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The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

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Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#101

Post by a1o »

paxys wrote: post #71
ghostly_s wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing a product from one of the largest companies on earth with an upstart. and even the cheapest ad-supported Kindle is only 2/3 the price of this in US?

The cheapest Kindle is routinely on sale for $60-70. And spec wise there is really no comparison. The Kindle has a backlight. 1448x1072 resolution (compared to this one's 800x480). Battery that can last a month. USB-C. 16GB storage. Bluetooth. It's a very capable device. The fact that this one is made by an "upstart" means nothing. You have to compete on price and quality to be successful. Plus if this company goes o…

> if this company goes out of business and shuts their servers you are left with a $150 paperweight

Wait, this doesn't work offline or just in a local network? Why does this has to phone home?

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#102

Post by 6bb32646d83d »

esperent wrote: post #98
arsome wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kobos are pretty trivially jailbroken if you're looking for a similar competitive device.

Old Kobos were awesome, I had one for years running Kohreader. Sadly I lost it. Then when I researched new Kobos, about two years ago, it seemed like the quality has gone down a lot as the company has been sold several times. Is that still the case?

I use a Kobo Libra 2 and I find it great. It replaced my Paperwhite. It's easy enough to side load apps if you want too (but I find that I don't - I just need it to read books and it does that well)

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#103

Post by dmd »

beAbU wrote: post #100
konschubert wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, when you make like a million of these you have different economies of scale, plus an ability to negotiate with suppliers. This is the power of making a product at huge scale. The amount of technology I can buy in a $90 Android phone is mind boggling.

Also consider that the devices you mention are probably heavily subsidised. The kindle is a gateway drug into the rest of the Amazon ecosystem, and you probably need some form of subscription to get full use out of it, or at the least you need to buy ebooks on Amazon for it. The $90 phone probably comes with facebook and other social apps + bloatware pre-installed, that no doubt ended up there because of some commerc…

The (eink) kindle is a fabulous device and in absolutely no way requires you to buy ebooks from Amazon. you can just plug it in and put Mobi files on it.

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#104

Post by chrisco255 »

paxys wrote: post #66

Products like these make me realize that a standard e-reader has the perfect general purpose e-ink display. The Kindle for example is about the same size as this but much sleeker, is backlit, multi-tone, has a battery, wifi, bluetooth, all for less than half the price. I wish there were more mainstream jailbreaking projects and alternative operating systems to really unlock their potential.

The main reason there isn't is because e-ink tech is controlled by a company with a strict and expensive licensing arrangement. Until the patent expires, we're unlikely to realize the technology's full potential.

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#105

Post by User23 »

I would pay good money for a tabloid eink reader, so 17x11 inches. Ideally it would fold. A folding pair of 8.5x11 screens designed to work together would fit my use case too. So far as I know, nobody makes such a thing. Ideally it would be color but I’d settle for monochrome.

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#106

Post by Rebelgecko »

merelysounds wrote: post #81
Rebelgecko wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have the link handy, but there's a company that sells 6-8 inch eink screens that are just recycled kindle parts with a more hobbyist-friendly interface attached

Sounds interesting! I found the following (below); was it that? https://soldered.com/product/soldered-inkplate-6plus-with-en... > What is especially interesting is that Inkplate uses recycled screens taken from old e-book readers (...)

I think so! Unfortunately they're actually more expensive than buying a Kindle, but I guess that's the price you pay for something that's conviently hackable

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#107

Post by napsy »

hau wrote: post #63
m-p-3 wrote: post #5

What I'm wondering is how open the device is for being operated entirely locally. I want to make sure I can still operate it myself so that I don't have to generate e-waste when it becomes "obsolete" by the maker. Otherwise the form factor is really good-looking and I'd put this in my kitchen.

Apparently it could be configured to use self-hosted local visionect server. https://hub.docker.com/r/visionect/visionect-server-v3/

The device in the article is not compatible with Visionect, but Visionect does offer digital signage devices (with even 13", 32" or even 42" e-ink displays). The prices of these devices are a bit premium but you get what you pay for.

Disclaimer: I work for Visionect

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#108

Post by Qwertious »

chrisco255 wrote: post #104
paxys wrote: post #66

Products like these make me realize that a standard e-reader has the perfect general purpose e-ink display. The Kindle for example is about the same size as this but much sleeker, is backlit, multi-tone, has a battery, wifi, bluetooth, all for less than half the price. I wish there were more mainstream jailbreaking projects and alternative operating systems to really unlock their potential.

The main reason there isn't is because e-ink tech is controlled by a company with a strict and expensive licensing arrangement. Until the patent expires, we're unlikely to realize the technology's full potential.

This is a myth, endlessly repeated without a source. Not only have the original patents expired, but there's a competing tech called Display Electronic Slurry (DES, or the cofferdam tech).

The real reason e-ink hasn't seen much innovation is that it's a tiny niche market, because e-ink is useful for e-readers and not much else. In contrast, LCDs are produced at a rate of billions per quarter, which gives room for lots of companies to compete furiously.

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#109

Post by vosper »

rubatuga wrote: post #96
gklitt wrote: post #13

I bought one of these for my house recently and it’s been great. We wrote custom software for our own info display, straightforward since you just serve images over an HTTP endpoint. I’m sure there are cheaper ways to achieve this result but it’s nice to have a prebuilt package like this. My only complaint is that the custom software requires using a proxy server managed by the device creator which is bad for longevi…

Why wouldn't you just buy a used kindle touch? Once rooted, it runs python3, curl, and imagemagick, I use it to query the Canadian weather API and display the forecast. No proxies needed! Plus it only costs $40 used... Essentially a local-device version of my earlier attempt at an e-paper weather display: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oel08SDFyIY If there's enough interest I can release a new video.

Please do release a new video! There’s a comment thread about “it’s a pity kindles don’t seem to get jailbroken” so presumably some people are confused (me included)

Re: The Invisible Screen – An E-Paper Smart Display

#110

Post by dcreater »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #54

I love e-ink displays, and I wish there would be more options out there for creartive use, like this one by Invisible Screen (hello Konschubert, thanks for creating this!) What I'd love is a large, high-res, perhaps color, e-ink display that I can use either as a second screen, or as an indipendent computer. I read hours every day on an LCD screen, and most of that reading would be much better on an e-ink.

It sounds like you're looking for the reMarkable 2
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