E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
goodereader.com
E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
1–10 of 138 posts
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#2E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#3Is it really "closely guarded", or "worst guarded"? Anyone with a logic analyser and a few hours can probably figure it out easily enough... and some have even gone beyond what the official controllers can do:
https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calendar/... (previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284 )
More research from others:
http://essentialscrap.com/eink/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894613
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/interfacing-e...
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#4E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...
Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#5E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...
Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?
Importers would likely get their shipments seized. It's not illegal for manufacturers to export their goods out of China, but US customs doesn't look too highly on importing goods that contravene on registered US IP.
Small time shipments are unlikely to be looked at (eg. if someone buys a single electronic ink display off of AliExpress), but someone actually importing many displays for resale would likely eventually get caught.
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#6E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...
We shall see if you are correct very soon (for display tech anyway). Key (initial) patents have already stared expiring and will continue to do so quite quickly (1-5 years).
Check : - https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp - https://patents.google.com/patent/US6422687B1/en?assignee=E+...
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#7E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...
Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?
Nobody in their right mind would invest 100M in a production line that is likely to be shut down.
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#8E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...
Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?
I think there are already some which do --- we just don't hear about them much because they tend to be fairly anonymous (for good reason).
I remember reading about "fake" Kindle replacement displays showing up on eBay a while ago, not as good as the real thing in terms of image quality etc. but certainly usable, so someone is clearly making them...
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?
Importers would likely get their shipments seized. It's not illegal for manufacturers to export their goods out of China, but US customs doesn't look too highly on importing goods that contravene on registered US IP. Small time shipments are unlikely to be looked at (eg. if someone buys a single electronic ink display off of AliExpress), but someone actually importing many displays for resale would likely eventually…
Honestly how would you even know if the e-ink displays infringe on IP? I can’t imagine them doing anything.
Re: E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
#10Ben Krasnow (Applied Science on YouTube) did some research into driving e-Ink displays, and he made some similar observations:
> All of the lookup table information has been removed from this datasheet, because the industry thrives on secrecy or something
Highly recommended, as usual for him it's a great video/write-up:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw
* http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fast-partial-refresh-...