13.3" full color ePaper display

https://shopkits.eink.com/product/atelier-with-13-3%cb%9d-acep-display-ac133ut1-%e3%80%90glass%e3%80%91/#tab-custom-tab-third

by bufbupa • 7 years ago

591 388 7 years ago

shopkits.eink.com

ThrowawayR23• 7 years ago

"... Glass..."

Oof, that brings back a couple of unfond memories of cracked displays in the early ebook reader era. Hope they are able to develop a plastic substrate version.

bufbupa4• 7 years ago

Looks like it may be coming soon: "The new printing process alleviates the need for a glass-based CFA" https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200107005530/en/

BeefySwain• 7 years ago

My understanding of electronic paper displays is almost entirely founded in the great Applied Science[0] video about it.

I have to assume that the way that a full color electronic paper display is done would be vastly different than the method that the 3 color displays work. Anyone have any insight into this?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw

RL_Quine6• 7 years ago

The way it's updating here, along with the description, give a good idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVANwwXtHEI

otras• 7 years ago

"13.3” ACeP display is suitable for various applications, e.g. Artwork, Signage, Retail, etc…"

These various applications sound like static images without fast refresh requirements. I wonder what the refresh rate is like on these.

I'm still waiting with bated breath for a reliable e-ink computer monitor comes out with a decent refresh rate. I'd even be happy with just greyscale.

bufbupa4• 7 years ago

Per below vid, it looks like refresh rate is ~25 seconds. Doubt you'll be able to use it for a monitor anytime soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVANwwXtHEI

simias2• 7 years ago

Oof, that's even way too slow for e-book usage. Still, it's nice to see this technology progressing. There's obviously a massive use case for battery-limited devices like smartwatches and smartphones.

The dream of someday coding on a high-resolution decent-refresh-rate color e-paper monitor is still alive!

Aaargh20318• 7 years ago

If the colors are good enough, this would be awesome as a digital photo frame though. Current digital photo frames emit light which is not something you want from a photo on your wall.

A few of these, updating them maybe once a day, would be excellent.

ThrowawayR23• 7 years ago

"I'm still waiting with bated breath for a reliable e-ink computer monitor comes out with a decent refresh rate. I'd even be happy with just greyscale."

Dasung's current generation grayscale e-ink monitor comes pretty close, IMO. It even does adequate video playback: https://youtu.be/vnUACe8Bsyg?t=27

FullyFunctional3• 7 years ago

I have one and agree. The software support for Linux is nonexistent which is a shame, but it’s still great after you tune your colors for it (eg. Black text on white background).

errantspark4• 7 years ago

I don't know if anyone is really working on this, the "killer feature" of eInk is that the display only draws power when it's refreshing. You can drive them much faster, iirc there have been several proof of concepts using extant consumer screens going at 60Hz, so it's totally possible. I just don't think there's much market for it and I bet it stresses the tech in weird ways to run it that fast. Definitely possible though.

j88439h84• 7 years ago

The other feature is it doesn't shine light.

RL_Quine6• 7 years ago

The Sharp "memory LCD" displays are nearly zero power and can update at 60hz if you really felt like it. They stopped making them sadly, but they were used in the Pebble Watch (it's marketing claimed ePaper, it wasn't).

simias2• 7 years ago

I'm optimistic because devices like smart phones and smart watches are things that benefit from having very low idle power when just displaying mostly static info but require a much faster refresh rate in active use. Being able to read them easily in bright daylight would also be a great plus. That's a good market.

Even laptops would probably benefit from it, when you're typing some text or reading a document you don't need 60fps refresh rate (especially if you can only refresh portions of the screen). That might save a significant amount of battery.

Causality12• 7 years ago

Why is that? Do you do a lot of computing outdoors in direct sunlight? I'll admit, the idea of a laptop whose LCD can go transparent to reveal an e-ink display behind it is very appealing.

errantspark4• 7 years ago

It wouldn't need an e-ink display. The backlight is separate from the display, remember the GameBoy Color? You just need a reflective layer that polarizes the light.

bch2• 7 years ago

Why is that?

Not OP, but I daydream of a big character cell display for console work, especially my development work which is basically vi and a few other tools multiplexed in tmux. Not sure how it’d play out in reality, but in my mind it’s just more pleasant to work with hour over hour.

thdrdt2• 7 years ago

If you don't mind power consumption then you can also use reflective LCD display's.

Brand like Pixel Qi offer those. They have 3 modes: backlight, reflective, and a combination of both. But to be fair the reflective mode always looks monochrome to me.

leggomylibro• 7 years ago

Refresh rates on eink are generally poor. But it seems uncommon to worry about Hertz or frames per second, because the advantage of low power usage disappears if they are refreshed at anything approaching "realtime".

For applications which need fast refresh rates and characteristics like good readability under sunlight, transflexive LCD displays seem to be more popular and economical.

Remember, eink works by physically moving 'ink' particles within each pixel using a magnetic field. It takes a lot of power and time compared to how quickly electronic signals usually propagate, and it seems difficult to get around that physical limitation.

olliej4• 7 years ago

The problem I’ve had is just how jarring the transitions are on refresh. I don’t need it to run continuously at 24/29/60/120 FPS, but I do want it to load the next page in like 25ms. So imagine it taking more power to update the display, but it still isn’t refreshing continuously so would hopefully still have power consumption advantage.

(Even a drawing application could maybe handle it if you could refresh subsections of the display)

int_19h6• 7 years ago

Refresh rates can actually vary a lot. They're intentionally slow on book readers, because eInk is rather power hungry when it redraws, so fast refresh is not free. But for a dedicated display, it's not a problem, so e.g. Dasung jacks the refresh rate way up on their monitors. Take a look at e.g. typing and scrolling here:

https://youtu.be/lXnZPvQiiPo?t=500

Veedrac3• 7 years ago

I'm still waiting with bated breath for a reliable e-ink computer monitor comes out with a decent refresh rate. I'd even be happy with just greyscale.

CLEARink have a best-of-all-worlds high-refresh rate color e-paper that want to release products around mid 2020.

cptskippy2• 7 years ago

They appear to be an early stages startup at best. No sign of product demos or even media photos from their public events on their site.

As of last year they had only just partnered with a manufacturer and had yet to ship actual Dev or Demo kits.

errantspark4• 7 years ago

Looks like fun! Perhaps another thing to add to my box of barely used devkits. I've clicked through their site but I'm not seeing a real data sheet or any information about the gamut etc. Did I just miss it?

jlangemeier• 7 years ago

Nope you haven't missed anything, their user manual for it is very sparse (to put it nicely). At least it comes with a pinout? Another user was saying ~25 second refresh rates.

gnicholas2• 7 years ago

Site isn’t loading for me. Am I the only one?

qwertywert• 7 years ago

Same here.

egypturnash• 7 years ago

I got an nginx error after a long wait, I think it is being hugged to death.

Here's an archive.org link: http://web.archive.org/web/20200108221349/https://shopkits.e...

thebitguru• 7 years ago

Lol, I have never heard it put this say, but seems exactly right: "hugged to death"! =D

frsandstone2• 7 years ago

Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20200108221349/https://shopkits....

somuchlan• 7 years ago

Site is loading this URL for me:

https://shopkits.eink.com/product/atelier-with-13-3%cb%9d-ac...

DesiLurker• 7 years ago

slashdotted!

m_ke• 7 years ago

I was just looking to see if there were any decent ereaders that could handle research papers in PDF format. I couldn't find anything but I guess there's hope for one in the future.

jborichevskiy2• 7 years ago

Have you looked at the reMarkable tablet?

https://remarkable.com/

Great for reading PDFs as they're displayed at about real size.

paxys2• 7 years ago

Looks neat, but $500? Yikes.

ChuckMcM• 7 years ago

I would second this, its pricey at $600 (on sale for $500) but it does read well. My first 'ereader' type device was the iRex Iliad and it had similar features. I had really hoped that Plastic Logic would meet the need for an affordable and durable e-ink screen but they augured into the ground[1] based on their own hubris.

[1] Yes, there is a shell out there that owns the rights but the original effort/team was killed by shooting too high and flaming out.

merqurio• 7 years ago

I love the hardware and they provide you root access. I really didn't like their software for document sync, but I installed syncthing and it works like a charm. Next step for me is to replace their document reader.

thesehands• 7 years ago

i think the ReMarkable might be of interest

dementik• 7 years ago

Rumours tell that next generation ReMarkable 2 is just around the corner, possible release in January.

hyzyla• 7 years ago

You can try covert a lot of them to 6' using k2pdfopt

grahamburger• 7 years ago

ReMarkable might work for this but isn't color, if that's what you're looking for. Nice form factor for PDFs and really good e-writing functionality IMO.

tigroferoce• 7 years ago

My wife has the remarkable. It's nice, even if slightly too small for a 2 columns pdf. But the feeling of writing with the pen is simply fantastic.

On the not-so-bright side, the software is not the greatest and it has a few bugs and limitations.

ThrowawayR23• 7 years ago

You probably want the Sony DPT-RP1. It's not cheap but that's basically the use case it was designed for.

probably_wrong• 7 years ago

If you can find it, the Kindle DX can be a good solution too. The screen is 9.7", big enough to fit an A4 paper. And it can read PDFs and allows uploads via USB cable.

Sadly, Amazon has discontinued it. And newer tablets are probably faster and/or have better resolution. But if you're willing to change its battery once it dies, a second hand one could be what you want.

cherioo• 7 years ago

You can also look into Likebook and Boox brands which has various Android 10/13 inch eink tablet.

qaq3• 7 years ago

I want E Ink monitor for programming. It so much easier on the eyes (even if refresh rate is horrible)

RL_Quine6• 7 years ago

I've messed around with this a bunch on some 9" hardware and custom waveforms to attempt to drive the display as hard as possible, it's almost certainly not what you want to be using, especially the color ones as they require multiple passes to actually attain the color. For my Color/Black/White panels that's normally rendering all the Black + Color as black, and then pulling the black pigment back as well to expose the Color one (red or yellow).

For the single color ones you can get sub-500ms latency for updating, at the cost of extreme ghosting. You need to do a lot of changes to the way you think about graphics to make this a reality. Think of an IRC program for example, normally every one of them scrolls up text from the bottom but this is completely a worst case solution for e-ink. To make it work you have to fill half the screen with text, then add new lines sequentially at the end and only scroll when you've run out of space. Additions can reasonably be done without a full refresh, scrolling text just causes it to mud out.

zozbot2344• 7 years ago

It could become feasible with a custom UI. You could have a version of vim or emacs that doesn't even "scroll" your code conventionally, but just gradually rewrites lines starting from the top down (or from the bottom up when scrolling "back"), sort of doing away with a unified viewport - this would at least address the most common operation in a dev environment that currently requires quick full-screen update.

blululu2• 7 years ago

This is pretty spot on. I tried something similar a while back and found that the typing latency was on the order of ~120 ms which made it feel mushy and led to a lot of errors. The need to rethink graphics to handle refreshes should not be underestimated. A lot of UI patterns (almost all animations and transitions) rely on a period refresh rate. In order to make a compelling experience you need to rework a good bit of the UI.

ddingus3• 7 years ago

https://youtu.be/jOYqXlsgo78

Seems like a similar dynamic to what these displays offered.

I got to work on one in the mid 80's

No scrolling, and multi-column output made sense.

mileycyrusXOXO• 7 years ago

I want one for reading documentation late at night.

bjelkeman-again• 7 years ago

If I can get it in ePub then a Kobo works well.

sdfin• 7 years ago

I want one too, but it seems that most people don't care. Otherwise there would be a big demand for them.

RL_Quine6• 7 years ago

It's the sort of thing that's nice on paper, but the practical limitations make it sort of useless for live updating content. I really like the devices for nearly static information displays because they're not bright and distracting, it's only noticeable if you want that information.

TeMPOraL4• 7 years ago

It's hard for the market to process demand for something that doesn't exist yet.

For use in their main computing device, people would like an e-ink display that could reliably pull 30+ FPS while not costing a fortune, and preferably with some color capacity. They don't want a display from Kindle. Until the gap between that and what we have today is closed, the demand signal won't register.

FWIW, there was a huge initial demand back in the Kindle era; the e-reader use case was absolutely perfect for these screens. Nowadays, from what I can tell, the main demand for e-ink is in retail, for cheap electronic price displays. But that doesn't drive the progress of e-ink much, if in any way at all.

crazygringo4• 7 years ago

I'm curious why?

My understanding is that if you simply turn the brightness on an LCD display down to whatever the ambient brightness is (hold a piece of white paper next to the screen to compare), that there is zero eyestrain over what paper or e-ink would be.

Have you tried that? It feels strange at first -- as if the screen feels "dim" -- but then once you realize the contrast is just fine, you get used to it within minutes.

(And in case you have a problem with glare, just get a matte screen covering, easy peasy.)

caconym_• 7 years ago

One nice thing is that you can see the displayed image by whatever light you want. Outside, inside, firelight, incandescent, vapor-arc, [built-in] LED... whatever.

I have a feeling that the contrast is also better under dim light, but no evidence, so I might be full of shit. And LED/LCD tech is obviously getting better in this regard.

Still, if there was a good implementation of an E-ink monitor with a refresh rate good enough for text editing, I'd easily drop 10k on it. I spend hours every day writing and reading and my preference for staring at E-ink displays over all other technologies is no contest.

zozbot2344• 7 years ago

You can't really do this because the contrast becomes way too low for comfort. It could become feasible with OLED, but that comes with a preference for dark mode anyway (due to the well-known issues with OLED endurance) which inherently addresses eyestrain.

chansiky2• 7 years ago

Its not about how dim it is. Daylight is orders of magnitude brighter than any lightbulb out there and has different levels of color wavelengths. Dimming a screeen actually does the opposite of what you would get reading eink outdoors, even in the shade. This is why TV's and projectors have such a hard time reaching the required brightness levels to be seen in broad daylight.

jiggawatts• 7 years ago

This is thinking based on anecdotal evidence, and is not supported by scientific evidence.

LCDs do not inherently cause eye strain. Specific implementations of any display technology can, but not in general.

Some LCDs have backlights that flicker to reduce motion blur, and some people can be sensitive to this. Most panels do not have this technology. Avoid low-lag 144 Hz gaming displays if you're affected.

Low resolution LCDs can cause eyestrain due to the apparent blurriness of the image making the lens of the eye "hunt" back and forth looking for the ideal focal distance. Simply upgrading to a 4K or better fixes this. It did wonders for me, and now I refuse to use anything else.

People tend to sit at different distances from screens depending on the technology. People sit meters away from their TV, approximately 50-100cm from PC monitors, and within arms-length for handheld displays such as phones or eInk displays. For anyone with vision problems such as myopia, the displays that are held closer tend to cause less strain, but this has nothing to do with the panel technology.

Brighter displays cause the pupil to shrink, which improves the effective focus sharpness for people with astigmatism. There is an actual benefit of eInk displays in that they can be used with high-lux external illumination such as daylight. However, HDR LCD panels can hit an eye-searing 1000 nits sustained, and even the default 300 nits of a good quality panel is more than sufficient to reduce the pupil size to the minimum. Just turn the brightness up and sit in a reasonably well-lit room instead of darkness. The new hotness of dark themes flies in the face of the science of this. My eyes start to hurt within minutes from reading text on a dark background!

Glare from screen coatings also reduces contrast and the glass layer is often 1-2mm closer than the image surface. This can also cause "hunting" of the focus and eye strain. Avoid glossy screens, and clean your monitor regularly to get rid of smudges.

Most of the above is technology-independent. You can simply turn the brightness up on you LCD screen and sit closer or further depending on whether you have myopia or hyperopia.

I once had the pleasure of working with an 8K Dell monitor, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that it's amazing. It's like looking at an animated glossy magazine. Zero eye strain. Unfortunately, it strains the wallet, but the new 8K video "push" might bring some competition and lower prices...

qaq3• 7 years ago

When anecdotal evidence is specifically you it's something one would care about :). HiDPI is a must for me can't use a regular ones at all for more than an hour. 8K I def could use for personal side but unfortunately I don't have a decent way to drive it from work issued mbp.

darzu• 7 years ago

I bought this one: http://www.dasungtech.com/ and it works surprisingly well. Definitely good enough for coding IMO. The only issue I had is that the drivers for Mac were very unreliable (but this was >1 yr ago).

My motivation was being able to work outside and I still plan on using it for that. This reminds me that I should check to see if they have driver updates...

ohlookabird• 7 years ago

I have the Dasung Not-eRader and it works pretty well for me. I connect it via the supplied HDMI/USB cable and it is recongnized as external monitor on Linux and I can program pretty normally using vim on a terminal.

blurbleblurble• 7 years ago

I recently got a Dasung Paperlike display... It's pretty amazing! It has a reasonably high refresh rate and I can use it outside in full sun.

qaq3• 7 years ago

Cool thnx for the pointer will try it out.

jdfellow• 7 years ago

On nice mild spring days I want this so much, to be able to code outdoors without glare.

frsandstone2• 7 years ago

Cached in Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20200108221349/https://shopkits....

kgwxd• 7 years ago

Is it archive.org or the original site that went out of it's way to force "smooth scrolling" on me?

Edit: original site is working now, it's them.

Zelphyr• 7 years ago

There should be a Developers Pledge: I, [state your name], hereby agree upon pain of death to never do things like force smooth scrolling, override scroll speed, implement a header that bounces based on scroll direction, etc...

marcusjt• 7 years ago

Smooth scrolling is a CSS3 feature implemented by (many but not all) modern browsers so you'll be seeing it around a lot - see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/scroll-beha... + https://drafts.csswg.org/cssom-view/#propdef-scroll-behavior

jalgos_eminator• 7 years ago

Could not find a refresh rate in the documentation, or how many colors it can create. I also saw something about it having to compensate for temperature with 7 different maps from 0°-50°C. You can see it on page 8 of the User Manual.

bufbupa4• 7 years ago

Per below vid, Refresh time: ~25 seconds Colors: 32,000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVANwwXtHEI

mwambua• 7 years ago

Do they actually mean 32768 colors?

op00to• 7 years ago

This would be awesome for comic books.

dsr_2• 7 years ago

Any 10+inch color LCD display of 250dpi or higher works well for comic books. It turns out that if you make a tablet capable of showing HD video at 60fps, it can show you comic book pages quite well.

I use an Amazon Kindle Fire Ow It Burns HD10 for this, because it's at the minimum intersection of suitable hardware and price.

bobbyi_settv• 7 years ago

I think the Kindle Fire makes you jump through hoops to get apps via the Google Play store though and as I understand it, you need to do that in order to get Marvel Unlimited on there, which is something many people really want to have on their comics-reading device.

seltzered_2• 7 years ago

The most interesting new-old startup in this space the past couple years is clearInk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjJ2-cdhwMQ

..but they haven't shipped anything yet AFAIK. And no idea how electronics/etc is hidden around their demo frames.

vanderZwan• 7 years ago

They state they are targeting education in developing markets, so that sounds like they (believe they) have a way to scale this and make it very affordable.

seltzered_2• 7 years ago

Eh, I'll believe it when I see it. Saying this from a perspective of:

- Usually reading seeing what's new in this space every year. Wrote my last comment in https://lobste.rs/s/ahy28r/remarkable_perfect_tablet_for_aca... .

- Taking some of the "developing markets" speech with a grain of "geek heresy" salt. It's out of my domain, but from what I've heard there's been a problem where technology in education has been rushed to as a cost-savings mechanism yet in practice the content / usability issues make the education experience worse.

ihuman• 7 years ago

What companies make consumer/hobbyist ePaper displays besides Waveshare? I'm looking for a 5"-7" ePaper display with fast/partial refresh that work with a Raspberry Pi, but the only one I've found is Waveshare's.

sparker72678• 7 years ago

4.2" (Which sounds like it's too small for your needs): https://www.adafruit.com/product/4142

nkozyra• 7 years ago

Wow that one also has a 25s refresh rate

hoytech• 7 years ago

This is still in kick-starter phase, but if you don't mind waiting a few months it has a lot of potential IMO:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica/inkplate-6

pitzips• 7 years ago

I believe Waveshare gets their panels from the same place good-display.com does. The Waveshare adapters work on good-display panels.

userbinator• 7 years ago

Replacement displays for ebook readers are not that expensive and someone has figured out how to drive them without the proprietary controller: http://essentialscrap.com/eink/

Polylactic_acid3• 7 years ago

Wow those are super cheap.. I'm tempted to pick up one and I don't even have a use case yet.

dsalzman• 7 years ago

Buy an old amazon kindle for $20. You can root them and remote into them via ssh for display control

proee• 7 years ago

This has a refresh rate of 25 SECONDS - so it's not going to replace your black and white kindle display or be useful for dynamic content.

duxup2• 7 years ago

Bummer.

My oldest son is a voracious reader, and I would love to get him on an e reader, but I don't want to go for a traditional screen, so the lack of color e ink type option kinda stops me.

etrk• 7 years ago

Does he only read comic books? Black and white screen is ideal for most of the world's books.

sukilot2• 7 years ago

Who remembers browsing the web/usenet on 28800Kbps modems?

JorgeGT• 7 years ago

I think you have an extra K on there! I do remember my 36 kbps modem though, but the web was optimized for that speed. Webpages had "image warnings"!

driverdan• 7 years ago

The web at 2400 baud was slow. Really slow.

olliej4• 7 years ago

1200 baud yo!

(It was actually a really neat little thing, I wish I still had it)

marton78• 7 years ago

28 megabits per second?! I sure don't...

mcv• 7 years ago

I remember reading BBSs over a 300 baud modem. If you read fast, you could read the text at the speed it came in.

int_19h6• 7 years ago

I remember that feeling when you get a shiny new 28800 USR Sportster, only to find out that your local BBS is capped at 9600...

mc32• 7 years ago

I'd buy one of these for a picture frame, to have changeable art. Sounds nuts (?), but at some point a big one of these would cost less than a painting and you have it change to suit your mood.

gitgud• 7 years ago

This works out to be 0.04 frames per second! :(

    1 frame / every 25 seconds = 0.04 frames per second

Maybe slideshows are all it can handle

b0rsuk• 7 years ago

...and I've been postponing buying an E-ink device in hopes of getting a color one!

One of my main excuses has been the fact color is useful for programming books because you have syntax highlighting. Now I'm realizing reflective color screens may never really come, and it's probably better to devise some kind of software workaround. Some kind of system that would replace colored fonts with a system of very distinctive set of typefaces that work well in B&W.

tombert• 7 years ago

God this would be great if we could get an Android color e-ink reader released so I could do Safari Books. The O'Reilly thing is a pretty good deal if you're a serial-tech-book-reader like I am, but I absolutely hate reading off the computer screen or my iPhone, but I don't mind reading regular text off my Kindle.

I know that there's the Onyx Boox Android thing, but that's only black and white, and technical books are occasionally in color.

OscarCunningham• 7 years ago

I've been waiting for something like this to use as a digital photo frame. It lets you have see all your photos without having it glowing at you when you go to bed.

elric• 7 years ago

I've long thought that it would be great to replace all kinds of signage wit eInk. Time tables on public transport, any kind of announcement that's typically printed on paper,... There's lots of stuff with a low refresh rate (sometimes in the order of months) that could benefit from being easier to update, but that isn't worth replacing by power hungry, overly bright, hard to read LCDs. Hell, there are a lot of cases where LCDs are used wher eInk would be a much better fit. Things like meeting room reservation screens, for instance.

With largeish colour displays, maybe that'll all finally become a reality.

BlueTemplar19• 7 years ago

Meeting room reservation screens should work well with even low-power transflective LCDs ?

solarkraft3• 7 years ago

It would be amazing if monochrome 13,3" e-ink displays would go on sale at an affordable price some day.

BlueTemplar19• 7 years ago

Aren't they ? What would be "affordable" for you ?

solarkraft3• 7 years ago

I think I'd be willing to pay about 230€ for the screen. Maybe 300-350€ for a device with a free operating system and very good UX (but I wouldn't be afraid of building that myself).

solarkraft3• 7 years ago

While it's very cool that this is now possible, I think this has almost no use case. A business that is able to afford e-ink's high prices could also buy an LCD/OLED, which could also show motion and much better colors.

htk• 7 years ago

E-ink advantage is not about price/motion/colors. Is about how close it is with printed paper, where external light like the Sun helps the visibility. It’s also interesting regarding energy requirements, as you can keep the image displayed without the need of power.

hinkley• 7 years ago

One of the reasons I keep an eye on eInk is that I love the idea of information radiators, but I always get stymied by running wires to a suitable spot. Data has been mostly solved, power has not.

deepspace2• 7 years ago

Nice, but I fear that this will go the same way as Eink corp's monochrome displays. They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting themselves to a tiny fraction of the addressable market (ebook readers) while shutting out a vast potential low power display market by pricing their panels far too high. They have also either refused to license their technology to others or made the licensing fee uneconomical.

A competent company would have pursued the signage market aggressively many years ago and would have had a massive revenue stream from that by now.

E Ink displays have recently started showing up as price tags on grocery shelves, which is promising for the future of low cost, low power displays. I am not sure if these are supplied by Eink or if patents are expiring and competitors are moving into the market.

sukilot2• 7 years ago

signs: https://eink.com/signage.html

price tags: https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html

more: https://eink.com/application.html

Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do?

deepspace2• 7 years ago

Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do?

Never said that I do, and, yes they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets. My point was that they could and should have done so 10 or more years ago.

ethbro4• 7 years ago

How many of those have you seen in the real world?

Maybe they're more popular elsewhere, but outside of warehouse store price labels I haven't seen the technology.

Certainly not in large format.

robbyking• 7 years ago

The price tags would be neat if they allowed you to swipe for additional information.

swiley• 7 years ago

You can get monochrome and 2 color displays very cheap! I bought one a while ago to play around with building a smartwatch but school got in the way, then I graduate and have been moving and my whole electronics lab is all packed up.

kerneltime• 7 years ago

From what I understand, a lot has to do with IP ownership, this was developed at MIT and any licensing deal is not as profitable as being able to sell a product. Thus, to make a VC/equity funded commercial venture of it they have to develop a product.

wasdfff• 7 years ago

What they should have done is license the tech while developing their product. This little move probably left them billions on the table just by preferring to sit on the tech.

neltnerb2• 7 years ago

Reminder that patents filed in 1997 expired years ago. I suspect that the lack of competitors has more to do with the incredible complexity of manufacturing them reliably than due to IP issues. Unlike 3D printers which went wild after Stratasys patents finally expired.

ATsch• 7 years ago

I checked it a while back, and the key patents aren't due to expire for several more years. I recall 2024, but with einks patent moat, it will probably take until the 2030s to see real alternatives in the space.

wvh• 7 years ago

Grocery stores here have had those e-ink price tags for a few years already, so I guess at least those are not expensive in bulk. Not sure if the same economy of scale applies to the larger screens or if there are still technological difficulties at large sizes.

I wonder if there are any noticeable economical effects of being able to update prices live on the fly with those price tags, or if it's purely a matter of convenience.

amluto• 7 years ago

The NDA required to buy a sample also doesn’t help.

alias_neo3• 7 years ago

About 7 years ago I moved to one of the most affluent parts of the UK (outside of London) and had my mind blown when every item on the shelf in the tastefully decorated Morissons supermarket had e-ink displays for every item.

As an engineer my immediate thought was whether they update these on-the-fly with different prices depending on who walks in the door (they don't).

sergiosgc• 7 years ago

At least in Portugal, prices on a supermarket can only be lowered during the day, never increased. The logic is: During a dynamic price increase, a customer may pick an item from the display at the low price, only then to be charged the higher price at the register; the store would be found lying on the displayed price, which is illegal.

This severely limits dynamic pricing.

ChrisRR• 7 years ago

Where is this?

lopis• 7 years ago

E-Ink as price displays has been around for at least 10 years.

dotancohen3• 7 years ago

  > They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting
  > themselves to a tiny fraction of the addressable market (ebook
  > readers) while shutting out a vast potential low power display
  > market by pricing their panels far too high.

I've often wondered if the E-ink management came from the pharmaceutical industry. They seem insistent on extracting the maximum dollar amount _per unit_ rather than maximizing revenue or making the technology available to those who would benefit from it.

I would pay any reasonable - and even a slightly unreasonable - price for a full E-ink phone, because I am a business user and do not care about consuming media. Likewise for a laptop or desktop screen. Yet they are all but unavailable!

int_19h6• 7 years ago

eInk smartphones, at least, are around: Hisense, Kingrow. Hisense just announced one with a color screen yesterday.

They are still very niche devices, though. Onyx made a similar thing back in 2013, but they never followed up because it didn't sell well.

FWIW, I do have a Kingrow K1, and I like it for what it is, which is a 5" Kindle that can also run the occasional Android app (like, say, OsmAnd or Kiwix). It's an excellent off-the-grid device due to battery life, which is precisely what I got it for. But for business use, I don't see much point - a dedicated business device to me would be something like Cosmo Communicator or Unihertz Titan.

ScottFree3• 7 years ago

Have you seen the Dasung Paperlike?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JIsX-qF6gQ

macewindu• 7 years ago

They have also either refused to license their technology to others or made the licensing fee uneconomical.

Please share your evidence for this.

techydude• 7 years ago

100% correct, eInk have been terrible stewards of this otherwise wonderful tech.

I was in a meeting with an eInk marketing person and saw a prototype of this display 2 years ago (the refresh time was hellish, 10-15 seconds IIRC, and their suggested applications suggest the refresh rate hasn't been brought down since then). He was relatively new to the company then, and mentioned that he'd reviewed their CRM contacts going way back, and found, among other things, an inquiry about a small eInk display from (my NDA probably prevents me being too specific) a little silicon valley tech start-up making an IoT wall-mounting thermostat, circa 2012. eInk failed completely to respond to that inquiry at all. What a massive lost opportunity.

I looked at their display range and had an idea for a demonstrator product - which is why we had the meeting, they wanted 3rd parties to help them develop novel applications for eInk displays - so I asked for data sheets on a few of them. I can't remember if we ultimately had to sign an NDA to get the data sheets, or if there was sufficient behind-the-scenes conversation between him and their Taiwanese owners to pull their fucking head in, but 2 weeks just to get data sheets wasn't a good start.

Along with the displays I looked at several of their dev-kits to drive them (before you design your own driver in your own product & get working hardware, so that s/w people can dev code for it before then). They had at least 3 completely different dev-kits for displays in the 1.5 to 4" range. Not only did they have quite different interfaces (signalling, pin-outs, connectors), but all the dev-kits were all based on different microcontroller brands, AND you had to have your own device-programmer for each of those microcontrollers to be able to update the dev-kit's firmware - as recommended by their own instructions before you start work. IOW, they ship dev-kits with outdated firmware, so you have to update them yourself at your own cost.

So I had a follow-up conf-call with this guy & someone new in the tech area and basically gave him the "srslywtf?" conversation about this appalling experience. They were appreciative of the feedback, but I never heard from them again. That marketing guy was in a new job less than a year later.

I found eInk displays from several other sources and moved on, never to bother with eInk Inc again.

The price-tag application has been around a long time now, 5 maybe 10 years, but precious few other applications (San Diego Airport's car-park comes to mind, tho that's ePaper, not eInk (i.e. whole panels, not dot-matrix displays)), but eInk have been completely wrong-headed about how to get eInk to go beyond the near-captive-audience of eBook Readers (which is mostly the Kindle), and the writing was on the wall for that product line to expand way beyond just eInk-based readers a LONG time ago. Sad.

AlphaWeaver5• 7 years ago

In the realm of e-ink, I've been loving my Onyx tablet lately. It runs full Android, has an ePaper display, and has a Wacom stylus for note taking.

Two things I think it's done really well- it has the ability to easily disable the touch screen so you can pass it around and work with it like it's a real piece of paper. Additionally, you can change the refresh rate to your preference, and set it per-app. Higher refresh rates lead to ghosting, but if I turn the refresh rate high enough, I can watch a YouTube video on ePaper (!!!) which is crazy to me.

skuthus2• 7 years ago

what model did you get?

AlphaWeaver5• 7 years ago

I got the Boox Note 2, which is 10.3 inches. It's just large enough to be useful, but not so big to be unwieldy.

Andrex• 7 years ago

Been looking at these for sheet music! (The larger models.) The ability to natively run Google Play Books is a huge bonus too, very few offer that compatibility and that's where most of my books are.

I wish Movies Anywhere existed for ebooks but there's no way Amazon would go for it. :(

minimalist• 7 years ago

I own an onyx boox and I can't emphasize enough how much I don't recommend it for anyone. If I had known the company was a serial GPL violator, I would have never purchased it in the first place. My recommendation would be to wait for the refresh of the ReMarkable Tablet, as it runs GNU/Linux and there is a healthy community of people who have made a ton of applications and tools for it [0]. This will likely never occur with any Onyx products and you will be stuck with a device running an old version of Android with SELinux disabled, on a vulnerable kernel, that constantly phones home to Chinese cloud servers.

I explain it all in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041543

[0] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

ViViDboarder• 7 years ago

I have an olde Barnes and Noble Nook that I rooted and installed Play Books. Used that for years to read public domain books that I got from Gutenberg and uploaded to Play to get position synced between my phone and Nook. Now I mostly read Libby. I also have the Kindle app on the Nook, so I need to see if the old version of the app still works and if I can send books from Libby to it.

abraxas4• 7 years ago

to easily disable the touch screen

The one feature I wish existed in every smartphone and tablet yet it exists in none. Perhaps I'm particularly clumsy but the amount of inadvertent interactions I trigger with my devices is infuriating.

abtinf• 7 years ago

iOS supports this with "Guided Access" mode. It has to be enabled in settings, then a triple click will turn it off/on. It can have its own passcode as well. I use it when handing my phone to my kids--start a video, enable guided access, and not worry about who they might inadvertently call or photo they might delete.

sideshowb• 7 years ago

There is an android app called touch lock which I use for this on the odd occasions my 2yo daughter watches youtube/netflix

It's a bit hacky but kinda works (netflix doesn't like stuff floating over a playing video so you have to set touch lock to lock in 10 secs then press play, there's a sort of knack to it. Also it doesn't lock the power button so sometimes that accidentally gets pressed and I get asked why did it stop? :) )

If there are better options out there I'm all ears!

jessant• 7 years ago

Game Tools on Samsung devices have this feature. For apps that aren't games you need to add them in Game Launcher so the Game Tools button appears in those apps.

politelemon• 7 years ago

How's the battery life, or to be inexact, how often do you recharge it?

AlphaWeaver5• 7 years ago

I haven't managed to get the battery down below maybe 70%, but I only charge it like once or twice a week. It's impressive.

chx2• 7 years ago

I personally love my Dasung not-eReader. Yes, the software is not the best, especially at very low power it becomes unusable but having my eReader serve emergency monitor duty is awesome. It has a mini HDMI input. It's also an Android tablet but i consider that a gimmick.

With the One Mix Yoga 2S it forms my on call tech kit I lug everywhere. I wouldn't use this for full time work but I only need a tiny shoulder bag this way vs carrying the 14" ThinkPad everywhere just because once every half a year we have an emergency...

You can see my loadout at https://imgur.com/a/xmRmYSn

diffeomorphism2• 7 years ago

The newer Onyx models seem to have a monitor function as well: https://onyxboox.com/boox_max3

If I am reading reviews correctly it has micro(?) HDMI and a usb-C port. However, the usb port seems to only be for charging/keyboards/data etc., not for display port (next model maybe?).

int_19h6• 7 years ago

I have one of those, but the problem is that it seems to be very picky about the devices that it can support as a display. I can get output from my Thinkpad X1 just fine, but an assortment of different Raspberry Pi models produce a mess of pixels (whereas the same devices work fine with a regular external HDMI display).

quxpar• 7 years ago

So it's you who got that incredibly sick 1733 custom bag! Figures I'd run into you here. /r/ManyBaggers says hello!

PeterStuer2• 7 years ago

I'd love something like the BOOX Max3 13.3 but sadly I'm locked into Amazon's Kindle with an extensive collection of books.

sails• 7 years ago

Not impossible to export them into an open format [0]

I recently deleted my Amazon account and now use the kindle as plain e-reader as far as that is possible (ie buy and load books from other sources).

[0] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283371

lisnake• 7 years ago

You always can liberate your DRM-ed ebooks with something like Calibre + plugin.

twodayslate• 7 years ago

If it runs Android why can't you install the Amazon Kindle app?

awinter-py• 7 years ago

fwiw the sony letter-size monochrome e-reader is amazing

reading PDFs on a device that doesn't burn out your eyes and can't receive notifications or produce audio is like a digital detox

all my favorite devices recently are low- and no-connection (voice memo, yubikey) and work fast with limited UX

kepano• 7 years ago

The progress towards digital paper has been really slow. Sometimes I wonder if there is an alternate timeline in which we pursued eink-like displays earlier on. It would be amazing to watch a movie on this kind of display if the refresh rate could permit it. I wrote about this on my blog http://stephanango.com/the-elusiveness-of-digital-paper

z3t4• 7 years ago

Make something 16 inches and lightweight. So that you can make it display an actual A4 "paper" and hold it in your hand.

passwordds• 7 years ago

This is the imitation of the Sony digital paper version ??? Similar price tags too.

jamilbk• 7 years ago

We have great weather here in the Bay Area but are often confined to offices to get our work done because of sunlight glare on our laptop screens.

I've always thought more people would choose to work outside if their laptop had a decent e-ink display that performed well in sunlight. Perhaps there'd even be outdoor co-working spaces complete with gardens, fountains, and grassy lawns to sprawl onto.

prennert• 7 years ago

I used to have a Toshiba Portege R500 which had a transreflective screen. It was an LCD that could be used in sunlight because incoming light got reflected back from behind the screen. The colors suffered a bit, but you could even switch off the backlight of the screen to save power. Seems to have gone out of fashion unfortunately..

http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_notebooks_toshiba_r500.html

Polylactic_acid3• 7 years ago

I really loved that the screen on my pebble watch was always on and the thing managed a week of screen on time. The colors looked like crap compared to the newer smart watches but I still feel like something major was lost here.

Polylactic_acid3• 7 years ago

Stop buying macbooks with glossy screens then.

cordite• 7 years ago

How does long term UV exposure (sunlight) affect pigments in a product like this? It seems like a cool idea for large format signs, but how long until everything looks like burnt green-blue?

BlueTemplar19• 7 years ago

Well, there are lots of pigments out there available that hold well to long-term UV exposure... Even if you're talking decades, I don't think that metal-based pigments uv-degrade easily ?

rrauenza• 7 years ago

I keep wishing for a large enough display I could use it as a digital picture frame. I was looking at eink's offerings just yesterday after hearing about Lenovo's new 21" frame.

zhoujianfu• 7 years ago

I really want somebody to use one of these to make a picture frame you hang on the wall with no power cable.. just a spot in the frame for AA batteries, and some kind of low power Bluetooth connection to your phone to update the picture via an app.

gnicholas2• 7 years ago

I have looked into low-power color displays and I think their competitor [1] is currently better positioned. My understanding is their eink has somewhat better light transmission, but their refresh rate is much, much slower than the competition. I'm looking forward to seeing the products made from these faster displays, which I believe are coming later this year.

1: https://www.clearinkdisplays.com/solutions

est• 7 years ago

I still wonders what happens to the MEMS display Apple bought from Qualcomm

https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/15/apple-has-taken-o...

sytelus• 7 years ago

Any details on how they made this work? How much power does it draw? This could have a tremendous impact. You can basically replace every surface with the programmable display, assuming mass-manufactured cost savings. Walls on your home or office, dining table, the exterior of the car!

kodachi• 7 years ago

If you wanna help hack the kindle: http://fread.ink/ Reminds me that my Kindle has been going strong for 7 years.

krick• 7 years ago

This is great. I was dreaming about large full colour e-reader since like 10 years ago, when I bought my first PocketBook. Now, TBH, I'm kinda used to reading on regular displays, mostly since I carry my phone all day long anyway. But if there will be a good reader like that I'm pretty sure I'll buy it. If nothing else, being usable without a daily recharge is huge by modern standards. It's virtually impossible to buy anything now that can last for a couple of days without recharging anymore.

Not sure about glass though.

stiray• 7 years ago

At this price just doesnt matter what size of display is or anything else. It is like selling toothpicks for 10 dollars. Yes they are usefull, yes I would like to have them, but the price is so overblown that I would feel stupid if I would buy it.

Eink is a typical case where instead of scaling up, they try to get rich by much too expensive product. This is a maximum stupidity as instead anyone having their product in their home, they will also loose the ebook market over time.

The second option, the technology is just not there yet and they have problems manufacturing it in large quantities.

mike-cardwell• 7 years ago

I had this idea, probably more than 10 years ago now, to have an e-ink display on my wall which does nothing other than show me my calendar. Every couple of years I go hunting for a simple and affordable display that's at least 13 inches, but preferably larger. I don't even care if it's colour or not.

The closest I can find is those picture frames that people have. But to auto update them over the network, they always seem to require the use of some crappy online intermediary. And they're always way more expensive than they should be.

hmottestad• 7 years ago

I turned my old ebook into a weather and subway screen: https://fluffyelephant.com/2015/12/reuse-my-ebook-reader/

Any ebook that can be hacked to run "regular" android will do the job, since you will need to turn off the auto-sleep settings. I then used the stock browser to show a simple webpage with some small javascript. Benefit of using the stock browser was that sony had implemented partial refresh...so when the subway times update every 10 seconds it doesn't cause a full screen refresh.

Wifi needs to be rock solid, had quite a few problems with my old linksys....no problems since I switched to unifi.

m712• 7 years ago

Seems like the site is suffering from the Slashdot effect.

beowulfey• 7 years ago

Holy shit, they finally did it. I interviewed for a coop with eInk back in 2009-2010 and they had mentioned they were working on full color back then. Very happy to hear they finally got there.

Rainymood• 7 years ago

All I want is an e-ink display for my monitor!

imhoguy• 7 years ago

I would love to have eink as my main monitor. I am sick of stareing to LED-backlit screens for 9/5.

megous2• 7 years ago

If anyone wants to play with bw e-ink displays in the form of e-book reader you easily can. I've ported mainline Linux to PocketBook Touch Lux 3 and I'm now playing with making userspace apps. You can just pick the kernel load it to uSD card, put it in the device and you'll be able to boot Arch Linux or whatever and play around.

http://linux-sunxi.org/PocketBook_Touch_Lux_3

kaffeemitsahne• 7 years ago

I would really love to have lichess and sgt puzzles on an e-ink device.

24gttghh• 7 years ago

Where does one purchase this e-ink reader? I can't find them anywhere, and their own website link for it seems broken.

megous2• 7 years ago

This one is not manufactured anymore, it was replaced with Touch Lux 4. (it's probably almost the same thing inside, with very small differences, most of their eink readers are A13 based, even some of the expensive hi-res ones).

You can buy it second hand, or with a broken display and replace the display (that's what I did).

mwexler• 7 years ago

Love the idea of these, after multiple botched attempts to deliver over the last decade. But refresh rate was always the killer for most applications. While I don't expect it to be a gaming monitor, any news on whether the refresh rate has improved? As a baseline, some companies are getting 7.5 fps with greyscale.

Noxmiles• 7 years ago

"$799.00 (Tax excl.)" it's probably not the for companies buying thousands of them. But what would you expect is the price?

End user products with this display probably are way over 1000 or 2000 USD.

npongratz• 7 years ago

It's 4:3! 1600×1200, 285.80mm (W) × 213.65mm (H). I keep looking for 4:3 non-CRT displays; what a pleasant surprise.

mavsman• 7 years ago

Hopefully we'll soon live in a world with solar powered electronics that use foldable e-ink displays.

chansiky2• 7 years ago

Its about time. Can't wait to get one. Hopefully it would only be like another 10 years before you can watch video on one of these.

13.3" full color ePaper display

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