Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-paper-monitor

by RossBencina • 12 months ago

331 81 12 months ago

sandos• 11 months ago

It seems to update fast, but with significant ghosting, right? Looking at the cat example. Maybe this is just the best e-ink can do, and thats fine!

swinglock4• 11 months ago

It looks amazing for e-ink. You'd probably don't want this for video anyway, besides it's not even in color. I'm impressed that it works at all. For a lot of work though it could be amazing, depending on your environment.

Say you'd want to pop outside in the nice weather to do some programming. You quickly find why that wasn't as glamorous as you expected. But if you had a laptop with such a screen I would expect it to work great.

porridgeraisin4• 11 months ago

What about syntax highlighting?

clueless• 11 months ago

this is not the same technology as e-ink, hence why they call it e-paper

b1123• 11 months ago

There's a lot better being done by Boox, and even with colour e-ink in terms of ghosting. I think a lot of that is software end, though.

The one unfortunate thing is that this monitor seems to have a glossy screen, not matte, but maybe that's an additional layer over a dev kit?

If this truly is 'open', then it should be trivial to write special X11/Wayland drivers for it, to handle a lot of the ghosting issues at that end. I think Boox actually refreshes portions of screens, and a double or triple video buffer in X/Wayland could do the same.

(One problem with Boox is their relentless phone-home to servers in China, which cannot be disable by normal means.)

swinglock4• 11 months ago

Damn shame, because otherwise they look brilliant, I would have wanted one. Thanks for the warning.

dspillett2• 11 months ago

Another problem with Boox is the disregard of the requirements of the GPL family of licences. I've been interested in some of their devices but won't touch them due to that (and now due to the issue you stated - though I was unaware there was un-disablable “telemetry”, I'd have to look into that if they ever did something about the lack of GPL compliance).

foolswisdom• 11 months ago

Can you tell us more about the phoning home?

DrJaws3• 11 months ago

boox devices are not even close to 75hz though

not even the latest ones like tab x c

RossBencina6• 11 months ago

The dev kit works with most if not all eink panels. You are not limited to the panels shipped in this launch.

It is fully open, the full source code, gateware and hardware designs are on github: https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider

teucris• 11 months ago

The screens included in these kits are glossy, however the board can support pretty much any screen up to 13”, including matte and flexible. On the ghosting - we’ve been thinking a lot about Wayland drivers and other software solutions. We’re working on an SDK that allows a compositor or other software to not just refresh portions of the screen but also change the display mode for certain portions as well.

alex-a-soto12• 11 months ago

Thanks! Yes, it does update quickly, and ghosting is still an issue, though I think there’s room for improvement on the OS/software side. I gave a talk at the Linux App Summit earlier this year where I shared some ideas for how this could work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7xTs9-2AgU

b1123• 11 months ago

I think, if you look at Boox and how they have display options and config for each app, you could do this for X11 quite easily. Especially a custom backend video driver which flattens to greyscale, and distinguishes change on a per app basis.

An incredibly hacky thing, is that (as an example) Sawfish is an immensely extensible window manager. You can literally drop in lisp code linking actions by tagging on window names, application names, and so on.

So you could actually extend sawfish quite easily, and then do what Boox is doing. Change per-window methods of refresh, by interfacing with the backend video driver in X11, and so on.

I think a lot of people who don't use Linux, would "put up" with Linux if there was a way to use a framework with a display. So I think, strongly think, that the display of course and your work of course must be done, but that it relies very strongly on slapping together a more holistic environment.

Just thoughts. And good luck with this.

exceptione• 11 months ago

Being Dutch I am proud to see NLNet and the EU financially supporting this project.

We deny ourselves so much progress by forcing smart individuals with a passion into conglomerates that are merely busy destroying competition. Small to medium sized organizations have the biggest potential for innovation, and look what two people even can do.

RossBencina6• 11 months ago

Agree, and for those who aren't aware, these grants are available to anyone, not limited to Netherlands residents: https://nlnet.nl/NGI0/

Vinnl• 11 months ago

In fact, NGI is funded by the EU - NLNet just happens to be the org doing the handing-out.

tonyhart7• 11 months ago

"EU financially supporting this project."

wdym about EU funding this project, I see backer list and there are bunch of US citizen

rsto• 11 months ago

It's an interesting project, but I'm confused why they got funded with EU money. Their company is based in Boston and it looks as both of them are living in them US, which suggests neither of them is European citizen or pays taxes in the EU, which ultimately is where the money for these grants comes from. The funding requirements of NLNet state "it is a knock-out criterion for each project to have a "European dimension [...] where a significant contribution towards the vision of the Next Generation Internet initiative also qualifies".

I'm not trying to pick on this particular project, I just found out non-EU projects can apply at all. I hope the majority of NLNet money goes to projects that actually are executed in Europe and build expertise there.

alex-a-soto12• 11 months ago

Thank you for your kind words. I agree that small teams can achieve a lot.

We’re grateful to NLnet and the EU, whose support made this project possible and especially in overcoming complex challenges. We’ve made a point of attending conferences and sharing what we’ve learned. Now that the project is ready, we can focus on expanding that knowledge and collaborating with people everywhere.

torium3• 11 months ago

Not sure I understand what I'm looking at.

At 0:47, which one is the e-ink, left hand side or right hand side? Initially I thought the e-ink was on the left hand side, but it has SO MUCH GLARE.

Also on the intro at 0:10 you can see the glare move across as they tilt it.

More glare: 0:26 (left) 0:28 (top left).

I have an e-ink reader and it has zero glare. I read it on the beach as clearly as paper, I'm not exaggerating.

They've done the hardest part (the latency), how don't know how to explain fumbling this badly on the easy part. It shouldn't have glass in front!!

KolmogorovComp• 11 months ago

It’s obviously the left one. I don’t see much glare on it.

torium3• 11 months ago

You don't see the glare on the left hand side? Are you trolling me?

https://imgur.com/AsMMNmi

https://imgur.com/a/kHBiPmu

technothrasher• 11 months ago

Their big claim, at least it seems on quick glance, is in the controller, not the display. You can use any e-ink display with it. The display with glare that you're complaining about I think is just the cheap display they're including in the dev kit.

torium3• 11 months ago

Oh really? I completely missed that. I thought what they were offering was an e-ink display with a latency that's low enough to use as computer screen.

It's possible I just can't read.

alex-a-soto12• 11 months ago

At 0:47, both sides use the same e-ink panel, the left in outdoor conditions, and the right indoor.

Latency was one of the challenges we addressed, and our driver board supports different panels, you can use one with lower glare if preferred.

jzellis• 11 months ago

This would be absolutely amazing for a productivity device. I've rooted my Kindle Paperwhite and set it up with a terminal and used it to SSH into my laptop just to try it, but the latency makes it a bit irritating just to keep up with typing. To be able to use a fully graphical environment in e-paper, even in grayscale, would be amazing.

I built a cyberdeck that primarily uses a pair of XReal AR glasses as its display, but to have the option to use either those or this would be so awesome.

WillAdams3• 11 months ago

Even without the advantages of e-ink, a display which one can view _anywhere_ is a compelling thing, which opens up a lot of possibilities --- my favourite Windows device was a Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 w/ a transflective LCD, which I used as my main computer, e-book reader, notepad (writing/drawing/annotating with a stylus), and map display when traveling.

The transflective display eliminated issues regarding reflection or the display getting washed out by even full, bright, direct sunlight (I would use it for reference material for building sand castles at the beach).

Unfortunately, transflective LCDs do _not_ showroom well (dim) and no one seemed willing to make the investment to show their capabilities (build a daylight-equivalent light booth on the store floor).

I keep eyeing a Daylight Computer, but these days, I just use a Kindle Scribe for reading and note-taking/sketching/reference, and I limit my activities when in full sun to those things which it can do well, changing location/finding shade when I need to do other things.

RossBencina6• 11 months ago

Are you familiar with Sun Vision RLCD displays? They seem to get good reviews. Not cheap though: https://www.sunvisiondisplay.com/

afandian2• 11 months ago

HannsNote2 looks amazing in the sunshine. But very slow processor and very low capacity battery. It’s a niche use case but great for a couple of hours of KOReader in the sun.

https://www.hannspree.com/product/hannsnote2

Igrom• 11 months ago

Can you showcase the cyberdeck? I've found a post by you on Twitter, but I don't know if you demo it elsewhere.

lagniappe• 11 months ago

I use a similar setup :) Have you done a blog post or anything?

criddell• 11 months ago

I built a cyberdeck

Have you written about this anywhere? If not, I’d love to see a ShowHN post about your project and I bet I’m not the only one.

What’s your background? I ask because I really want something like a TRS-80 Model 100. Is interfacing a low end (power efficient) board to an LCD or eInk display something an electronics neophyte could reasonably take on?

A lot of homemade slab computers seem to rely on Raspberry Pi boards but those draw quite a lot of power and tend to run Linux. It’s not a combination that I’m going to be able to run for weeks at a time on 4 AA batteries (one of my goals).

When building your cyberdeck, were there any resources in particular that you found helpful?

newsclues2• 11 months ago

Looks like they would be good for Home Assistant dashboards.

voxadam• 11 months ago

Maybe if they supported touch.

newsclues2• 11 months ago

Not really, not everyone likes or wants touch, and the fingerprints on screens.

Switches, buttons, sliders and knobs are excellent physical input devices when used properly.

ajtaylor• 11 months ago

That was my very first thought as well. I'm wanting to build a display that can show the status of various things - garage door, temperature, air quality, etc. Ideally it could run on battery too so I could mount it anywhere. Just need to find the time and motivation to do it, among all the other priorities & interests.

Escapade5160• 11 months ago

Soldered Inkplate is a solid option for anyone wanting a device with Wi-Fi, backlight, touch screen, battery, and runs arduino or micro python. Recently set one up as a display that updates if I'm in a meeting or free that I hang on my office door.

whamlastxmas• 11 months ago

Also shout out to https://usetrmnl.com/ which is much cheaper than OP if all you need is a display that updates every 5+ minutes. The founder is a really cool guy and cares a lot about this project

RossBencina6• 11 months ago

Looks like my post got a second chance. I'm not affiliated with the project, but I am an interested e-ink monitor enthusiast.

You may be interested to know that this project is a fully open project, all source code, verilog, algorithm documentation and hardware design files are on github:

https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider https://gitlab.com/zephray/caster

Forgeties792• 11 months ago

I talked to my wife constantly about how badly I want an e-ink monitor, they’re just still so expensive for the specs I want haha. I’d take a solid 24”, maybe 21”, b&w 30hz at this point if the price was right (sub-$500).

alex-a-soto12• 11 months ago

Yeah, to get a 24" e-ink monitor anywhere near that price, we’d need much higher production volumes. Right now, it just isn’t mass-produced enough to bring costs down to the sub-$500 range.

alex-a-soto12• 11 months ago

Three years ago, I posted about modding a ThinkPad T480 into an e-ink laptop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26245563

That turned into a community project and eventually into building our own FPGA-based e-ink display controller to improve refresh speed and reduce ghosting.

The result is a dev kit and monitor: open hardware, supports 6–13" monochrome and color e-ink panels over HDMI or USB-C, up to 75 Hz with sub-100 ms latency, and includes a C API.

Hardware, firmware, docs and schematics: https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider

Palomides• 11 months ago

I'm probably getting one for desktop use, but I'm also curious for other use cases, what's the power usage like? while idle or doing high frame rate video?

RossBencina6• 11 months ago

The devboard shipped with this kit has USB Type-C DisplayPort and DVI via microHDMI, both provided by off-the-shelf interface ICs. I would love to see a version that can take LVDS from a typical laptop motherboard to allow for modding a laptop (maybe a Framework 13)? The design appears to use a low-end FPGA with fairly modest resource usage, so I suspect it is technically feasible to interface video LVDS direct to the FPGA. I'm not sure about the power requirements however.

wtallis• 11 months ago

The Type-C DP input appears to be using a DP to LVDS converter, so the FPGA is already accepting LVDS, it just doesn't expose a connector for it. But for interfacing with laptops, these days it's eDP that matters, not LVDS. So the issue is mostly the mismatch between an internal eDP connector vs the board's type-C connector.

lemonberry• 11 months ago

There was a really neat post here from November of last year about a person making an e-ink display for his mother with amnesia. It may be of interest if you like this stuff.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42135520

perching_aix• 11 months ago

Really impressed by how fast epaper is these days, but the demo video really doesn't look refresh rate compliant at 60 Hz.

alex-a-soto12• 11 months ago

We have some other videos, with more to come this week.

Generative Forest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fLYVwh4XCE

Return of the Obra Dinn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClK8lDJWJcw

qwertytyyuu• 11 months ago

75hz woah

ryanckulp• 11 months ago

we bought a couple of these at TRMNL for testing purposes ;)

alex-a-soto12• 11 months ago

Can't wait to see what you have in mind ;)

arkensaw• 11 months ago

I'm disappointed by how expensive these things still are. Smartphone size eink panels are so cheap that every supermarket has thousands of them as price display panels. but try and find epaper bigger than 10" and you'll be paying $350+ just for a panel that does nothing by itself.

system2• 11 months ago

Can't do anything with eink in the USA because of the patents. This is very frustrating.

oojuliuso• 11 months ago

Why Amazon can't use its economies of scale to build a Kindle monitor that devs and writers would early adopt like wildfire is a strange curiosity.

wkat4242• 11 months ago

Um that "driver board" has more power than a raspberry pi lol. No wonder it's so expensive

Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

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