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E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

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Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#51

Post by thelastgallon »

orlandohill wrote: post #34
jillesvangurp wrote: post #16

It would be nice to see somebody do a device that isn't crippled in terms of hardware and software. In my experience, most hardware companies aren't very good at software and vice versa. Apple seems a rare exception to this rule. I'd love a laptop that I can use outside. Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside. It kind of works but it's not that comfortable on the eyes. And that's supposed to be a screen…

You could connect your laptop to an e-ink monitor. That's what I do. I've been using a 13.3" Dasung Paperlike HD-FT e-ink monitor since 2020. The refresh rate is fine for reading and writing code, and most websites are easily usable in black and white. I normally use a terminal-based text editor in light-mode with syntax colouring turned off. It's not great for detailed videos, but sometimes it's good enough. Dasung…

Wish it were cheaper. $1600 (closer to 1800 with taxes for most people): https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-p...

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#52

Post by globular-toast »

E-ink is special because it has basically no downsides when compared to paper. This makes it perfect for reading regular black and white books and for the vast majority of readers it's all they need. As soon as you try to do more, there are tradeoffs, like with anything else. I've never found a screen to be anywhere near as good as paper for writing (unless it comes with a keyboard, but even then it's not as good for drawing pictures etc). So it's just another device that might work for you, but might not. I can't see it replacing eink unless it has literally no downsides (including cost).

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#53

Post by squarefoot »

londons_explore wrote: post #46

Readers might be interested in this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006647598296.html never used it, but am considering getting it to lay on top of my laptop screen for outdoor coding. One of the reviewers seems to suggest it is made out of the CPU etc from an old bitcoin miner which is no longer economic to run, but with an extra circuit board added, which is a neat way to get value out of old electronics!

Uses a XC7Z010 SoC which also contains a FPGA.

https://docs.amd.com/v/u/en-US/ds190-Zynq-7000-Overview

Searching the board name "EBAZ4205" brings some interesting results.

https://github.com/xjtuecho/EBAZ4205

https://theokelo.co.ke/getting-starting-with-ebaz4205-zynq-7...

https://github.com/XyleMora/EBAZ4205

https://hackaday.io/project/187351-cheap-35-and-powerful-fpg...

http://cholla.mmto.org/ebaz4205/

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/ebaz4205-(zynq-7000-based...

https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/kmk9f9/ebaz4205_recyc...

...etc.

About €30 on Aliexpress, so it's cheap.

Edit: corrected the €10 mistake.

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#54

Post by orbisvicis »

mcbetz wrote: post #9

Any first-hand experiences with the Nxtpaper devices? There's a lot of press coverage of the release official material, especially on the 14 inch model, but few actual reviews. Availability or even infos on availability is an issue, at least in Europe as well.

There are surprisingly few reviews of any nxtpaper devices outdoors. Chalid Raqami did a comparison with two generations of eink displays, stating that the nxtpaper 10s appears hard to read and washed out outdoors but the accompanying video clip hardly demonstrates that.

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#55

Post by SSLy »

squarefoot wrote: post #53
londons_explore wrote: post #46

Readers might be interested in this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006647598296.html never used it, but am considering getting it to lay on top of my laptop screen for outdoor coding. One of the reviewers seems to suggest it is made out of the CPU etc from an old bitcoin miner which is no longer economic to run, but with an extra circuit board added, which is a neat way to get value out of old electronics!

Uses a XC7Z010 SoC which also contains a FPGA. https://docs.amd.com/v/u/en-US/ds190-Zynq-7000-Overview Searching the board name "EBAZ4205" brings some interesting results. https://github.com/xjtuecho/EBAZ4205 https://theokelo.co.ke/getting-starting-with-ebaz4205-zynq-7... https://github.com/XyleMora/EBAZ4205 https://hackaday.io/project/187351-cheap-35-and-powerful-fpg... http://cholla.mmto.org/ebaz4205/ https://www.e…

now it's 110€ for me, did we splashdot-effect it?

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#56

Post by WillAdams »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #16

It would be nice to see somebody do a device that isn't crippled in terms of hardware and software. In my experience, most hardware companies aren't very good at software and vice versa. Apple seems a rare exception to this rule. I'd love a laptop that I can use outside. Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside. It kind of works but it's not that comfortable on the eyes. And that's supposed to be a screen…

I really miss, and worry that I will never be able to replace my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 which had a transflective display (which allowed using it in full-bright, direct sunlight, even at the beach) and a stylus --- closest I came was a Samsung Galaxy Book 12 (which I wasn't able to replace).

The problem is, trying to out-bright the sun on a battery-powered device is exactly as stupid as it sounds, and solutions such as transflective displays don't showroom well (someone should build a showroom w/ a light booth which simulates a bright sunny day and invite folks to try to use devices in it w/o shading them).

At this point in time, I'm seriously considering switching to a Raspberry Pi 5 as a daily driver (paired w/ a Wacom One 13 gen2 display w/ touch) --- if that display could be supplemented by (or swapped out for) an e-ink or similar daylight viewable pen-enabled display, it would probably push me over the edge (and yes, I've considered just pointing my Kindle Scribe's web browser at a page on the rPi --- if someone has a tool which would allow this to capture stylus input, please let me know).

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#57

Post by WillAdams »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #50
jillesvangurp wrote: post #16

It would be nice to see somebody do a device that isn't crippled in terms of hardware and software. In my experience, most hardware companies aren't very good at software and vice versa. Apple seems a rare exception to this rule. I'd love a laptop that I can use outside. Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside. It kind of works but it's not that comfortable on the eyes. And that's supposed to be a screen…

> Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside. There's a hack for that. Involves running a full screen transparent overlay which tricks the OS into letting you turn the screen brightness all the way up. Silly that it's necessary but works very well. I don't remember the name of the program.

Trying to outbright the sun on a battery powered device just results in displays w/ burnt-in screen elements and a dead battery.

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#58

Post by WithinReason »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #31
WithinReason wrote: post #7

Instead of reflecting ambient light, why not measure it and then emit the same amount? It should be indistinguishable (as long as you reconstruct the RGB colors properly), so you can use a regular OLED display.

Because a sunny day at the equator is about a kilowatt per square metre. A typical mobile phone display is about 100 cm^2 (0.01 m^2), so you would need to emit 10 watts to match sunlight. As far as I can tell OLEDs are 20% efficient or less so you would need an input power of 50 W. Even at 60 deg. N where I live we get over 300 W/m^2 in August so would still need about 15 W of input power to the display.

Just aim the light at the user's face and those power requirements reduce by 99% :)

Re: E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

#59

Post by reirob »

carlosjobim wrote: post #27
jillesvangurp wrote: post #16

It would be nice to see somebody do a device that isn't crippled in terms of hardware and software. In my experience, most hardware companies aren't very good at software and vice versa. Apple seems a rare exception to this rule. I'd love a laptop that I can use outside. Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside. It kind of works but it's not that comfortable on the eyes. And that's supposed to be a screen…

Your best solution right now is the 13 inch Onyx Boox Tab X. Put it in front of your MacBook screen and connect through VNC, or leave the Mac at home. They can't connect through wire. Or wait and see if they release a color version of the same size soon.

I have a color Boox tablet, and I am very very disappointed about the colors. Very hard to distinguish many colors and shades. Black and white though is really good.
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