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PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

paperterm.org

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Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#21

Post by maaneeack »

codetrotter wrote: post #18
thomasfl wrote: post #15

I have been craving an e-ink laptop with a low voltage RISC processor for twenty years. It is impossible to open a normal laptop at night, after the kids have gone to bed, without becoming more awake than after a double espresso. I can't stare into a bright back lit screen at night. It often ends up with me sitting way to late up at night. At daytime, the often ridiculously bright back lit screen makes me unfocused a…

If I could afford it I would buy an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi https://onyxboox.com/boox_maxlumi It can be used as an external monitor for your laptop or desktop via HDMI port according to https://onyxboox.com/files/manuals/BOOX_MaxLumi_User_Manual.... Screen Size 13.3 inch Resolution 2200*1650 Is it actually good enough to do real work on? I don't know, but I would be willing to try. Certainly looks interesting. https://www…

have you seen the pinenote annoucement? https://www.pine64.org/2021/08/15/introducing-the-pinenote/

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#22

Post by Y_Y »

Yaggo wrote: post #13

Is the refresh time of e-ink display suitable for convenient terminal use? (I just skimmed the article.) When reading an e-book, the page is typically refreshed 1-2 times per minute, while the typical CLI use is more fast-paced, not to mention TUI programs.

Yes, if you're only making small updates and not dumping tons of lines all the time the even an old e-ink display is plenty fast. It works the same way when you're menuing on an e-reader.

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#23

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Yaggo wrote: post #13

Is the refresh time of e-ink display suitable for convenient terminal use? (I just skimmed the article.) When reading an e-book, the page is typically refreshed 1-2 times per minute, while the typical CLI use is more fast-paced, not to mention TUI programs.

The modern ones are quite impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTok6imfgoM

Still very expensive, but with tech it's just a matter of years

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#24

Post by endymi0n »

codetrotter wrote: post #18
thomasfl wrote: post #15

I have been craving an e-ink laptop with a low voltage RISC processor for twenty years. It is impossible to open a normal laptop at night, after the kids have gone to bed, without becoming more awake than after a double espresso. I can't stare into a bright back lit screen at night. It often ends up with me sitting way to late up at night. At daytime, the often ridiculously bright back lit screen makes me unfocused a…

If I could afford it I would buy an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi https://onyxboox.com/boox_maxlumi It can be used as an external monitor for your laptop or desktop via HDMI port according to https://onyxboox.com/files/manuals/BOOX_MaxLumi_User_Manual.... Screen Size 13.3 inch Resolution 2200*1650 Is it actually good enough to do real work on? I don't know, but I would be willing to try. Certainly looks interesting. https://www…

I own one, it's a true three star experience. It's completely unique in its class as it's a true e-ink display at A4/Letter scale and even has two monochromatic backlight sources, one without any blue light. That rocks.

It's a near-perfect reader and digital notepad and that's what I use it for.

The software however is bad. Did I say bad? It's laggy, it's supposedly Android but not really. Lots of apps only work semi-well if they use colors or greyscale. It feels like using a tablet device from a decade ago.

In the end, I'm still rather happy, but it's hard to justify the price point.

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#25

Post by pjerem »

jbverschoor wrote: post #11
holsta wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Remarkable 2 -- it doesn't have a good SSH client nor supports an external keyboard, as far as I know.

Sounds like an easy 'dev mode' to add, and capture a large market of developers. For years I've been looking into eink for development etc.

Remarkable is actually very open. Getting root access is as easy as going to the bottom of the About page to get the device's ip and its root password for SSH access.

But still, the hacking scene is far from big. There is no SDK. You can do things with QT but for a lot of use cases, you have to work directly with the screen capacities. e-ink screens are not good old framebuffer screens. If you want to have nice performance (like, instant note taking), you have to actually "draw" things on it.

You can draw things relatively fast on an e-ink device. But you can not draw a lot of things at the same time. That's why you have to wait maybe a full second between two pages of your book, but you can also have a blazing fast writing experience.

So the display paradigm is totally different compared to a classic screen and you can't just port existing apps. Well, you can, but it'll be without the "smart refresh" part. So it will be slow. If you want something usable, you have to think what and when to draw things on the screen.

Hence, few usefull apps exists on remarkable, because you have to build them from zero, with no real documentation, and to target a niche.

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#26

Post by Ideabile »

I leave a picture of my setup that I previously posted in Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/o16nfa/pretty_please...

This is a BOOX Note Air, with Termux + Mosh + TMUX and my editor of choice Emacs DOOM.

I'm pretty happy of this setup. I went in holiday and I manage to use my editor to do some coding.

The only side effect is that it requires internet for extra processing power, although you could still run all locally depending on your requirements.

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#27

Post by avnigo »

Yaggo wrote: post #13

Is the refresh time of e-ink display suitable for convenient terminal use? (I just skimmed the article.) When reading an e-book, the page is typically refreshed 1-2 times per minute, while the typical CLI use is more fast-paced, not to mention TUI programs.

From the demos I've seen of other e-ink tablet devices like the Max Lumi, it seems like it can handle handwriting pretty smoothly [0].

So it could probably handle typical CLI use too, but higher refresh rates would of course mean higher battery usage. I think e-ink displays can handle local refresh zones, so it doesn't necessarily mean that it would have to refresh the whole screen.

However, without pagination, a lot of our computer usage includes scrolling, and I would imagine that's more power intensive, and can maybe hit the refresh rate limits of e-ink displays. I guess that would be akin to a lot of phones now letting you pick a fixed or variable refresh rate depending on the experience and battery life you want to get out of the device.

[0]: https://youtu.be/B8X7JPdgsh0?t=788

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#28

Post by [deleted] »

endymi0n wrote: post #24
codetrotter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could afford it I would buy an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi https://onyxboox.com/boox_maxlumi It can be used as an external monitor for your laptop or desktop via HDMI port according to https://onyxboox.com/files/manuals/BOOX_MaxLumi_User_Manual.... Screen Size 13.3 inch Resolution 2200*1650 Is it actually good enough to do real work on? I don't know, but I would be willing to try. Certainly looks interesting. https://www…

I own one, it's a true three star experience. It's completely unique in its class as it's a true e-ink display at A4/Letter scale and even has two monochromatic backlight sources, one without any blue light. That rocks. It's a near-perfect reader and digital notepad and that's what I use it for. The software however is bad. Did I say bad? It's laggy, it's supposedly Android but not really. Lots of apps only work semi…

[deleted]

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#29

Post by borzunov »

Years ago, I've made a program turning Pocketbook e-ink readers into computer monitors with some extra features: https://github.com/borzunov/remoteink

The update speed is quite good (comfortable for writing texts and browsing most websites) even when connecting via Wi-Fi.

Re: PaperTerm Concept, An e-paper remote terminal device

#30

Post by salamandersauce »

endymi0n wrote: post #24
codetrotter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could afford it I would buy an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi https://onyxboox.com/boox_maxlumi It can be used as an external monitor for your laptop or desktop via HDMI port according to https://onyxboox.com/files/manuals/BOOX_MaxLumi_User_Manual.... Screen Size 13.3 inch Resolution 2200*1650 Is it actually good enough to do real work on? I don't know, but I would be willing to try. Certainly looks interesting. https://www…

I own one, it's a true three star experience. It's completely unique in its class as it's a true e-ink display at A4/Letter scale and even has two monochromatic backlight sources, one without any blue light. That rocks. It's a near-perfect reader and digital notepad and that's what I use it for. The software however is bad. Did I say bad? It's laggy, it's supposedly Android but not really. Lots of apps only work semi…

It's android. Are you disabling the "Whiten Apps Background" optimization? It's on by default and it makes it harder to use apps I find because controls and buttons end up hidden. Turn it off and it's fine.
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