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E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

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Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#41

Post by rwmj »

Vekz wrote: post #27

Here is a teardown of a 13.3 high perf E-ink monitor I did a few months ago: https://kevzettler.com/2018/02/11/dasung-paperlike-pro-teard... The post identifies some on market E-ink display components and discusses the design of a proprietary display driver.

"On closer inspection all the chip components have had their labels chemically peeled off to prevernt reverse engineering."

Wow, I've never seen that. Is it a common thing? It also puts me off buying one of these (assuming the $900 price tag hadn't put me off already).

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#42

Post by sofon »

userbinator wrote: post #3

Is it really "closely guarded", or "worst guarded"? Anyone with a logic analyser and a few hours can probably figure it out easily enough... and some have even gone beyond what the official controllers can do: https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calendar/... (previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284 ) More research from others: http://essentialscrap.com/eink/ https://news.y…

The waveforms will all likely be disclosed in their patents too:

https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp

Certainly a number of drive waveforms and the basic concepts are presented. There are likely implementation subtleties or specific configurations that are not explicitly disclosed.

You can probably figure out a lot about both the implementation, and motivation by digging through the patents.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#43

Post by Tharkun »

chaoxu wrote: post #25
tigershark wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you use an e-ink display for videos? The main advantage is the low power consumption because it needs power only to refresh, using it for a video it will negate that advantage and draw much more power than a traditional display with an awful image quality...

1. Currently, I use it for writing code and reading papers. However, I still want the monitor to be a good enough drop-in monitor for things I need to occasionally do. For example, I need to switch to a browser window to check what was that error I'm getting. 2. Visual snow syndrome: Many had their first experience of visual snow after staring into the screen for too long. People who believe in that is the cause of v…

I was under the impression that Visual Snow was a symptop of anxiety?

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#45

Post by DiabloD3 »

Unfortunately, what the article described sounds a lot like a thermometer coded delta-sigma DAC or other similar design.

How these are constructed and used are well known, and they're probably lying about "closely guarded" to make sure people don't realize it is just a clever usage of an off the shelf part, and none of the magic is in-house.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#46

Post by ben_w »

Lewton wrote: post #36
tigershark wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you use an e-ink display for videos? The main advantage is the low power consumption because it needs power only to refresh, using it for a video it will negate that advantage and draw much more power than a traditional display with an awful image quality...

> The main advantage is the low power consumption No? The main advantage is that it's easier on the eyes

People keep saying eInk is better than reflective black and white LCD, such as that found on calculators.

I’m unconvinced, but (obviously) to test this I would have to actually get a monitor sized black and white reflective display, and I can’t find any of those — largest I have found so far is 320x240 for about £200

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#47

Post by wpietri »

captainmuon wrote: post #11
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 pa…

It's possible because people have different theories of what will benefit themselves. In a functioning marketplace, different suppliers will explore different options. With a monopoly, which is what patents are, you're stuck with whatever notion the patent-owner has.

One perfectly reasonable theory of self-interest is to keep prices very high. Yes, they could drop the price and possibly make more. But they could end up making less, and they'll certainly have to do a lot more negotiation work.

As an analogy, look at Apple. They have less than 20% of the smartphone market, but make 80% of the profit. [1] They were way ahead of everybody and could have captured a much larger share of both the phone and tablet markets. They're using a different theory of self-interest than the other players.

[1] https://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-rakes-...

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#48

Post by ehead »

robin_reala wrote: post #20
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?

If you’ve ever seen an OG Pebble, you’ve seen that display. It looks like a better resolution gameboy display. Very little space between pixels.

Some models are different, though, and basically turn into a mirror when their pixels are turned on, rather than become matte black.

Adafruit sells a dev board for 25 bucks. Perfect for low power wearables, much better than E Ink.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#49

Post by ben_w »

mrob wrote: post #37
chaoxu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Currently, I use it for writing code and reading papers. However, I still want the monitor to be a good enough drop-in monitor for things I need to occasionally do. For example, I need to switch to a browser window to check what was that error I'm getting. 2. Visual snow syndrome: Many had their first experience of visual snow after staring into the screen for too long. People who believe in that is the cause of v…

What exactly about emitted light is a problem? Light doesn't carry a memory of how it was generated, so it must be some difference in some measurable property, e.g. brightness/contrast/color spectrum/flicker/polarization, or the way these change at different viewing angles. If you know which attributes are important then you might be able to match them with an emissive display.

Emissive displays don’t generally match the brightness of their surroundings; even with automatic adjustment, most are physically incapable of being as bright as a newspaper in daylight, and many cannot be as dim as a newspaper lit only by one of those small book-reading lights without being switched off entirely.

There’s also the spikey spectrum, which looks the same consciously but I’ve seen claims [1] that is messes with our circadian rhythm.

[1] I lack the skill to tell if this is real science or neo-mystic woo.

Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret

#50

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ben_w wrote: post #49
mrob wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly about emitted light is a problem? Light doesn't carry a memory of how it was generated, so it must be some difference in some measurable property, e.g. brightness/contrast/color spectrum/flicker/polarization, or the way these change at different viewing angles. If you know which attributes are important then you might be able to match them with an emissive display.

Emissive displays don’t generally match the brightness of their surroundings; even with automatic adjustment, most are physically incapable of being as bright as a newspaper in daylight, and many cannot be as dim as a newspaper lit only by one of those small book-reading lights without being switched off entirely. There’s also the spikey spectrum, which looks the same consciously but I’ve seen claims [1] that is mess…

I found this command that works, so far, on all my Linux laptops, to give much greater control over backlight intensity.

  sudo su -c "echo 200 >/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness"
Replace 200 with another number for different brightness.

Haven't found a Windows nor MacOS equivalent though.

I've used it a fair bit in conjunction with Redshift to get a screen that's reasonable for reading ebooks in low light.

I'd buy an e-ink laptop tomorrow if there was one.

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