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Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

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Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#31

Post by tpmx »

dredmorbius wrote: post #27
Sparkle-san wrote: post #18

Imagine where electronic ink displays could be today if E Ink wasn't such a terrible steward of the initial technology.

I'd say you might get your wish in about five years, after present patents expire. There will doubtless be new developments, but present devices are absolutely sufficient for e-book reading and most web surfing / tablet tasks, even at monochrome and modest 0.5 -- 16 Hz refresh or so. Higher-quality display is slower to refresh, though almost all instances are well under sub-second. Colour displays are slower as I und…

We really should shorten patent lifespans to like 10 years. And like 5 (or 0) years for pure software patents.

Things are moving faster these days, with the interwebs and all.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#33

Post by TrinaryWorksToo »

dheera wrote: post #17

I'd love to see someone crack the partial fast update modes of the Boox tablets. They run Android apps, but only the included, closed-source apps like the note-taking app and browser get fast screen updates at high quality. If you try to install a third-party note-taking app the experience is crap.

Can you not use ADB to download the APK off the app and reverse engineer anything anomalous?

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#34

Post by GekkePrutser »

jvik wrote: post #23
GekkePrutser wrote: post #14

Nice. I wish I could put this on my Kindle

What is your use case?

I don't know.. But I have several old kindles laying around :)

Would be a nice console or something.

In fact I'd love a laptop with eInk which I could use outdoors in the sun.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#35

Post by Retric »

tpmx wrote: post #31
dredmorbius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say you might get your wish in about five years, after present patents expire. There will doubtless be new developments, but present devices are absolutely sufficient for e-book reading and most web surfing / tablet tasks, even at monochrome and modest 0.5 -- 16 Hz refresh or so. Higher-quality display is slower to refresh, though almost all instances are well under sub-second. Colour displays are slower as I und…

We really should shorten patent lifespans to like 10 years. And like 5 (or 0) years for pure software patents. Things are moving faster these days, with the interwebs and all.

It's less of a problem with how long patients last, instead it’s the ease and scope of patents granted.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#36

Post by tpmx »

Retric wrote: post #35
tpmx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really should shorten patent lifespans to like 10 years. And like 5 (or 0) years for pure software patents. Things are moving faster these days, with the interwebs and all.

It's less of a problem with how long patients last, instead it’s the ease and scope of patents granted.

The former parameter (how long the patents last) is dramatically easier to define in law than the scope.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#37

Post by muhehe »

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #33
dheera wrote: post #17

I'd love to see someone crack the partial fast update modes of the Boox tablets. They run Android apps, but only the included, closed-source apps like the note-taking app and browser get fast screen updates at high quality. If you try to install a third-party note-taking app the experience is crap.

Can you not use ADB to download the APK off the app and reverse engineer anything anomalous?

Maybe the apps are completely normal, but whitelisted somewhere in the system for different behaviour. Like some phone manufacturers cheat at benchmarks...

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#38

Post by _8rlb »

IshKebab wrote: post #22
alpb wrote: post #19

Is the notable delay between keyboard sounds and video rendering due to the SSH/software?

Later he writes a comment saying is due to network latency. Seems a bit dubious if you ask me though.

I measured and split the latency between the main tasks of a single frame draw.

The main culprit was network delay as I am transmitting raw pixels (one u8 per pixel) compressed with zlib. That's a hit of ~140ms for half a screen.

Next in line is the screen refresh (unmeasured, perceived).

Then the optional post processing (~20ms for half a screen), and housekeeping, like keeping track of dirty regions (about as long).

Lastly writing to the framebuffer (less than 20ms, I don't remember exactly how long).

I took great care to optimise the process, and my next step was to transmit multiple pixels as a single u8 int, the physical display cannot render 255 distinct shades of gray.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#39

Post by LeSaucy »

celie56 wrote: post #28
cassepipe wrote: post #9

What are the current market options for e-ink /displays/devices that you could program on/ that you know of and (don't?) recommend ?

I personally use a Remarkable 1 with yaft (1) as a terminal. I connect via ssh to a tmux session for editing and the response is fast enough. 1. https://github.com/timower/rM2-stuff/tree/master/apps/yaft

Don't let the .cpp file extensions fool you, its c.

Re: Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text

#40

Post by ernesth »

otras wrote: post #8

Wow, this is great! I've been hoping for eInk with good refresh for years, and seeing it in action in your demo is very cool. > The screen can refresh up to 30 times per second, this will degrade the eInk display rapidly. Do not use with fast changing content like videos. Have you noticed the degraded display in your Kobo? I imagine it's not uniform across all pixels, since editing would mostly be localized to your c…

I thought 11 years ago that e-ink with good refresh was achieved, seeing bookeen's prototype display videos and full screen scrolling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxwceUvxlCo

But all e-ink devices I have seen since were slow and would form time to time show remanence.

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