Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 208 posts

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#21

Post by opencl »

Abroszka wrote: post #16
theshrike79 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been waiting for e-ink displays to become affordable since the first Raspberry Pi came out. I'm still waiting.

I think Dasung and Mira has e-ink 25" monitors, but they are just getting released, so not sure how good they actually are. I also wonder how they worked around the e-ink patents.

They didn't work around any patents, they buy the panels from the company holding the patents.

This is the panel you'll find in the Dasung and Mira monitors: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/25-3%cb%9d-spectra-3100-ep...

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#22

Post by christkv »

empalms wrote: post #20

Every time an E Ink article is posted the patent defeatism is inevitable. I’m curious if there are other techniques to implement reflective(?) displays being explored that wouldn’t fall within the scope of E Ink’s defensible moat, or, if their parents are simply so broad as to stifle most hopes of accessible solutions and broader consumer/professional adoption. Frankly, I’m quite sick of straining my eyes and circadi…

The one laptop per child had one but never went anywhere

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#23

Post by wizzwizz4 »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #12
theshrike79 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have slowly become accustomed to high refresh rate displays. So that's a big no on e-ink displays unless they manage get them to 60Hz+ somehow

The devices I've seen with color e-ink need to intermittently flash the screen. I could live with a slow refresh rate, but having my screen flicker black once or twice a minute is a deal-breaker.

In theory, they could do the “flicker black” as a black band that moves across the screen every so often.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#25

Post by reginaldo »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #19
wyre wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to hook up a small e ink screen to a pi and use it with my mechanical keyboard as a modern typewriter of sorts but the prices on eink are so prohibitive it doesn’t seem worth it.

The response time is what makes devices like this kinda annoying.

Do you say that from experience? I have both a Dasung Paperwhite monitor and a fairly hacked reMarkable 1 that I use for that purpose. Both work well for typing, as long as you type in a way that full refreshes are the exception, not the norm.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#26

Post by rowanG077 »

berkut wrote: post #14
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #2

This is second hand info, so sorry if it's totally wrong, I'll edit this: E-ink tech is great, but patents and other paper-limitations are slowing down developments of cheap e-ink devices devices, and e-ink will become "great again", when patents expire. I personally see many, many usecases of e-ink all around me, but the prices are way too high for anything that is not either really small or a repurposed old existin…

Out of interest, is there actually any evidence that patents are preventing developments in this area?

Not with E-ink specifically. But look at the 3D printing development. It basically exploded once certain patents expired. Now every company I have worked for has had 3D printer in use.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#27

Post by throwthere »

empalms wrote: post #20

Every time an E Ink article is posted the patent defeatism is inevitable. I’m curious if there are other techniques to implement reflective(?) displays being explored that wouldn’t fall within the scope of E Ink’s defensible moat, or, if their parents are simply so broad as to stifle most hopes of accessible solutions and broader consumer/professional adoption. Frankly, I’m quite sick of straining my eyes and circadi…

When does the original parent run out? Will that be the end of this or are there other “process” aka bs patents coming?

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#28

Post by saxonww »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #17
saxonww wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink... Monochrome. It has "turbo refresh tech" but unclear what that really means; with e-readers, similar verbiage just means it's less bad. The resolution and pixel density is very nice. The prices would have to come down by at least a factor of 3 though, IMO. I'd take the under.

E-inks screens don't have to be monochrome. I have one with black, white, and yellow. The hard part is fitting a range of color pigments in the pixel units, so the first e-inks so far have had 2-3. At only three colors, black, white, and one shade makes most sense for information contrast. But nothing says it can't be red, green, and blue... and as the technology miniaturizes, we can fit three in the space of one, ma…

The article details where they're at now. They do have a product using a CMYW scheme, but the refresh and saturation are not good enough. The consumer-acceptable product is a standard monochrome with color filters and a front light, which is better, but has lower resolution.

I suppose with intensive R&D they might figure out how to have acceptable refresh and saturation at competitive resolution, but absent a really big shift in how people view emissive displays, I think they will always be niche.

By acceptable, I mean: can I watch a movie on it and it not feel like a flipbook or slideshow; can I game on it. The article talks about how (at least initially) the pigment transition typically took less than half a second. Is this similar to the response time on an LCD? Those are typically 5ms or less now, roughly 100x faster.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#29

Post by jagger27 »

For most reading and writing tasks I think I’d rather have a a monochrome display with much higher DPI with extremely crisp high contrast edges. I hope that keeps improving too. Colour is something I’m willing to go without for this type of device. Maybe a single highlight colour would be nice to have as long as the red or yellow pigment occupies the same cell as black, not an adjacent one.

A 600 dpi A4 sized tablet would be lovely. It would be a lot harder to get to that effective dot pitch with colour displays.

300 dpi should be the entry level.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#30

Post by travisporter »

opencl wrote: post #21
Abroszka wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Dasung and Mira has e-ink 25" monitors, but they are just getting released, so not sure how good they actually are. I also wonder how they worked around the e-ink patents.

They didn't work around any patents, they buy the panels from the company holding the patents. This is the panel you'll find in the Dasung and Mira monitors: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/25-3%cb%9d-spectra-3100-ep...

I’ve never seen this before outside of medical devices : THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND (II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED
Post reply on HN