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E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

goodereader.com

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Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#11

Post by captainmuon »

Roritharr wrote: post #2

E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...

I don't understand how that is even possible. Patent owners want their cut, but in the end they want the product to be made, too, because that's the only way they get money. So they will take as high a cut they can negotiate, reducing the margins of the end manufacturer to a marginal price. But that is the case with every "supplier".

At work I looked into integrating e-ink into a product, and the problem seems not patent fees, but availability. Granted, that could be due to patents itself, but the answers I got why it's hard to procure e-ink display were sadly "the end customers don't want it" and "e-ink is dead".

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#12

Post by colordrops »

dev_dull wrote: post #9
jfim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Importers would likely get their shipments seized. It's not illegal for manufacturers to export their goods out of China, but US customs doesn't look too highly on importing goods that contravene on registered US IP. Small time shipments are unlikely to be looked at (eg. if someone buys a single electronic ink display off of AliExpress), but someone actually importing many displays for resale would likely eventually…

Honestly how would you even know if the e-ink displays infringe on IP? I can’t imagine them doing anything.

Enough market/distribution and either the patent owner or a patent troll will find out.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#13

Post by orbital-decay »

Roritharr wrote: post #2

E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...

Funny how the name of the company (E Ink) became almost synonymous with the actual tech (EPD, or electronic paper if you want to generalize).

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#14

Post by captainmuon »

reustle wrote: post #4
Roritharr wrote: post #2

E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...

Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?

It's a common misconception that there is no IP law in China. Patents do exist, and you do have to respect them (at least if it is a chinese patent or you intend to sell into the patent's country). Of course, as with many things there, enforcement is spotty, so you might get away with it for a while. But the days are over where you could completely fly under the radar with a grey market production. It's hard to completely hide your big ass illegal factory in Shenzhen, especially when you have to register every little thing with the state. As in every other country, your competitors or patent owners can just get a lawyer, look up your address, and sue you.

Granted, I do understand that from the perspective of a western entrepreneur trying to do business in China it seems to be a lawless space, especially if you've been burnt by fake products from Alibaba etc..

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#15

Post by FullyFunctional »

This is really frustrating as if you already have an FPGA (and appropriate regulators), the controller is just redundant overhead (in every metric conceivable). I'm glad to see at least the beginning of reverse engineering as some of the panels (typically kindle replacement panels) are quite affordable and even the $450 13.3" panel isn't unreasonably expensive. (An FPGA-powered PocketCHIP-like device with e-Ink would be a lot of fun).

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#16

Post by ehead »

In my experience, memory LCD has been a better technology to work with: https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd-technology

No crazy +/- 40V lines, no external driver circuitry, and extremely low power. Not as low power as E Ink, but since you don’t need to drive wacky voltages, your power budget math will come out the same or better.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#17

Post by chaoxu »

Recently, I brought a Dasung paperlike HD to use as a monitor. (crazy expensive, prob should've spend money elsewhere...) I thought some things were impossible with eink, but it proved me wrong. (video in a reasonable fps)

It has a few different ways of display. For example: Floyd–Steinberg dithering: essentially only black and white with dithering, and the speed pretty good. A16: uses 16 shades of grey, but the speed is horrible for moving images. So I wonder if a mix of the two can do much better (e.g. moving objects using floyd-steinberg until it stops moving)

Before doing that, I need to know the exact limit of eink. Are some operations slow because the microcontroller or because it is the limit of the display module itself? This article shows such a question is not that easy to answer using the openly available information.

Also, I'm interested if there are algorithmic problems to be solved in this space. (I do research in theoretical computer science). If you are in NYC and knowledgeable I'm very interested to chat (I know little, but I have the monitor you can play with).

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#18

Post by chx »

Some info https://hackaday.io/list/35814-e-paper here and especially from the links provided, everyone is working from http://essentialscrap.com/eink/waveforms.html and http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay

And https://hackaday.io/project/21168-fpga-eink-controller has an FPGA doing waveforms by extracting them from existing firmware. So while it might be a closely guarded secret, just replicating it is possible.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#19

Post by contingencies »

luka-birsa wrote: post #7
reustle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?

Nobody in their right mind would invest 100M in a production line that is likely to be shut down.

Usually you don't have to buy the line, you order sub-assemblies from different suppliers and do final assembly.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#20

Post by robin_reala »

ehead wrote: post #16

In my experience, memory LCD has been a better technology to work with: https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd-technology No crazy +/- 40V lines, no external driver circuitry, and extremely low power. Not as low power as E Ink, but since you don’t need to drive wacky voltages, your power budget math will come out the same or better.

I’ve never seen one in real life. How are the display characteristics compared to eInk?
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