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CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

cutiepi.io

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Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#71

Post by baybal2 »

rektide wrote: post #54
crazygringo wrote: post #47

I love this concept, I just really want one with an e-ink screen instead. I think there's a great niche for "embedded" devices around the home -- weather readout panels, lighting controls, music player, intercom, etc. -- but glowing rectangles mounted to the wall are just too... glowing. E-ink panels is where it's at, and a Raspberry Pi powering it is perfect. Unfortunately, the only real general-purpose e-ink tablet…

When do the Pixel Qi / One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) / XO-PC screen patents expire? :) Why not both? :) Update: oh holy shit, John Gilmore was a Pixel Qi investor, bought the patents to help the company close cleanly rather than go bankrupt, and licenses the patents with an generally-available Defensive Patent License[1]! What a story!!! Thanks John! Pixel Qi is from ~2010, so he's better than halved the time it took t…

It's a big problem to get active matrix monochrome displays these days, let alone reflective ones.

Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#72

Post by adkadskhj »

notRobot wrote: post #63
kemonocode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it has been stated before but I do wonder why e-ink displays remain still so out of reach even though the sort of parents that were encumbering them have expired? It really does seem that anything that involves e-ink panels comes with a huge markup.

Here's your answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779

The CLEARink product in that thread looks _amazing_. Super excited to see that come to market. I'd buy a dozen of those displays for pairings with Pi's around the house.

Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#73

Post by solarkraft »

crazygringo wrote: post #47

I love this concept, I just really want one with an e-ink screen instead. I think there's a great niche for "embedded" devices around the home -- weather readout panels, lighting controls, music player, intercom, etc. -- but glowing rectangles mounted to the wall are just too... glowing. E-ink panels is where it's at, and a Raspberry Pi powering it is perfect. Unfortunately, the only real general-purpose e-ink tablet…

A friend & I have a dream of building an E-reader based on the 10" ED097OC4 E-ink display that was built into the Kindle DX and can now be had for around 30€ (old stock?).

Most parts of the stack are conceptually figured out:

A Pine64 SOPINE module (comparable to the Raspi CM, but cheaper), a Linux DRM driver based on tinydrm (https://github.com/notro/tinydrm) or gud (https://github.com/notro/gud/), as panel driver either vroland's ESP32 based EPDiy (https://hackaday.io/project/168193-epdiy-976-e-paper-control...) or a custom FPGA solution.

What's really missing and I just can't figure out is how to get a touch input layer on there. Because the format is so weird there's just nothing available off the shelf at a fitting size. Cutting a larger one to size doesn't seem feasible (or is it?), perhaps the most DIYable would be an infrared solution like early kindles and old larger touch screens have, but on that topic there's a distinct lack of information (best I could find is this EEVblog video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnZ9KfJNjRQ).

A button-only navigation would really suck, since even KOReader (the absolute minimum application to run, preferable would be a full Wayland desktop) doesn't seem to be compatible with that.

I figure this is the best place to ask: Does anyone have an idea how this could be solved? Also, would anyone be interested in E-reader kits like that?

Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#74

Post by hedora »

fnord123 wrote: post #70
CharlesW wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can find some for $150-250. Can you share links to less expensive options?

https://www.amazon.com/resolution-interface-Raspberry-Pi-XYG...

I wonder if the orange tab can be folded over without damaging it.

Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#76

Post by botto »

warp wrote: post #23
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

I’ve been following this project for a while. I truly hope they succeed, but as always some caution is warranted about crowdfunding projects. They ran a Kickstarter last year with a target ship date of late November, but I’m not sure how many orders they’ve filled. None of my friends who ordered have received theirs. Their open source repositories are available here: https://github.com/cutiepi-io Note this isn’t a ta…

The reason they're late is because they switched from the Raspbarry Pi 3 compute module to the (then recently announced/released) Raspberry Pi 4 compute module very late into the project. I would have preferred if they had shipped what they had, instead of delaying the project for that upgrade, but it seems most backers preferred to get the shiny new thing, even if it meant the project was delayed.

I think if they had stuck to the CM3 this would have lived a short life of "Oh, this is neat, but ugh so sluggish and can't really use it" to now it's an actually viable alternative to low powered laptop/tablet as you can upgrade it to the cm4 with 8gb ram

Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#77

Post by t0r0nat0r »

crazygringo wrote: post #47

I love this concept, I just really want one with an e-ink screen instead. I think there's a great niche for "embedded" devices around the home -- weather readout panels, lighting controls, music player, intercom, etc. -- but glowing rectangles mounted to the wall are just too... glowing. E-ink panels is where it's at, and a Raspberry Pi powering it is perfect. Unfortunately, the only real general-purpose e-ink tablet…

I got the BOOX Note 3 and it somewhat dooes what I need it to. It’s mind boggling to me, however, that nobody has tapped into this market yet. I think Lenovo even made a laptop which had one e-ink as well as a regular display, but used the e-ink display in place of the keyboard. That just felt like they were rubbing it in tbh.

Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#78

Post by botto »

spicybright wrote: post #40
kmfrk wrote: post #33

Would love to see a bullet point about repairability somewhere. That's one of the most compelling points about indie projects like this for me.

Besides swapping the Pi out I'd imagine there's very little repair ability. PCB with tiny components, custom screen, etc.

Considering all the hardware and software is open source the repairability will be high, obviously you will need some tools to do it.

Re: CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

#80

Post by botto »

StevePerkins wrote: post #39

Two-hundred bucks is basically "impulse purchase" territory, but I'm nevertheless struggling to see the use case here. If you're into maker projects with Raspberry Pis, then I'm not sure what this does for you. It's a Pi already built into a consumer device. Not seemingly a platform for new maker projects. If you want a tablet with a Linux kernel buried in there somewhere, then there's probably a thousand Android opt…

The pitch of this project is not great imo.

Not sure saying it's an open source table is any better but calling it a tool for keeping projects on the go is also just weird.

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