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Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

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Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#51

Post by afranchuk »

userbinator wrote: post #48
robocat wrote: post #31

An alternative might be to jailbreak a Kindle 2 or 3, looks like you just need a computer and a USB cable to do so. https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Python_on_Kindle https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Hacks_Information The original OS runs, so what you can do is limited. There are examples of changing the “screensaver” from Python, but I couldn’t see how easy it is to get data into the Kindle (maybe needs USB, w…

Kindle displays are themselves also not hard to drive directly, and relatively cheap: http://essentialscrap.com/eink/ An interesting project someone did with one: https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calendar including pushing the display beyond its original (and currently commercial) limits of 16 levels of grayscale: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284

I absolutely encourage exploring and experimenting, but I wouldn't call the current state (even now) of driving those displays easy. I had a few such displays (and have a decent amount of experience with electronics and reverse engineering), but they differ in subtle ways, and since no comprehensive spec sheets are available you end up futzing around a lot to get it to work. I used that essentialscrap link as well as spritesmods (both excellent resources) and any other little tidbits I could find but it still took lots of iteration until I could even get anything displayed! Not to mention from a technical perspective, driving the displays takes 5 different voltages, 4 of which are fairly atypical.

Still, they're really cool to mess around with, and cheap on eBay :)

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#52

Post by Polylactic_acid »

reom_tobit wrote: post #43
p0llard wrote: post #39

The article mentions turning off the display to avoid ghosting and links to an article about screen burn in; it was my understanding that e-ink displays do not suffer burn in? I was under the impression that e-ink ghosting is simply due to an incomplete refresh of the display (since this causes a flash and is time consuming)? EDIT: Interestingly the datasheet for the component used does indeed mention this; does anyo…

Due to the design of the screens (small capsules containing charged particles that move back and forth to create either black or white) the capsules can retain the charge that is passed through them if not cycled correctly. This will cause the particles within to stay in whatever side of the capsule they were last in, essentially causing a dead “pixel”. If this happens across as a whole image like a logo or text, it’…

"Turning off" the screen seems like an invalid concept as the screen has no "off" state, white pixels are just as much off as black. Seems like all you need to do here is to just blink the screen every now and then. Even one blink cycle per day should be enough since ereaders usually go longer than that and are just fine.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#53

Post by Polylactic_acid »

derefr wrote: post #25
yosito wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I pick up my phone to check a piece of information or complete a simple task, I am presented with some other distraction that threatens to sidetrack me. When I don't want to be distracted, I often leave my phone in another room, turn it off, put it in a bag or even leave home without it. I've often thought of creating my own eink devices with focused purposes to help me get the information I need, while av…

> Every time I pick up my phone to check a piece of information or complete a simple task, I am presented with some other distraction that threatens to sidetrack me. Feels like a very good use of ML on the part of the mobile OS makers would be to decide, based on place and time and activity history, which of your active widgets should appear above the fold on the lockscreen of your phone. (E.g., when near a bus stop,…

Basically every kind of ML of this kind has pissed me off. It never knows exactly what I want and every time it gets it wrong it leads to a very negative experience. I much prefer dumb and predictable UI vs black box ML UI that doesn't know exactly what I want.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#55

Post by napsy »

agloeregrets wrote: post #35

This is one of those projects that would be wonderful if it were paired with a driver to be able to serve standard webpages on the display. Or just with a display driver for the whole pi and Chromium.

This is exactly what the Visionect Place&Play does: can display HTML5 content on E-Ink displays (see https://www.visionect.com/products/place-and-play/) and is packaged in a neat casing.

Disclosure: I work for the company

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#57

Post by xixixao »

I strongly believe there is a market for a large, thin, slow-to-update e-ink display to hang on the wall, connect to your phone, and display stuff. I'd pay it for it, wouldn't you?

I'm talking about an end-user product, not just a component for tinkering.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#58

Post by reom_tobit »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #52
reom_tobit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to the design of the screens (small capsules containing charged particles that move back and forth to create either black or white) the capsules can retain the charge that is passed through them if not cycled correctly. This will cause the particles within to stay in whatever side of the capsule they were last in, essentially causing a dead “pixel”. If this happens across as a whole image like a logo or text, it’…

"Turning off" the screen seems like an invalid concept as the screen has no "off" state, white pixels are just as much off as black. Seems like all you need to do here is to just blink the screen every now and then. Even one blink cycle per day should be enough since ereaders usually go longer than that and are just fine.

I believe the danger is not necessarily when you are leaving the capsule in one state or another for a long period of time, I believe it is more to do with a transition. So if you’re going from black -> black you need to cycle to white to ensure you don’t burn the black in.

I’m not an expert though I’ve just faffed around with these displays myself a bit. The datasheets always err on the side of caution, I managed to get maybe 3fps out of mine, but that induced a lot of ghosting. I should try to get back to that project tbh.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#59

Post by vb4 »

cmsj wrote: post #16

I have something similar that shows when the next bus is leaving our nearest stop. I really like it, and I would be tempted to invest in something larger for putting my calendar on the wall in my home office, but the big problem with this sort of thing is that cases are always a disaster. My bus Pi is in a really janky case because there was only really a couple that would fit with the ePaper display on it. If I coul…

I used an IKEA picture frame for this purpose. It was relatively easy to fit one of the larger Waveshare screens inside, I only needed to cut a hole into the cardboard on the backside for the wires. A Pi Zero fits pretty nicely behind the cardboard piece that holds the screen in place, as the frame is rather thick.

If you only glance at it, it looks like I framed a paper printout of my agenda.

Re: Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard

#60

Post by snovv_crash »

cmsj wrote: post #16

I have something similar that shows when the next bus is leaving our nearest stop. I really like it, and I would be tempted to invest in something larger for putting my calendar on the wall in my home office, but the big problem with this sort of thing is that cases are always a disaster. My bus Pi is in a really janky case because there was only really a couple that would fit with the ePaper display on it. If I coul…

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