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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

#41

Post by the_biot »

torgoguys wrote: post #33

Oh, hi all! I didn't my project to show up here today! This was just my private notes-to-self I'm using to organize a group to create this thing. These notes haven't been cleaned up to be public yet (near the end it gets particularly messy and the memory map has changed from the state shown on this page), but oh well, it's been found! I will answer any questions you may have. And if you want to help make this, my ema…

I realize this might simply put me into the "not target demographic" group, but what makes this so useful as a terminal, that a laptop won't do?

I could understand the no-distraction writing i.e. word processor use-case that some people think E-Ink would be good for, but that doesn't appear in your list of possible applications either.

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

#42

Post by Ideabile »

barrenko wrote: post #31
Ideabile wrote: post #26

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 r…

Hi, if I can ask, what is that keyboard? My local electronics chain had it listed as "Raspberry keyboard" but it's no longer available and I've been looking for it for months.

The keyboard is a Dell K07M, but beside the cute form factor I will NOT recommend buying it. Maybe mine is damage, but I got a lot of ghosting in my key pressing. I’m looking to replace it, maybe with a K3.

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

#43

Post by maicro »

barrenko wrote: post #31
Ideabile wrote: post #26

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 r…

Hi, if I can ask, what is that keyboard? My local electronics chain had it listed as "Raspberry keyboard" but it's no longer available and I've been looking for it for months.

Dell logo in the top left corner, bluetooth indicator in the top right; nothing on the Dell website that matches it, but on Amazon and Newegg "Dell KW14M01" looks very similar (though neither have the logo top left, so could be different minor version or not actually Dell...).

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

#44

Post by torgoguys »

the_biot wrote: post #41
torgoguys wrote: post #33

Oh, hi all! I didn't my project to show up here today! This was just my private notes-to-self I'm using to organize a group to create this thing. These notes haven't been cleaned up to be public yet (near the end it gets particularly messy and the memory map has changed from the state shown on this page), but oh well, it's been found! I will answer any questions you may have. And if you want to help make this, my ema…

I realize this might simply put me into the "not target demographic" group, but what makes this so useful as a terminal, that a laptop won't do? I could understand the no-distraction writing i.e. word processor use-case that some people think E-Ink would be good for, but that doesn't appear in your list of possible applications either.

Use as a distraction-free word processor is listed as a use-case if you read far enough. (As mentioned, the notes are a bit of a mess and weren't cleaned up for public consumption.)

But, yes, a laptop can do pretty much everything Paperterm can do. A laptop can do everything a Kindle can do. A laptop can do a huge percent of what your phone can do. If the advantages of this niche device (e.g., sunlight-readable display with no backlight/blue-light, it's insane battery life, a no-compromise keyboard, and it's always-ready-"never-off" state) doesn't appeal to you, then you're right, you're probably just not in the target demographic. Those in the target market find a lot to love in such specs. This is explicitly a niche product, not trying to be everything for everyone (which is closer to what a laptop does).

EDIT: if you have a look at the (also not ready for announcement) root of the domain, you'll see a brief pitch: http://www.paperterm.org/ This page also has notes-to-self in brackets, and I'm not in a spot where I can fix it right now, so ignore that.

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

#46

Post by James-Livesey »

Neat! I've been thinking of building something similar to this — a portable Linux machine that has an eInk display and little QWERTY keyboard, in a size that's a just a bit bigger than a smartphone.

I've had a spare eInk display laying around for some time now, and it's about ~~5"~~ 3.7" in size, I think. I managed to get it working with a Pi Zero, and wrote a small Python script which captures the desktop, and then compares it to the previous capture, and then updates the bounds of where the capture is different. Somewhat slow with a Pi Zero, but still somewhat usable. I really need to look into the possibility of performing partial refreshes on the display to save it from having to invert the screen every time there is a change.

I might try and use a Pi 4/ Pi CM4 to drive the whole thing — I believe the bottleneck mainly lies in sending the data over to the display, which the Pi Zero is unfortunately quite slow at doing. Plus, it would potentially be a bit more powerful/useful with the newer processor found on the Pi 4!

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

#47

Post by torgoguys »

James-Livesey wrote: post #46

Neat! I've been thinking of building something similar to this — a portable Linux machine that has an eInk display and little QWERTY keyboard, in a size that's a just a bit bigger than a smartphone. I've had a spare eInk display laying around for some time now, and it's about ~~5"~~ 3.7" in size, I think. I managed to get it working with a Pi Zero, and wrote a small Python script which captures the desktop, and then…

Sounds like a neat project. Yes, partial refreshes help a lot, lot, lot!

Battery life might end up becoming a problem if you intend for it to run on batteries. Compared to PaperTerm or smartphones, a Pi uses a lot of juice, but it is great for proof-of-concept!

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

#48

Post by _ph_ »

torgoguys wrote: post #33

Oh, hi all! I didn't my project to show up here today! This was just my private notes-to-self I'm using to organize a group to create this thing. These notes haven't been cleaned up to be public yet (near the end it gets particularly messy and the memory map has changed from the state shown on this page), but oh well, it's been found! I will answer any questions you may have. And if you want to help make this, my ema…

Sounds like a very interesting project, I certainly would be tempted to have an eInk terminal. Can you post images on how the terminal looks on the eInk screens?

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

#49

Post by James-Livesey »

torgoguys wrote: post #47
James-Livesey wrote: post #46

Neat! I've been thinking of building something similar to this — a portable Linux machine that has an eInk display and little QWERTY keyboard, in a size that's a just a bit bigger than a smartphone. I've had a spare eInk display laying around for some time now, and it's about ~~5"~~ 3.7" in size, I think. I managed to get it working with a Pi Zero, and wrote a small Python script which captures the desktop, and then…

Sounds like a neat project. Yes, partial refreshes help a lot, lot, lot! Battery life might end up becoming a problem if you intend for it to run on batteries. Compared to PaperTerm or smartphones, a Pi uses a lot of juice, but it is great for proof-of-concept!

Thanks! As you say, the Pi does chew up quite a bit of the battery life, but I hope that usage should last for at least a day or two. I plan to use a 3,000 mAh battery with the thing, which seems to be quite a lot — my Pixel 4 has 2,800 mAh _and_ that doesn't even have an eInk display! For the purposes of my project, I'm not really focused on trying to make the device extremely thin either. Something relatively chunky (like 1-1.5 cm) is sometimes quite nice and welcoming imo.

I wrote up my own notes-to-self much like the author of the PaperTerm did, which provides a brief overview of my general ideas: https://github.com/inkySystems/resources

It's a tiny bit outdated since it has no mention of my idea of using a Pi CM4. I haven't got many publicly-available info about what I've done so far with my board (seeing that it's a side-side-project of mine or something to that effect...) but it's something I'm experimenting with whenever I've got time on my hands!

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

#50

Post by pickledish »

Ha, this looks great, the list of goals seems really similar to a list I came up with a couple years ago for what I’d consider optimal for a writing device, too:

http://www.willett.io/posts/device/

So, I’m of course in total agreement, and interested! Is there any place we can sign up for some kind of mailing list?

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