[HN Gopher] The E-Ink Badge ___________________________________________________________________ The E-Ink Badge Author : nate Score : 251 points Date : 2023-02-28 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (census.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (census.dev) | mrinfinite wrote: | I love my Dasung 253 paperlike! | xenon7 wrote: | I honestly wasn't expecting the device to use coin cells, but I'm | glad that it does. Not everything needs to be rechargeable. | oneearedrabbit wrote: | I built/assembled them. I carried out some informal experiments | and found that it requires roughly one million full screen | refreshes on two coin cells to completely drain them. | Furthermore, given that Badger operates on an RP2040 and a | battery holder comes with a toggle, it is astonishingly durable | device. It is like a smoke detector, which can operate for a | decade straight on a single battery. | dragontamer wrote: | Note: CR2032 is awesome and all, but be careful about | extrapolating like this out to decade+ timeframes. | | CR2032 only has 235mA-hrs of life down to 2V. x2 and that's | only 470mA-hrs and 2V probably browns-out the circuit (so... | 470mA is already a stretch. You'll probably get less than | that on practice). | | Over 10 Years, that's 5uA of power usage on the average. | | ---------- | | IIRC, an aluminum capacitor has ~15 uA of leakage current, | and Tantalum is ~1uA of leakage current. So Aluminum caps are | already disqualified, and Tantalum capacitor leakage-current | already uses 20% of your power budget. Given the "Burstiness" | of this workload, I know that these capacitors need to exist | somewhere. | | You probably can get a year out of this in practice. To get | better than that, you'll need to spend an incredible amount | of energy on finding every 1uA "leak" and plugging the leak. | | And its crazy how many things leak 1uA. Not only capacitors | leak 1uA, but so do MOSFETs, diodes (reverse bias currents, | especially in schottky diodes)... diode-protected MOSFETs (oh | no, twice the leakage!). | oneearedrabbit wrote: | After I completed the project, I made a somewhat | lighthearted personal vow to try to design a custom PCB | next time I fall down the rabbit hole of hardware | tinkering. I suspect, these days it is a commodity skills, | and curious if you happen to have any suggestions or | articles that could serve as a starting point? | dragontamer wrote: | PCBs are a dark art, and I focus on lower-speed (below 30 | MHz) to try and avoid any issues. | | I know that the faster the PCB is, the more issues you | get. Above a certain frequency, inductors look like | capacitors, capacitors look like inductors, and PCB- | traces look like transmission lines with reflections and | other such nonsense. Staying at a slower speed helps | negate these issues. | | Most application notes, be it from STMicro (for STM32) or | Microchip, or really any other microcontroller | manufacturerer, will have recommended hardware designs + | their thought process fully documented. | | Start there. Here's Microchip's ATMega328 hardware design | notes: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/AN | 2519-AVR-M... | | STM32F4: https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/ | an4488-getti... | | --------------- | | Study up on the "reference designs". For ATMega328p, | that's Arduino Uno. For more recent AVR chips (such as | AVR DD), that's "AVR DD Curiosity Nano". (See schematics | here: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development- | tool/EV72Y42A) | stavros wrote: | The sibling comment is too specialized, I feel. It | depends on what you want to do. If you just want to | connect a few components together, you can learn the | required skills in a day, watch some KiCAD videos. | | I made a sensor board the other day (I'm just printing | the case for it now), and it was very enjoyable, and even | came assembled for $1.7 per board: | | https://gitlab.com/stavros/sensor-board | | Feel free to email me if you have any questions or just | want to chat. | | Also, I don't think I've ever wanted something in my life | more than this badge thing. | dragontamer wrote: | > The sibling comment is too specialized, I feel. It | depends on what you want to do. If you just want to | connect a few components together, you can learn the | required skills in a day, watch some KiCAD videos. | | That's fair. | | Lets put it this way: if your circuit works on a | breadboard, you don't need to know anything about PCB | design. The PCB will pretty much always be better than | the breadboard. | | Things get troublesome as you enter mixed-signal (analog | + digital), or high-frequency. | stavros wrote: | Agreed, but you still need to know a ton of things that | seem hard when you haven't done them before. Even | exporting the Gerbers, or the BOM for assembly, or any of | those things seemed too hard to me before I did it for | the first time, so I don't want to underestimate people | asking "I want to connect a few components into a custom | PCB, how do I do it?". | nickthegreek wrote: | That has to cut down on the thickness as well since the | Badger 2040 is designed to take AAA. Wish there was a side | shot to see your total thickness. | oneearedrabbit wrote: | Exactly! The device is approximately 12mm thick. I will | upload a side shot shortly. I appreciate you bringing this | up, it's an excellent point! To be honest, it is still a | bit thicker than I had initially hoped for; however, when I | weighed my options - solder 26 devices by hand vs use pre- | made components -- the decision was much more clear. | outworlder wrote: | > That has to cut down on the thickness as well since the | Badger 2040 is designed to take AAA. | | Would it be ok with the lower voltage of NIMH | rechargeables? I really dislike primary batteries. | | Edit: found the answer. | | > 2x AAA rechargeable (NiMH) batteries only puts out 2.4V | which is, strictly speaking, not enough for Badger. | However, in our tests it keeps on truckin' down to an input | voltage of 2.05V (without the LED), so if you want to use | rechargeable batteries that should be fine. | dragontamer wrote: | AAAA is popular and as cost-effective as CR2032 (aka: bad | value, but less-bad value than most other batteries of this | size). Note that CR2032 is toxic, so AAAA is somewhat | preferred. | | AAA and AA have much more energy-per-dollar. I mean, so | does lead-acid but I guess that's too big lol. | | --------- | | Specialty batteries, like CR123A, seem to fit the bill for | this size much better. But those are so, so much more | expensive. I feel like the only two cells worth really | considering are AAAA and CR2032, despite their | deficiencies. | VLM wrote: | Really the "hidden story" is the pimoroni board is like "ten | bucks" whereas two years ago the exact same application was | available from Adafruit for "fifty bucks". | | I have two of the adafruit variety and it works fine with | circuitpython and all that. | | Someday the "wifi connected eink screen" will drop to maybe five | dollars and that will be interesting in the market, open up some | product ideas. | | The adafruit product uses most of its power sleeping and | occasionally waking up to check the wifi in the apps I played | with, the screen itself doesn't use much power. I suppose it | depends how often you want to refresh. | | An example of interesting/weird apps for this technology is we're | already at the point where its probably cheaper if you want a | remote thermometer displaying on your wall to skip owning an | actual thermometer and just display some web API of the current | airport temperature or whatever. I wouldn't invest in consumer | grade high resolution temperature sensors, you can replace all of | that with a little wifi traffic right now and it's only going to | get 'worse'. | Psychlist wrote: | > skip owning an actual thermometer | | Doesn't that rely on you living next to someone else's | thermometer that's published? My not very accurate setup gives | me more than a degree just down my property line (~30m) largely | because one end is next to a road and the other on lawn | surrounded by trees. Albeit neither are proper meteorological | stations so accuracy in that sense isn't even an option. | | I publish a few readings but have never really looked into the | exact accuracy of the https://www.uradmonitor.com/ sensors. My | actions in response are pretty coarse so it doesn't matter a | huge amount... PM10 goes over 300 and I close the doors and | windows sort of thing. | karmanyaahm wrote: | Tangent: My gas station replaced grade-selection buttons and | rate/volume/price LCDs with one huge (20") touchscreen. | Unfortunately because of the distance, it's brighter than the | overhead lights at night. No one thought to add a little | brightness sensor to the several thousand dollar machine. | nielsbot wrote: | Cool... but I really wish it didn't have bezels! | abraxas wrote: | This century's pocket protector! | GrumpyNl wrote: | Am i as a visitor, supposed to push the buttons on your badge? | brk wrote: | Not sure if they're still available, but I have a handful of | "Badgy's" along the same lines: | | https://www.tindie.com/products/sqfmi/badgy-iot-badge/ | masklinn wrote: | Apparently out of stock. | | The linked badger 2040 | (https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/badger-2040) is half the | price and apparently in stock. TFA is a 3D printed case around | that, and custom software for the badge. It's also powered by a | more capable dual-core M0+, however wifi is lost. | sxp wrote: | Another good starting point for an e-ink badge is | https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-... | | It won't work as a badge out of the box, but if you know how to | program an ESP32, it's easy to get it to use the demo libraries | to load a JPG. It also has a touchscreen and 3 physical buttons | for basic interactivity. | | It's $85, so it's pricy for being used just as a badge, but it's | a cool gadget that I use for a desktop display. | crote wrote: | The only thing which would make this even cooler would be | RP2040-controlled NFC. I wonder how hard that would be to add? | oneearedrabbit wrote: | Badger comes with a built-in Qwiic / STEMMA QC connector. I | believe it should work out of the box with Adafruit ST25DV16K | I2C RFID: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4701 | sadpolishdev wrote: | Isnt badger an old news by now? I had mine for quite time: | https://twitter.com/piropro/status/1505054493305671681 | IronWolve wrote: | I thought e-ink was fad, but finally broke down and bought an | e-ink ebook reader, the battery life that lasts a month is | amazing. | malfist wrote: | I use my kindle all the time and I totally forget about | charging it. Then suddenly it tells me it's low on battery and | I remember "oh yeah, I've not charged this in like 3 months" | | What other modern battery device has that many | interactions/uses without needing near daily recharges? It's | like magic | IshKebab wrote: | Why did you think it was a fad? Just curious. Had you ever seen | one in real life? | knodi123 wrote: | And I try to convince my family about it, but just _cannot_ get | it through to them that "kindle the tablet" and "kindle the | ebook reader" are entirely unrelated products. What a terrible | bit of branding. | stronglikedan wrote: | I will always take the opportunity to read without a backlight. | It's a hugely noticeable difference on the eyes for me. I'm | just glad I don't have to print out thousands of sheets of | paper just to read documents comfortably any more. | IronWolve wrote: | I was reading on a normal android tablet. When I saw a sale | on a kids bundle for 99 bux, decided to pull the trigger. | Been my night time reader for months when going to sleep. | It's amazing how easy on the eyes it is. I just read until I | start to nod off. | schwartzworld wrote: | I bought a badger2040 recently. I mainly wanted it for the ebook | feature. A pocket-sized eInk device could make reading throughout | the day so easy. I used to always have a paper book in my back | pocket before phones. | | Anyway, it's a great device with one small caveat. None of the | GPIO pins are exposed, the only IO is buttons, usbc or a | QT/Stemma connector. This would all be fine by me, except that | there is only about 1mg of free space on the device. Doing any | serious reading would require me to use external memory and | without GPIO I can't do that. Making a few pins accessible would | make attaching an SD card completely trivial. | karmanyaahm wrote: | Because the RP2040 is so dynamic, the QT/Stemma connector _is_ | two GPIO pins, even thought it can do I2C or SPI. | schwartzworld wrote: | Are you saying interfacing with an SD card should be possible | using only 2 pins? | | https://content.instructables.com/FJT/PT8T/KROXES4A/FJTPT8TK. | .. | whiskers wrote: | If you look at the back of the badger you'll see that we put a | set of pads to solder to for GPIO! | | It also has a "Qw/ST" connector (STEMMA + Qwiic) that exposes | an I2C bus so is ideal for adding sensors, or you could bash on | an IO expander for a heap more pins! | schwartzworld wrote: | Sensors don't fit my use case, but I can't believe I didn't | notice those pads. I'll see if I can make them work. | | I don't believe that SD cards can be interfaced with over | i2c. | | If I were you guys I would consider having a built in SD | reader in version 2.0, as it would add a lot of value. | adolph wrote: | You might be interested in the Serial Wombat which can expose | gpio as as I2C, for which it has pads on the back. | https://www.serialwombat.com/ | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Hey! What's wrong with csv files?! | iwebdevfromhome wrote: | Anyone else using this for cool ideas ? Please share! | gambiting wrote: | Yes, I just got my Badger W few days ago and I'm pairing it | with a temperature/humidity/CO2 sensor - I designed and 3D | printed a bracket for it, I'm going to mount it on a wall in my | kitchen. It's also going to show brief weather forecast and the | current price of my energy tariff(it changes daily). | | That's what it looks like(just assembled it today so I haven't | written code for it yet): | https://photos.app.goo.gl/NjdisB8PbfFiGgkk9 | toyg wrote: | I have a badger2040, looping through a few different screens - | one with a QR code pointing to my linkedin. The lack of | integrated battery is annoying though - either you stick a | potentially hazardous one to the back, or you're carrying | around a bulky AAA enclosure. | JKCalhoun wrote: | E-ink in general? | | I did a desk calendar that looks like an old Mac: | https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SystemSix | samizdis wrote: | My favourite e-ink application was in the Yotaphone II [1] | some years ago, but sadly discontinued. I had one sent from | the UK to Australia, where I was working for a few years. | Reading books, docs or emails via the e-ink screen was a joy | (no probs with bright sunshine), as was calling up your | airline pass on the screen and turning off the phone, because | the image on the back was retained. Even writing emails/docs | was fine for me, despite the e-ink lag. I needed to charge it | only every other day, and that still left plenty of margin. | Best phone I ever had. | | [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/yota_yotaphone_2-6959.php | sho_hn wrote: | Very cool! | | I linked my framed e-ink newspaper build elsewhere in the | thread, here's to e-ink hacking :) | sokoloff wrote: | I love the "it's trash day" being represented as a full trash | can on the desktop! | bobbiechen wrote: | At the beginning of 2020, I worked on a project to create a | status indicator for real life, to help people in the office | communicate whether it's okay to interrupt them or not. We | ended up using a Pimoroni Inky with Raspberry Pi to auto-sync | calendar/Slack status - easy to work with and reasonably | pretty. | | Of course, we didn't have a chance to deploy it before the | pandemic hit, but someday I'll come back to it... | | Here's my teammate's writeup of the project, including | photos/video: https://www.timmychiu.com/dash | dragontamer wrote: | Some notes about my E-Ink studies. | | 1. E-ink requires a number of external components, even with | their "chip on glass". In particular, E-ink requires a high | voltage to change and charge the ink. I've seen inductors on most | of these reference designs (ie: suggesting a boost converters of | some kind). | | 2. E-Ink is very slow especially at this price range. Static | images are fine, but don't expect animations. | | 3. E-ink protocols take a "temperature". In my cases, I've just | been hard coding it to 25C / Room temperature, but this suggests | that low-temperatures or high-temperatures may change the | behavior of the screen. | | 4. E-ink is very "bursty" with power, using more power than LCD | when changing images, but then zero power for most of its life. | Be sure to think carefully about the current associated with this | burst, especially if you're using small CR2032 coin cells (which | have ~10 to ~100 ohms of internal resistance). A ~100mA draw on | the charge inductor isn't out of the question (at 10-ohms, that's | a voltage drop of 1V, which probably browns-out the RP2040). A | slow-start circuit could solve this but you'd need to consider | the longer charge times. Another method is to have 2x CR2032 | cells in parallel, which lowers IR (parallel resistors lower | resitance). I'd be most interested in studying the power-network | of this design, I bet there's some interesting things going on | here. | | 5. Most E-ink screens seem to be some kind of SPI protocol (4 | wire). This is very similar to mini-LCD screens. | | --------- | | LCD screens use more power, but get you color, more resolution, | animation and seem to be cheaper still. Furthermore, LCD requires | fewer external components (maybe a charge-pump set of capacitors, | but some LCD screens don't even need that). Note that | color/resolution/animation all costs processor power / storage / | RAM, so be careful what you wish for. | | LCD might be more suitable for beginners. But e-ink is very cool | and awesome. | samstave wrote: | First ; Gosh I wish I had the knowledge you have on electric | transfrerence/resistance==ohms/volts | | But given that coin discs input/output are heat-dependent based | on your comment, and no knowledge, would it not be sound to | place CR coin batts in a baffle of graphene-aero-gel which | could be just mm thicc and shield them from said temp | inflections? This would greatly increases life, and can be | moulded and produced en-mass with little effort and minimal | cost (especially if you encase batteries used in space flight | etc - and one may use the non-conductive format to use | aerogells as an extremely light and thin insulating layer for | many a thing. | | Imagine the ability to 'spray' an AeroGel sealant onto a | component which is heat sensitive to its accuracy... | dragontamer wrote: | Its not hard. But you often need someone to "initiate" you | with the correct documents. | | Try reading these: https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/cr2032.pdf | | https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/lithiumcoin_appman.pdf | | Hopefully that answers any questions you have. You might need | to research some other bits of knowledge to build up your | base EE skillset, but once you're able to read those | documents + understand them, I think you'll be in a good | spot. | sho_hn wrote: | I've recently built a little "automatic newspaper" home deco | piece using a 13.3" e-ink display, mainly as an excuse to try | out Rust on an ESP32: | | https://imgur.com/a/PqkhdGd (edit: corrected link to album with | finished pics) | | This is using an IT8951 EPD controller I wrote a little Rust | driver for, which indeed talks SPI, although its SPI frontend | is really a quirky/leaky abstraction over an I80 interface so | you have to e.g. do chip select using I80 semantics and send | preambles and such. Still, pretty breezy overall. | | Can confirm the power draw is of course "bursty" during the | update. Also, yes, e-ink refresh times get slower in colder | temps. e-ink refresh also works poorly in direct sunlight. The | displays can also "dry out" from it and it can cause artifacts. | But the envelope for normal operation is overall fairly good, | certainly for home/indoor use. | | There's a fair amount of manufacturing tolerance and during | testing manufacturers will usually record preferred drive | voltages for the individual unit, etc. It's quite important to | configure software to make use this information for optimal | performance. | | I'm hoping it will run for about a year without recharging from | that little 1100 mAh LiPo pouch at one update a day (the | newspaper is rendered on a common home server RasPi using | LuaLaTeX+Ghostscript and then retrieved over Wifi), having | taken self-discharge into account. | | For more du-jour hype points I'm considering using OpenAI on | the backend to summarize articles down to size to fit the | layout! Or make it do style transfer to "1870 newspaper". | bostonvaulter2 wrote: | That looks great! How much was the e-ink screen itself? | sho_hn wrote: | About $400 + shipping from Waveshare. | oneearedrabbit wrote: | I love it! On a somewhat related note, I've been working on a | tiny Forth interpreter lately, and I think the e-ink device | it could be an interesting choice to explore and test it on | as a dedicated computational environment. Inkplate looks very | appealing: https://soldered.com/product/inkplate-6plus-e- | paper-display-... | | You might want to check out Kagi to summarize articles: | https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum. It does the heavy lifting of | producing nice outputs for you. | renewiltord wrote: | What's the screen? Where did you get it from? | | It looks really cool! | sho_hn wrote: | Thanks! | | It's this product, which is built around a ED133UT2 panel | by E Ink: https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-pape | r/epaper-1/... | | You can find this unit and other IT8951-based driver boards | for it on a few different places/in different catalogs but | Waveshare's easy and the price seems OK. | | The ED133UT2 is a Carta 1200 display. The latest Carta gen | is the 1250, but AIUI it's only relevant for color displays | with the change being a thinner film that allow plastic | color filters to be closer to the ink to improve contrast. | I think the current greyscale 13.3" offered by E Ink's | direct shop for $449 sans driver is still a 1200 - at least | many vendors list VB3300-NCB as just an alternate name for | the ED133UT2. The Carta range of displays are well-known | from Amazon's Kindle and many other reader products, so my | newspaper is basically a big honking DIY Kindle. | | They also offer a 10.3" panel with even higher resolution | for half the price of the 13.3" that's supported by the | same controller and should be fantastic for all sorts of | home dashboards. | anoncow wrote: | I worked with 7.5 inch screen a few years ago for a | desktop Todo list, but the display faded overtime (1 | year). | sho_hn wrote: | This seems to be pretty common with E Ink displays | unfortunately (you hear the same about many commercial | ebook readers). At least the larger ones are more or less | all from the same manufacturer (E Ink). I don't know if | there is binning going on and Amazon gets better batches | than Waveshare does ... | | Direct sunlight can also be a big problem for this | display tech, so I'm intentionally hanging it on a wall | facing away from the most intense daytime sunlight I get. | | Hope it survives at least a couple of years. | erksa wrote: | Thanks for the info! | | I saw something like this a couple of years ago and | wanted to do it myself. However the cost was relatively | unattainable at the time, I'm glad to see it is getting | more affordable! | alexose wrote: | Shoutout to the EPDIY project, which supports the | ED133UT2 and is planning to support the 10.3" ES108FC1 in | a future revision! | | https://github.com/vroland/epdiy | sho_hn wrote: | This is extremely cool! | | While cobbling together my project I was really tempted | to go custom PCB with the ESP and the ITE controller on | one board. Looks like this eschews the seperate | controller entirely and instead uses ESP32 PSRAM for the | framebuffer and has the driving waveforms embedded in the | MCU firmware etc. Very neat, also one further level of | "go deeper", would love to try one! | stavros wrote: | This is great! Would you happen to have the code available | somewhere? | sho_hn wrote: | Not yet, sorry! It's still very fresh; I'll be releasing on | GitHub pretty soon after cleaning it up a little and | writing some documentation. When getting around to it I'll | remember your comment and drop you a line. | | https://github.com/eikehein/hyelicht <- I get a little | obsessive with that when documenting/releasing DIY stuff | ... :-) | stavros wrote: | Wow, haha, that's extensive. However, I'd urge you to | release first and write docs later (or even release first | and make it work later). I'd get a lot more value from | code with no docs than no code at all! | sho_hn wrote: | I'll try to RERO! | bsder wrote: | > Another method is to have 2x CR2032 cells in parallel, which | lowers IR (parallel resistors lower resitance). | | Don't do this. It will work for a short time, but this | basically just drains one of the CR2032 cells dead. | | The issue is that lithium cells have very little discharge | slope, so by the time the two voltages equalize, one of the | cells is about to die. | | This is in contrast to alkaline batteries which have quite a | bit of discharge slope, so the two batteries can equalize | voltage with most of their battery life still remaining. | tiedieconderoga wrote: | For very small stuff, OLED displays are another possible | alternative. Great contrast, and there's no backlight so you | don't spend power on the "off" pixels. | | You could start with SSD1306 (monochrome, 3.3V) and SSD1331 | (16-bit color, boosted voltage required). They speak I2C and | SPI, and have decent software support. | | The cheap and cheerful ones are <=1" diagonally though, so you | need to step off the happy path to find badge-sized ones. | karmanyaahm wrote: | > small CR2032 coin cells (which have ~10 to ~100 ohms of | internal resistance). A ~100mA draw on the charge inductor | isn't out of the question (at 10-ohms, that's a voltage drop of | 1V, which probably browns-out the RP2040). | | n=1, but I'm using a single CR2032 with a Badger 2040 (same as | OP) and a DS3231 in parallel and it works just fine down to | ~2.8 volts. | sho_hn wrote: | By the way, for the e-ink project I just linked in the other | comment I ended up discovering the RV-3028-C7 RTC module. | Idle power draw 45 nA at 3.3V instead of 110 mA for the | DS3231 for similar functionality and +-1 ppm accuracy with an | internally sealed oscillator. Awesome for battery-powered | stuff and cheaper at low qty on Digikey. | | I hope more of those little DIY/maker breakout boards adopt | it. Pimoroni sells one. The one in my project is a free | sample dev board that Micro Crystal sent me on request - | which I guess is working out for them considering I just | shared their product with you all. | oneearedrabbit wrote: | Recently, I have come across some interesting developments in | the e-ink space. Although I haven't had the opportunity to test | DASUNG monitors myself, but I read positive reviews. It is | impressive, these monitors have extremely fast refresh rate. | Yes, they are pricy. I am intrigued if something has changed | technologically? | sho_hn wrote: | Your comment made me curious, but after looking at a teardown | blog the 13" Dasung Paperlike uses the same ED133UT2 panel by | E Ink as in my DIY newspaper project, which is a panel | originally released about 2016/2017. | | That said getting good partial refresh performance out of a | panel like this requires a good controller and good code | (after having written a driver for one such controller | recently), and developers and product integrators have gotten | more refined at this. Refresh speed and display quality are | still a trade-off here though, expressed as different | waveforms when driving the same display. | roughly wrote: | Second the power draw on refresh - that surprised me for the | projects I was using it with. Especially if you're planning on | any kind of animation or dynamic display, it can eat your power | budget a whole lot faster than you were expecting. | Animats wrote: | > But e-ink is very cool and awesome. | | E-ink should be, but it never seems to get there. Too low- | contrast and/or too expensive. It's been a Real Soon Now | technology for about two decades. | | There was another persistent display technology - chomeric | displays. They came from a company called Chomerics, which was | acquired by Parker Hannefin, which dropped the product line. | Almost everything about those has disappeared from the Web, | except that the former factory is now a Superfund site.[1] | | [1] | https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/CurSites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0... | WillAdams wrote: | I've been using it since my previous job bought me a Sony | PRS-505 (a co-worker got an Amazon Kindle). | | Works well, w/ great battery life, and it really has come | into its own w/ the new Kindle Scribe --- a large screen | e-ink device which works as an e-reader and has useful note- | taking and annotation capabilities (looking forward to seeing | what competitors do w/ it --- probably would have bought an | Onyx Tab Ultra if the Scribe hadn't been available). | | I'd really like to see an affordable display suited to a | Raspberry Pi, ideally w/ touch. | amluto wrote: | I'm cautiously optimistic, because two decades is the | lifespan of a patent. E Ink the company has been a terrible | steward of the technology. May they lose their state- | sponsored monopoly and fade into irrelevance in peace. | fossuser wrote: | Unfortunately it's not that simple. | | I talked to someone building related tech in the industry | and E-Ink the company has a stranglehold on suppliers and | leverages that to force compliance despite the patent | nearing expiration (blocking anyone else from getting | access to those suppliers). | | The patent has allowed them to become entrenched and all | current suppliers to depend on them. This will be hard to | correct even with patent expiration. | | I don't remember the specific details (unfortunately) and | it's second hand info, but I was disappointed to hear it | from someone more involved than I. | amluto wrote: | I wish the FTC would crack down harder on exclusivity | deals like this. | Animats wrote: | Why? E-Ink is a tiny niche in the display sector. Now, | if, say, only Apple had E-Ink phones, it would be a | monopoly issue. | amluto wrote: | E-Ink is apparently engaged in anti-competitive | practices. Why should it matter that the market in | question is small? | | Lots of companies do this. Amazon demands exclusivity for | certain book sales, and they have contracts with sellers | that make it hard for other marketplaces to undercut | them. Qualcomm is famous for abusive practices. The list | goes on. | | In general, IMO companies should be able to compete by | offering a superior product and/or a superior price point | and/or a superior experience. They should not be able to | compete by getting in each others' way. | outworlder wrote: | Expensive yes, but low contrast? Doesn't it have the opposite | problem? | zamnos wrote: | Maybe for you. But the first Kindle came out in 2007, and | Amazon has sold tens of millions of them. The latest, the | Kindle Scribe, even allows users to write in books with a | pen. | CrazyStat wrote: | I have an e-ink tablet (Boox Tab X), which is like a Kindle | Scribe except it's also a (more or less) full featured | Android tablet. | | I have a very nice setup with Zotero, where I can sync | papers I want to read to the tablet (running Zoo for | Zotero), read and mark them up, and then sync the marked up | version back to my computer. | bitL wrote: | I use Onyx A4 reader and it has completely replaced paper for | me. Making notes directly to PDFs while I read them is | fantastic. And it saves my eyes. The only drawback is the | price (around $1k). I am not watching videos on it though. | dragontamer wrote: | Sharp's Memory LCD technology (made famous by Pebble | Smartwatch) was pretty good IMO. | | They still sell those on Digikey: | https://sharpdevices.com/memory-lcd/ | | https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sharp- | microelectr... | | This is an LCD screen with active-power measured in micro- | amps. This means that memory-lcd is more power-efficient than | e-ink even if it updates once every 5 minutes. (though the | less you update, the better e-ink gets). | AshamedCaptain wrote: | People don't realize that e-ink and related technologies | simply _suck_, and rather make up crazy conspiracy theories | about eInk for some reason sabotaging their own product. | Consumers don't want eInk. Consumers cannot distinguish | eInk from LCD. Most companies that have made non-LCD based | products are simply out-sold by LCD products and go | bankrupt. I could probably name half-a-dozen non-LCD | reflective technologies which are _dead_ today without even | checking Wikipedia, like Gyricon, Mirasol, the stuff the | OLPC used, Flepia, etc. All of them dead or niche. | | Even price displays are usually LCDs, with only a minority | being eInk, but as you can see here, even casual hackers | have a hard time distinguishing between them. | | Th small displays they put on smartcards (showing a 2FA or | the like) are also LCDs, and even with a practically | minuscule battery they last for a decade, and that's | refreshing itself once per hour... there's absolutely | nothing that would improve with eInk, save for perhaps if | you wear polarizing glasses... | Pet_Ant wrote: | > E-ink should be, but it never seems to get there. T | | Every price tag at my local grocery store is eInk. Like there | must be thousands. I'm guessing there are updated by wifi. I | mean that is pretty damn good use and the refresh rate means | you saw real energy over LCD. | | https://www.mrbdvr.com/products/e-ink-price-tag-99 | donio wrote: | If you wanted to make these cheap couldn't you have tag | contain nothing but the eink matrix and a connector and the | have all the electronics in the burner caddy? | trompetenaccoun wrote: | Funny you should bring this up, I just thought about it | today what a terrible development those electronic price | tags are from a consumer perspective. Because of course the | next step is constantly changing the prices based on | customer data telling them how to extract the maximum | amount of cash from shoppers. Which is what I noticed at | stores where they do have them, in extreme cases they | change the prices of some products multiple times a day. | joezydeco wrote: | Wait until they change price as you approach the shelf. | Maybe put that phone in airplane mode when you shop. | dmonitor wrote: | I can confirm that they start to act weird around high | temperatures. Just exposing it to the sun for a few minutes on | a hot day can make dots not transition correctly | frosted-flakes wrote: | One very widespread use of two-color (red and black) e-ink | screens is grocery store price labels. They're everywhere in | Canada, and they work great. Even the fine-print (price per | 100g) is clearly readable. | | I don't know if they have batteries and wi-fi, or if they're | updated manually with NFC, but either way they can't be too | expensive if there are 5000+ in every store. They're a bit | smaller than the badges these guys made, but they might be a | lot cheaper and easier to work with. | dragontamer wrote: | > I don't know if they have batteries and wi-fi, or if | they're updated manually with NFC | | Yes, yes, yes, and other methods. These are called | "Electronic Shelf Labels", and there's a whole slew of | competitors. | | WiFi is very high power, so its "pull only twice a day" kinda | setup. You have a radio that only turns on twice a day to | contact the server. Zigbee is also a solution, though that | requires a Zigbee router (coordinator? I forget the | terminology). Much less power on Zigbee, but if you're | deploying hundreds/thousands of these ESLs, I think the | benefits of Zigbee low power outweigh the penalties. | | NFC exists but I don't think I've ever seen them in person. | Probably too much effort since it'd require a human walking | around the store? | | I've even seen ESLs that work off of infrared. You're | supposed to install IR LEDs all around the store, and they | can it all shelf-labels to update. IR receivers are the | lowest power, so this is the only way you can feasibly "push" | data to a shelf label. (Wifi and Zigbee are "pull only"). | | So some computer blasts the IR signal around the whole store, | which is enough information to transmit to change all the | prices apparently. Like a giant broadcast remote control. | philipphutterer wrote: | There was some information only recently on HN about | reversing those Electron Shelf Labels [0] that was quite | interesting, but your comment makes me wonder if you could | eavesdrop these wifi price updates in such stores. Also, | searching for that term on HN gives some other fun | projects. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34738649 | TheAdamist wrote: | Ive seen similar (maybe the same) red black eink screens at | best buy in the usa for pricing labels as well over the last | year, so they're not exclusive to north of the border. Far | fewer labels than a grocery store though. | jonathankoren wrote: | eInk price labels always make think about time of day | pricing, and even differential pricing based on computer | vision. | | Sure, you can't do it today, but I'd be surprised if we don't | see it in 20 years. | Ballu wrote: | Could you recommend any good similar size as well as | functionality LCD for my personal project? Charging is not an | issue (short term use), minimal equipment and clarity at screen | are key requirements. | dragontamer wrote: | https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/lcd-oled-graphic | | These are cheap enough that you can pretty much buy what you | want and sample them yourself. | | I know there are other stores that have better prices. But | Digikey has a very good selection and has data-sheets for | most of their offerings. | | --------- | | I personally like the Sharp memory-lcd display. But your | milage may vary. Monochrome is fine for my uses ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-28 23:00 UTC)