changing the wallpaper on my
| actual wall to match the new pintrest trend"
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| For black and white photos / etchings, etc. I can see it.
| But yeah, the colour will always look washed out, like
| older newsprint.
|
| I too would really dig an e-ink terminal. Just needs to
| do VT-100 sequences and let me run Emacs. But I think
| it's likely a niche product.
| eli wrote:
| "Why aren't prices of large eink panels cheaper?" is a
| question that can only be answered with opinions until
| someone actually does it.
|
| Seems like the opinion of someone actually in the
| business of selling large eink panels should count for a
| lot more than speculation by an outsider.
|
| Visionect sells some eInk signs for showing the status of
| meeting and conference rooms. I thought that was a clever
| application -- saves companies from having to run wires
| and mount a bunch of hardware.
|
| Color photo displays could be cool, but I suspect it'd be
| hard to compete with the incredibly cheap Google Home and
| Alexa devices with screens.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Seems like the opinion of someone actually in the
| business of selling large eink panels should count for a
| lot more than speculation by an outsider.
|
| Not really. That particular person's entire business
| depends on eink being a high margin business product.
| varenc wrote:
| His first comment says the opposite and that they've
| tried hard to get the price down. Of course we have to
| trust him on that:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726#25067359
|
| But I can't really find any other large format e-ink
| displays with the driving hardware (which can be even
| pricier than the display), so I'm inclined to believe
| him.
| eli wrote:
| High cost isn't the same as high margin. If patent fees
| were a significant expense it'd be in their interest to
| say so even if the margins were already high (which I
| very much doubt)
| robinsoh wrote:
| > Not really. That particular person's entire business
| depends on eink being a high margin business product.
|
| That claim doesn't seem to be very reasonable to me. Why
| would Visionect want eink to be a "high margin business
| product"? A Visionect panel is not a Veblen good as far
| as I can understand. Could you share your evidence for
| why you would think that?
| pjerem wrote:
| > Some companies in China, that ignore the patents, manage
| to produce 20 fps 23" eink screen.
|
| I'm genuinely interested, are you talking about Onyxboox
| Mira or Dasung ? Because i thought that they manufactured
| official e-ink patented products
| Kuinox wrote:
| I was talking about Dasung. Dasung respect the patents?
| My bad then, I've read somewhere they were not.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Dasung panels are properly licensed from eInk Corp. They
| (Dasung) actually have a couple patents of their own on
| their e-ink driver board tech, which drives the panels.
| If you're searching a patent database, search for
| "Beijing Dasung".
| robinsoh wrote:
| > The volumes are different because the technology is
| locked by a company that doesn't innovate nor mass produce
| their tech.
|
| Citation needed. I'd love to see some evidence backing up
| your incredibly confident claim.
|
| > Some companies in China, that ignore the patents, manage
| to produce 20 fps 23" eink screen. Add color to it and it's
| the perfect screen for a lot of computer work.
|
| I've never heard of that. Please share some evidence for
| this please. 20 fps electrophoresis? In my opinion, that's
| physically impossible unless the screen is 0.1mm thick. How
| did they escape Q = vA ?
| dalbasal wrote:
| "Citation needed" is not a nice quip. You're responding
| to a forum comment, not reviewing a paper.
|
| It's fine to be dubious of a claim, and it's fine to ask
| politely for sources or rationales. Just be nice.
| scratcheee wrote:
| I disagree, it is in fact a very polite and fair minded
| way to respond to claim you find dubious. If anything
| they were being more polite than later in the comment
| when they suggested the claimed results should be
| impossible (though that's still a reasonable claim to
| make if they beleive it to be true).
|
| Rather than saying the equivalent to "I think this cannot
| be true", a request for citation merely means "I am
| interested in this claim and would like to know the
| source" (even if phrased more tersely). The content is
| more indicative of the intent than the phrasing, and
| requesting a citation is not an accusation at all, it is
| a request for a source for further research.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>it is in fact a very polite and fair minded way to
| respond to claim you find dubious.
|
| Citation needed.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > It's fine to be dubious of a claim, and it's fine to
| ask politely for sources or rationales. Just be nice.
|
| I was not aware that "citation needed" is considered
| impolite. It is something I use at work a lot when
| interacting with colleagues. My apologies, I'll refrain
| from that in future.
| vanattab wrote:
| I would be willing to bet your colleagues at work would
| find it annoying and impolite too.
| robinsoh wrote:
| Perhaps it is a difference in 'climate' between working
| in a science based industry where we often get challenged
| on our data versus software development industry. Maybe
| I've spent too long in academia where 'citation needed'
| is an indicator of interest in my topic and considered a
| good thing.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I didn't consider citation needed to be a "mean" thing to
| say.
| Kuinox wrote:
| https://youtu.be/RRvlJ2HjH30?t=250
| robinsoh wrote:
| Yes, that's a Dasung Paperlite. That's a regular E-Ink
| screen from the same manufacturer, not as you wrote "Some
| companies in China, that ignore the patents, manage to
| produce 20 fps 23" eink screen. ".
|
| That's not 20 fps. That's A2 mode which is a 1 bit mode
| and is a non-stable state so it will decay. I'd recommend
| you read the user manual about how that works.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| A2 should be 8fps, 125ms.
|
| How does the 'Q = vA' law you mention apply, to reason on
| an example, to the case of A2, as a limiter to the rate?
|
| > _A2 mode which is a 1 bit mode and is a non-stable
| state so it will decay_
|
| It makes little sense to use A2 on a long-lasting render
| - nonetheless, I suppose the decay time will be
| relatively long (I have never notice an A2 dot change
| state...).
| greysonp wrote:
| I assume they're referring to Onyx and Dasung[1]. Not
| sure if it's actually 20fps (videos I've found look to be
| more in the low teens by my eye), and I believe they're
| making a lot of trade-offs around ghosting and stuff to
| achieve those frame rates. Also no idea what their
| licensing situation is.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvlJ2HjH30
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| E-Ink lists Dasung's monitor as one of their showcase
| products so that supposition is incorrect:
| https://www.eink.com/Laptop-
| Peripherals.html?type=applicatio...
| fortran77 wrote:
| This is an old trope on Hacker News, as predictable as
| "have you tried re-writing it in Rust." But there's little
| evidence it's true.
| jokowueu wrote:
| I don't think he is saying patents are bad. But the
| company it's self is .
| robinsoh wrote:
| > But the company it's self is .
|
| and it would be lovely if he could share what leads him
| to believe that.
| [deleted]
| Kuinox wrote:
| Did I hurt you personally for you to be so toxic with me
| ? Chill.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| There has been no evidence presented whatsoever for the
| assertion that e-Ink has been abusing their IP other than
| one post from a throwaway account on HN a couple of years
| ago. No corroborating news articles about lawsuits, which
| the post alleged; no filings about acquisitions, which
| the post alleged; nothing. But somehow HN posters have
| adopted that as the truth?
| jokowueu wrote:
| No one here has said they were abusing their IP . The
| common theme on HN and other sites is that e-ink are
| pricing their hardware at such a high level that it makes
| anything other than small tablets unaffordable .
|
| We will have to just wait until the patent runs out in
| order to see great advancements in this tech like what we
| have seen from the aftermath of the expiration of certain
| 3D printer patents
| robinsoh wrote:
| > We will have to just wait until the patent runs out
|
| I'm genuinely curious. Which patent is that?
| jokowueu wrote:
| Not sure which but they do have quite a few.
|
| https://patents.justia.com/search?q=+E+Ink+Corporation
| robinsoh wrote:
| > Did I hurt you personally for you to be so toxic with
| me ? Chill.
|
| I'm sorry you feel that way, however challenging your
| incredible claims and asking that you provide some
| evidence before we believe you is not the same "be so
| toxic with me".
| Kuinox wrote:
| You are thinking I feel this way because you ask for a
| source.
|
| It's not.
|
| It's the condescending tone you display in every of your
| response, exactly like this one.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > It's the condescending tone you display in every of
| your response, exactly like this one.
|
| It is unfortunate that you continue to persist in not
| providing data but instead redirecting the energy of the
| conversation into allegations of condescenion which I
| can't defend. All I said was. I'm sorry you feel that
| way, however challenging your incredible claims and
| asking that you provide some evidence before we believe
| you is not the same "be so toxic with me".
| Kuinox wrote:
| To have a constructive discussion you must have mutual
| respect, and I lost any respect to you when you showed
| you had none to me.
| EGreg wrote:
| Which companies in China?
|
| Can they produce large format screens, like a few feet on
| each side?
|
| Or do we have to buy small ones and tile them? We probably
| can't tile them as they need electronics around each
| border.
|
| I want to do e-paintings. So if you tell me which Chinese
| companies, ie their websites, I would try to reach out !
| m-p-3 wrote:
| If the tech becomes attractice enough (high visibility in
| direct sunlight, lower power consumption, etc), maybe we'll
| see more public advertisers switch to them for digital
| signage, significantly increasing the demand and volume.
|
| One can dream..
| robinsoh wrote:
| > One can dream..
|
| Of faster than light travel? :-) They're limited by the
| physics of electrophoresis.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I mean there's other ways than refresh rate where there
| can be improvement, especially on color eInk displays.
| They managed to increase the DPI on this version after
| all :)
| rory096 wrote:
| The transit stop use case really does seem to be ramping
| up, including the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority
| currently adding them to most surface Green Line stops:
| https://www.mbta.com/projects/solar-powered-e-ink-signs
|
| Transit was one of the two core practical applications the
| Visionect founder mentioned in Nov 2020:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25067359
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Interesting. Now I'm curious about the tech used behind
| it to transmit the info accross the network. I'm
| wondering if a LoRa/LoRaWAN-based mesh network could do
| the trick to avoid using some kind of cell data or wired
| infrastructure, but also be energy-efficient enough to
| work using only solar power.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Aren't all e-ink displays highly visible in direct
| sunlight? You need exterior to even use them in the first
| place
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I meant compared to traditional displays.
| Melatonic wrote:
| E-Ink is a ton more visible in direct sunlight compared
| to traditional displays?
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Quite a bit more.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Z36BcCn.jpg
| mdp2021 wrote:
| <<Reasonably priced>> very probably just meant "a price
| closer to their individual potential buyers' attributed
| value". That <<LCD/OLED>> will be cheaper does not affect
| that.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Can E Ink finally launch a product at a reasonable price point? I
| get that they are trying to mostly be an IP company, but at this
| point, when everyone is begging for their product, shouldn't they
| at least consider pivoting? Their competitors in China are
| starting to have good products now, and I can't wait for E Ink
| Inc to become irrelevant in the market it created.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| There isn't a use case that I personally want, that couldn't be
| satisfied with transflective LCD instead of e-ink.
|
| They are dirt cheap but only a handful of chinese manufacturers
| are using them.
|
| On top of the e-ink IP stronghold, I think there is also a
| Product manager issue in consumer electronics. Everyone wants
| to show case Macbook-esque glossy displays whereas a large
| number of consumers want displays that they can use outdoors
| and without eye strain. Everybody complements garmins
| transflective displays but somehow nobody makes the leap of
| slapping them on phones or laptops.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Board game boards and cards with changeable contents.
| dmonitor wrote:
| A Magic deck of cards that are actually just 5in eink
| displays that you program at home would be... interesting
| Covzire wrote:
| Know of a good 10" or larger e reader that works natively with
| Kindle store?
| robin_reala wrote:
| Why would you tie yourself to a storefront that flexes non-
| compliance with standards for commercial gain?
| Covzire wrote:
| A good question, might be a good time to make a clean
| break, will give it some thought.
| anoneon31 wrote:
| My suggestion is to get Calibre, install the DeDRM plugins,
| and then every ereader works with the Kindle store. You would
| lose the wireless integrations with Amazon on some non-Amazon
| devices. If that's important to you, then this might not be a
| great solution. But otherwise, it's the best way to go.
|
| Not only could you then use any device on the market, but
| your books are truly yours. Immune to Amazon revising them in
| the future, and immune to having your books revoked. They'll
| last as long as your preferred backup methods last.
|
| And that's a good reason to do this even if you keep using
| Kindles.
| innocenat wrote:
| Any of the Android e-reader, like Onyx Boox.
| Covzire wrote:
| Doesn't look very native to me, you have to convert them.
| Could one jailbreak it and simply install the Kindle app?
| innocenat wrote:
| You can enable Google Play on Onyx Boox. Or just sideload
| the APK. Or install the Amazon Fire Store. It's just
| another Android device.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| There's no need to jailbreak them, they're open Android
| systems. You have full Google Playstore access and can
| install anything you want.
| xyst wrote:
| Besides the ability to "roll" the display
|
| Maybe there is a market for novelty or in a construction trade?
| Melatonic wrote:
| This would make an amazing tablet specifically for topographic
| mapping. I would love something that can be used for days or
| weeks on end without charging and also could do a GPS ping as
| needed (manually)
| cubefox wrote:
| E Ink (the company) keeps improving their electrophoresis display
| technology. Unfortunately the technology necessarily has very low
| refresh rates since it it is based on moving around solid
| particles submerged in a liquid.
|
| There were other passive e-paper display technologies like the
| one by Liquavista (based on moving colored oil droplets) or
| Mirasol by Qualcomm (mechanical micro-shutters create colored
| light via interference). These were capable of achieving high
| refresh rates, but unfortunately they have long been abandoned.
|
| I believe the monochromatic electrophoresis displays by E Ink had
| higher reflectivity and lower price, which is what mattered for
| e-readers, so all the others went out of business.
| h-w wrote:
| You can watch videos on modern eink devices from boox and
| hisense. Looks like an old TV.
| thrown12 wrote:
| If you don't do a full screen refresh you can get 10Hz refresh
| rates on newer products. The quality is similar to the
| newspapers of yesteryear.
| innocenat wrote:
| And tons of ghosting.
| other_herbert wrote:
| Yeah but newspaper refresh rates are terrible...
| ricksunny wrote:
| In a notification-heavy, video-ad intensive world, maybe slow
| refresh will someday turn out to be a feature rather than a
| bug. Confining one's portable device to applications that
| preserve mindfulness, focus & attention...
| mackrevinack wrote:
| every now and again i read hackernews and reddit stuff on my
| boox ereader and having a slow refresh rate is definitely a
| good "feature" since it makes it a lot more tedious to read
| things compared to my phone, which helps me spend less time
| scrolling aimlessly
| cubefox wrote:
| This reminds me of the time when I bought my first
| smartphone, which was quite late. I delayed it as long as
| possible, but as soon as I had it, I stopped reading books
| on the train. The Web is just too addictive. At least with
| snappy refresh rates.
| beowulfey wrote:
| The high refresh is what makes epaper notebooks such a joy to
| use though
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The user is the one supposed to be disciplined, "not the dumb
| device".
| mdoms wrote:
| You should read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari[0]. People all
| over the world today are struggling with focus and
| attention, not because they're not virtuous enough but
| because tech companies have been intentionally hacking our
| brains and stealing it away from us. If you don't have time
| to read the book he did an outstanding interview[1] with
| Bari Weiss on her podcast Honestly which I urge you to
| listen to.
|
| I used to think of attention in the same way you do,
| blaming and hating myself because I felt like I wasn't
| disciplined enough. It's so important to understand that
| this is something billionaire tech giants have done to us,
| on purpose.
|
| 0 https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/stolen-focus
|
| 1
| https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/2f84e8d4/your-
| at...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Dear mdoms, first of all allow me to grant you that I
| will check the material you kindly indicated, when time
| will allow.
|
| But let me confirm my point: if <<tech companies have
| been intentionally [etc.]>>, this must involve their
| users, who have been using those services (I can guess
| which ones they may be) willingly, though innocently.
| Many of them should also have experiences the other side
| in life - I hope they received a decent scholarization -
| and could and should have seen the difference from that
| side to the other side, and act accordingly taking
| measures and distances. Many of us have tried experiences
| in our life, and noticed that they were leading them into
| something undesirable, and consequently relegated those
| experiences to appropriate spaces (if any) - this is
| perfectly normal.
|
| In short: if visiting intoxicant.com makes you
| intoxicated1, you should probably avoid it, or greatly
| reduce it, or manage it differently (actively)1.
|
| 1and note that while they may try hard, it's not an
| overpowering "injection" - I suppose it must be some bad
| habit they attempt to instill in users, and which the
| said users may dodge instead of adopt. You do have a
| will.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yes, definitely, this and all related problems people have
| with focus and attention on modern devices is just because
| they aren't virtuous enough.
|
| ???
| mdp2021 wrote:
| To the original point: "crutches" are not a feature, they
| are a device. They are not universally useful - the same
| way that prescription glasses are not. A low refresh
| display may help some people: it is not helpful in
| general; some people find featureless text editors less
| distracting, normalcy greets happily the availability of
| features and options and hides the GUI with a keyboard
| shortcut.
|
| To your statement: I do not see how <<modern devices>>,
| on literal terms, can be the issue: they are *organizers*
| (meant to optimize your time). If people use them
| differently, that is not a fault in the device.
|
| To your statement again: focus and attention are skills
| that individuals develop. If they are underdeveloped,
| they should if sough be developed. If your point is
| elsewhere, please make it explicit. I must presume you do
| not think that it is the responsibility of your sofa to
| sculpt your abdominals (nor, for that matter, to make you
| use your sofa wisely).
| cubefox wrote:
| That's an interesting point.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > Unfortunately the technology necessarily has very low refresh
| rates since it it is based on moving around solid particles
| submerged in a liquid.
|
| Why is the ReMarkable 2 screen able to follow your pen stroke
| with such low latency, then?
| adamrmcd wrote:
| There are full updates and partial updates. The former
| involves refreshing the whole display multiple times to
| remove ghosting, and a complete redraw. The latter is a
| targeted change at specific coordinates, which typically
| involves going from white to black. Very fast, but it's a
| single point/block at a time.
| abeppu wrote:
| I do wish there was a reasonably priced color remarkable
| equivalent. Very frequently, I start reading a paper on the
| remarkable and have to bail when a chart distinguishes
| lines by color.
| rnmp wrote:
| Remarkable owner here. RM display doesn't anti-alias actual
| pen strokes, pretty sure this makes the screen refresh
| faster. Everything else that is anti-alias tho is a bit
| slower to refresh.
| webmobdev wrote:
| I wish Qualcomm's Mirasol display had seen light - you could
| even watch videos on them comfortably (as per the demo). They
| were building a huge plant to manufacture those displays
| commercially and suddenly the whole thing tanked. I think Apple
| bought parts of it.
| cubefox wrote:
| Their last innovation was called Mirasol SMI, which let them
| change color within one MEMS block (instead of just switching
| it between color/black), so that they wouldn't need subpixels
| to create color. They were way ahead of E Ink in these
| respects. Unfortunately Qualcomm pulled the plug shortly
| after the SMI announcement. I'm not sure which part Apple
| actually bought, whether it was just labs or actual IP as
| well.
| Rygian wrote:
| I thought the color in Mirasol displays was achieved by
| electrically adjusting the distance between a transparent and a
| reflective plate, creating a controlled iridescence. Were there
| shutters on top?
| cubefox wrote:
| No you are right, the term "shutter" wasn't appropriate. Not
| a native speaker...
| grishka wrote:
| Might be a dumb question, but I'll ask anyway.
|
| In the 00s, there were reflective color LCDs in things like
| phones and portable game consoles. The kind that isn't black
| when off. Why is this technology not developed further any
| more, and all modern color LCDs rely on backlight? If it's a
| dead end, why?
| Ycros wrote:
| The recently launched Playdate handheld gaming device uses a
| monochrome Sharp brand Memory LCD with no backlight.
| cubefox wrote:
| Yeah, so the reflective LCD technology isn't quite dead. I
| guess when both reflectivity and quick refresh rates are
| required, monochrome LCD is still the only solution, since
| Liquavista and Mirasol were discontinued. For color
| displays there is simply no solution at all with decent
| reflectivity I believe. The E Ink Gallery 3 display seems
| to mostly solve the low reflectivity problem, since it does
| not rely on standard additive sub-pixel color mixing. But
| there is no similar solution for higher refresh rates.
| There were improved Mirasol prototypes which apparently
| solved the issue, but shortly after they were shown, the
| development of the Mirasol technology was discontinued.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Power. I don't think there were cheap blue LEDs when these
| displays first came out, so the backlights were all
| fluorescent, which was the main power draw in the display.
| Once LEDs came along it massively reduced the power
| consumption of the backlight to where it could be used even
| in low-power devices.
| nicoburns wrote:
| These still exist. Some smart watches still use them.
| adrusi wrote:
| No question reflective LCDs are rare, but you can look at the
| pebble smart watch or playdate game console for modern
| devices using reflective LCDs, for an idea of where that tech
| has gone.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| It's just a strange set of constraints. If you need a
| miniscule battery, long battery life, where the device will
| often be used outdoors, and don't care about color accuracy
| at all, they're perfect.
|
| Smartwatches are the obvious application, and it's why all
| Garmin watches use this tech. For most other things, it just
| makes more sense to sacrifice battery life or put in a bigger
| battery to get a massively better quality screen indoors.
| cubefox wrote:
| I think in the failed first e-reader wave actually used
| reflective LCDs. The problem was that these were quite dark
| and somewhat viewpoint dependent. The successful second wave
| (pioneered by Sony and dominated by Amazon) used
| electrophoresis displays by E Ink and another company I can't
| remember. Those were much more reflective, somewhat
| approaching actual paper.
| skykooler wrote:
| Brightness and contrast in reflective color LCDs are very
| poor, because the polarizing filter blocks half the light,
| then the color filter on each subpixel blocks a further two
| thirds, so a fully "white" image will only return one-sixth
| of the incoming light. Power efficiency has also improved for
| backlights, so there's less of a benefit to omitting one than
| there once was.
| oynqr wrote:
| These displays can also work wonderfully, see the Amazfit
| Bip.
| torginus wrote:
| But since human vision perceives brightness
| logarithmically, a 6x drop still looks like a surface
| darker by a constant amount I think. This is an issue that
| regular, backlit LCDs also need to overcome.
| Jiro wrote:
| I'm still waiting for someone to create a modern equivalent to
| the Pebble watch with a color e-ink screen that can stay on all
| the time. I still use my Pebble, but the battery charge only
| lasts about a day and a half and I'll have to replace it at some
| point.
| h-w wrote:
| Garmin instinct 2 solar has the same black and white screen as
| the pebble and requires zero charging; battery lasts forever
| with enough sun.
| Jiro wrote:
| My Pebble is color, not B&W.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I find that turning on Airplane Mode overnight substantially
| extends my battery life, perhaps from 3 to 5 days. It also
| prevents me from being awakened by notifications, which seem to
| come through regardless of DND mode on my iPhone. It's also
| easy to trigger: just hold the left side button for a couple
| seconds.
|
| I would pay $75 for someone to replace the battery in my Pebble
| and maintain water resistance. I don't trust myself to do it,
| but eventually I may try. My current fallback plan is a Fossil
| hybrid smartwatch, which is nicer looking, but has a worse
| UI/UX.
| mas-ev wrote:
| I'd pay top dollar for a pebble time with smaller bezels and
| thinner body. Although, the pebble time was super thin compared
| to today's standards.
|
| Are there any truly thin smart watches? The leaks for the new
| pixel watch kill all hope in my mind that I'll ever get a smart
| watch again since they are all thick and heavy. Even fit bits
| are thick compared to the pebble time.
| aembleton wrote:
| Something like the Amazfit Bip? https://www.amazfit.com/en/bip
| sedatk wrote:
| > 45-day battery life
|
| Wow, that's probably the first time an always-on electronic
| device actually surpassed my Nokia 6310's 21-day battery life
| in the last two decades. It's really hard to imagine a
| cellphone charge lasting for three weeks today. How far we've
| come :P
| aembleton wrote:
| You get 60 days with the much more expensive Vertix 2 and
| that also has an always on display
| https://www.coros.com/vertix2
|
| I have the Coros Pace, so can vouch for their battery life
| claims. I get between one and two weeks between charges,
| depending how much I use the GPS.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I returned my amazfit bip almost immediately. It's too dim
| with the backlight off and looks like a toy with the
| backlight on. If you look for photos of real life usage
| you'll see what I mean. The wyze watch blew me away in terms
| of looks and battery life (especially considering the price),
| they _must_ be selling at a loss. However I 'm also not a
| fitness junkie so I don't use the watch heavily and can't
| report on how useful the watch actually is
| user_7832 wrote:
| Did you have the Bip (which iirc hasn't been sold
| officially for over a year now) or the Bip U/Bip Pro? The
| OG Bip screen is much more reflective. Here's an image of
| my Bip - https://i.imgur.com/DBzoDp5.jpg
| Jiro wrote:
| Actually I don't use the Pebble for fitness. I like having
| the weather, calendar, location, and sunrise/moon phase
| (though that depends on the watch face).
| politelemon wrote:
| Can we expect this to show up on ereaders anytime soon?
| dominotw wrote:
| there are some ereaders with color already but they are niche
| because there isn't a huge demand of color.
| cubefox wrote:
| I think they are niche because they have a much worse
| reflectivity (and hence contrast) than usual monochromatic
| displays. The existing approaches use sub-pixels to create
| color via additive color mixing. This approach throws away
| roughly two thirds of the incoming light. E.g. a red pixel
| consists of red+black+black sub-pixels.
| pangaurdian wrote:
| Took about 5 years for Onyx to release a color e-reader. People
| are buying them. They are kind of niche because the screens are
| greyer than monochrome screens, and the main use of an e-reader
| is to read b/w text. But it's first gen tech. As contrast
| improves, more color e-readers will be sold. Onyx is always the
| first to push the new tech. Eventually Amazon etc will start
| releasing them. Give it about 3 years.
| guyzero wrote:
| This is great less because anyone needs a folding display but
| because hopefully it won't shatter if you look at it wrong (like
| all their other displays).
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