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Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

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Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#51

Post by camgunz »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #50
camgunz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built a colorscheme for Vim [0] that is close to monochrome when I was worried about blue light (I've since had kids and now this kind of worry doesn't rate at all), and I basically use bold and highlights (I hate underlining, italics, and squiggles, but I think you can do all that too in the GUI version). I found it surprisingly usable. [0]: https://github.com/camgunz/amber

> in the GUI version or in the TUI version, in a terminal like Kitty. I want to try some monochrome UI, but that amber is definitely not my taste. Let me see if there is a "paper-like" theme, or maybe I can make one myself.

I (re)built it w/ a little script I call roygvim [0] -- here's the source [1]

[0]: https://github.com/camgunz/roygvim

[1]: https://pastebin.com/b0LRpjUC

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#52

Post by alex-a-soto »

exceptione wrote: post #15

Being Dutch I am proud to see NLNet and the EU financially supporting this project. We deny ourselves so much progress by forcing smart individuals with a passion into conglomerates that are merely busy destroying competition. Small to medium sized organizations have the biggest potential for innovation, and look what two people even can do.

Thank you for your kind words. I agree that small teams can achieve a lot.

We’re grateful to NLnet and the EU, whose support made this project possible and especially in overcoming complex challenges. We’ve made a point of attending conferences and sharing what we’ve learned. Now that the project is ready, we can focus on expanding that knowledge and collaborating with people everywhere.

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#53

Post by clueless »

swinglock wrote: post #3
sandos wrote: post #2

It seems to update fast, but with significant ghosting, right? Looking at the cat example. Maybe this is just the best e-ink can do, and thats fine!

It looks amazing for e-ink. You'd probably don't want this for video anyway, besides it's not even in color. I'm impressed that it works at all. For a lot of work though it could be amazing, depending on your environment. Say you'd want to pop outside in the nice weather to do some programming. You quickly find why that wasn't as glamorous as you expected. But if you had a laptop with such a screen I would expect it…

this is not the same technology as e-ink, hence why they call it e-paper

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#54

Post by alex-a-soto »

sandos wrote: post #2

It seems to update fast, but with significant ghosting, right? Looking at the cat example. Maybe this is just the best e-ink can do, and thats fine!

Thanks! Yes, it does update quickly, and ghosting is still an issue, though I think there’s room for improvement on the OS/software side. I gave a talk at the Linux App Summit earlier this year where I shared some ideas for how this could work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7xTs9-2AgU

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#55

Post by alex-a-soto »

clueless wrote: post #53
swinglock wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks amazing for e-ink. You'd probably don't want this for video anyway, besides it's not even in color. I'm impressed that it works at all. For a lot of work though it could be amazing, depending on your environment. Say you'd want to pop outside in the nice weather to do some programming. You quickly find why that wasn't as glamorous as you expected. But if you had a laptop with such a screen I would expect it…

this is not the same technology as e-ink, hence why they call it e-paper

It’s an electrophoretic display, in the category of e-paper, informally called e-ink, made by the company E Ink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper#Electrophoret...

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#56

Post by alex-a-soto »

balou23 wrote: post #8
swinglock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't require it myself but that's a concern, it's nice to have. Maybe someone can build an editor that uses different fonts within one file instead of different colors. Could be something out there for color blind folks already, though seeing no colors at all is unusual. But e-ink has grayscales so you could at least make comments a bit lighter, I think I'd be happy with that.

There's plenty of options available. A coworker of mine used to print out code for reviews. You can use italic, bold and underline as alternative to colors. Grayscale might work nicely for eInk too - for laser printers just thin/regular/bold probably works better. Other fonts... I could see myself being distracted by changing fonts in a document, except maybe for comment blocks. But for those italic/thin seems to wor…

I didn’t know about GNU Enscript, going to check it out. Thanks!

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#57

Post by alex-a-soto »

torium wrote: post #16

Not sure I understand what I'm looking at. At 0:47, which one is the e-ink, left hand side or right hand side? Initially I thought the e-ink was on the left hand side, but it has SO MUCH GLARE. Also on the intro at 0:10 you can see the glare move across as they tilt it. More glare: 0:26 (left) 0:28 (top left). I have an e-ink reader and it has zero glare. I read it on the beach as clearly as paper, I'm not exaggerati…

At 0:47, both sides use the same e-ink panel, the left in outdoor conditions, and the right indoor.

Latency was one of the challenges we addressed, and our driver board supports different panels, you can use one with lower glare if preferred.

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#58

Post by alex-a-soto »

perching_aix wrote: post #38

Really impressed by how fast epaper is these days, but the demo video really doesn't look refresh rate compliant at 60 Hz.

We have some other videos, with more to come this week.

Generative Forest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fLYVwh4XCE

Return of the Obra Dinn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClK8lDJWJcw

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#59

Post by wtallis »

RossBencina wrote: post #33

The devboard shipped with this kit has USB Type-C DisplayPort and DVI via microHDMI, both provided by off-the-shelf interface ICs. I would love to see a version that can take LVDS from a typical laptop motherboard to allow for modding a laptop (maybe a Framework 13)? The design appears to use a low-end FPGA with fairly modest resource usage, so I suspect it is technically feasible to interface video LVDS direct to th…

The Type-C DP input appears to be using a DP to LVDS converter, so the FPGA is already accepting LVDS, it just doesn't expose a connector for it. But for interfacing with laptops, these days it's eDP that matters, not LVDS. So the issue is mostly the mismatch between an internal eDP connector vs the board's type-C connector.

Re: Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit

#60

Post by whamlastxmas »

Escapade5160 wrote: post #26

Soldered Inkplate is a solid option for anyone wanting a device with Wi-Fi, backlight, touch screen, battery, and runs arduino or micro python. Recently set one up as a display that updates if I'm in a meeting or free that I hang on my office door.

Also shout out to https://usetrmnl.com/ which is much cheaper than OP if all you need is a display that updates every 5+ minutes. The founder is a really cool guy and cares a lot about this project
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