• Displays one month • Needs battery change more than monthly I.e. it’s still less work to have a paper calendar and flip a page every month.
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E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
141–150 of 171 posts
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently, this is not true according to an HN user robinsoh who works in the industry. Check his comment history more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robinsoh
He doesn't seem to ever provide any evidence for his claims other than a repeated "I work in the display industry"..
I think you've misunderstood my comments.
I saw this recurring theme on HN that electrophoretic panels were expensive due to patents and evil misdeeds by that most evil corporation called E-Corp.
I thought, hey, I work in this bloody display industry myself where everything is about volume, volume and more volume, and I hangout with their guys at conferences and events, and I've never heard such a thing as them using patents to attack other industry players. Are they really attacking people and hurting customers that want to use their technology as alleged?
So I asked a simple question each time I saw that claim that E Ink uses patents to attack startups or similar claims. What's the evidence?
And guess what. Now it turns back to people like you who ask what is my evidence that there's no evil misdeeds. And to which I just feign shock, oh no, it must be true then, since a lack of evidence for them being innocent of the alllegations must mean they are guilty.
So we're left back at square 1. I hope people with a smarter mind than mine can arrive at whatever the correct conclusions are.
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#143The first thing I always do with these E-Ink projects is to check the price of the display, to see if it's come down at all since the last time I checked over the last 3+ years: > Waveshare 12.48" Tri-color E-Ink Display - $179.99 NOPE
The price of displays has come down. Color e-ink is new tech, and as such is more expensive.
Problem is - three-pigment e-ink was a new tech 10 years ago and still of luxury niche.
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#144Hey man, this is so cool. I hope it’s okay to plug here: I am working towards releasing a similar product for sale: https://www.invisible-computers.com/ Unfortunately the display isn’t as big as the one you chose and it isn’t battery powered. But I am starting to ship the first units, so there is that :)
Completely off topic, but you could have followed "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with "Dinner with Andre"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Dinner_with_Andre
You weren't lying about being completely off topic.
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patents & monopoly
Apparently, this is not true according to an HN user robinsoh who works in the industry. Check his comment history more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robinsoh
I asked someone from Visionect (eInk maker) what was driving the price for large panels and they said the same thing: just not enough volume yet.
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
He doesn't seem to ever provide any evidence for his claims other than a repeated "I work in the display industry"..
I think you've misunderstood my comments. I saw this recurring theme on HN that electrophoretic panels were expensive due to patents and evil misdeeds by that most evil corporation called E-Corp. I thought, hey, I work in this bloody display industry myself where everything is about volume, volume and more volume, and I hangout with their guys at conferences and events, and I've never heard such a thing as them using…
Could you please tell a bit more about the volume-side of story? Somehow I feel that E-ink is at this weird point on the cost/volume curve because it is a fundamentally flawed display technology: monochrome or a couple of dull colors at best, very slow refresh rate (with ghosting/leftover on partial refresh).
LCD/OLED displays were also very expensive initially, but because they're so much appealing universally, loads of money got poured into the industry to make them better and cheaper (mostly due to volume demand).
There's no such amount of money/interest in making E-ink better and cheaper :(
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#147Can’t explain why but all these E-Ink projects are so awesome and attractive to me. I’m surprised I can’t just buy a bunch of E-Ink style gizmos from some company to decorate my home and office. My wallet would be wide open to it constantly. Great work and congrats on this!
I buy old kindles for this, ~50$ per piece. they have a linux os & battery included. you get in through a serial port and a password generated for your serial number. downside is that you fight the kindle os in certain aspects. see for example: https://github.com/Neelakurinji123/kindle-weather-display
Tried that, but when I was at the process of soldering the cables to the debug ports, the "solder spots" came out of the board :(
Now I need to press hard with a needles to make the serial port work - so it is quite hard to setup - at least until I install sshd there and setup wifi to make it work wirelessly.
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've misunderstood my comments. I saw this recurring theme on HN that electrophoretic panels were expensive due to patents and evil misdeeds by that most evil corporation called E-Corp. I thought, hey, I work in this bloody display industry myself where everything is about volume, volume and more volume, and I hangout with their guys at conferences and events, and I've never heard such a thing as them using…
Could you please tell a bit more about the volume-side of story? Somehow I feel that E-ink is at this weird point on the cost/volume curve because it is a fundamentally flawed display technology: monochrome or a couple of dull colors at best, very slow refresh rate (with ghosting/leftover on partial refresh). LCD/OLED displays were also very expensive initially, but because they're so much appealing universally, load…
Please search my comment history for what I posted about electrophoresis and physics. I don't think they'll be able to get past the physical limitation. To summarize, you either move ink fast but end up losing bistability, or move ink slow, as it is currently. Most people don't realize electrophoresis has remained at about 700ms for an update over the last decade. Tricks like A2 sure with the Dasung, but nothing substantial.
As for the comment about "money/interest", see my comments about why a venture capitalist would have little interest in spending billions trying to create new display tech and fighting hard expensive physics problems when they could get higher rate of return by investing in another software service or ML/AI company. That said, Jeff Bezos spent hundred million or more on trying to get Liquavista working, Qualcomm spent lord knows how much on Mirasol. Great demos, but just couldn't get the process scaled or reliable enough to commercialize. Physics is hard. Physics is expensive.
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#149The main problem with e-ink is finding a display that doesn't cost 5x what an LCD of the same size would cost. This display was $179 before it became unavailable. That's on the low end for such displays bigger than phone-sized. If the e-ink people ever overcome their cost problem, we'll see many more products.
I just used an old eBook reader I had lying around. It shows the weather forecast.
Did you repurpose the screen or use the e-reader software to point to a data source?
Re: E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you please tell a bit more about the volume-side of story? Somehow I feel that E-ink is at this weird point on the cost/volume curve because it is a fundamentally flawed display technology: monochrome or a couple of dull colors at best, very slow refresh rate (with ghosting/leftover on partial refresh). LCD/OLED displays were also very expensive initially, but because they're so much appealing universally, load…
Please search my comment history for what I posted about electrophoresis and physics. I don't think they'll be able to get past the physical limitation. To summarize, you either move ink fast but end up losing bistability, or move ink slow, as it is currently. Most people don't realize electrophoresis has remained at about 700ms for an update over the last decade. Tricks like A2 sure with the Dasung, but nothing subs…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27831868
Seems to be a meaty thread if anyone else is curious.