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ReMarkable Paper Tablet

blog.getremarkable.com

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Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#81

Post by linuxkerneldev »

sandsmark wrote: post #24
pttrsmrt wrote: post #16

I was sold until this line: "Your thoughts, whether they’re words or sketches, are instantly synced to reMarkable’s cloud service" Imagine for a company only five years back to literally say that your thoughts are sent to their server. I welcome any product that understand we need less distractions and less help from so-called AI, but there are many reasons to be cautious about this one (preorder, latency claim and l…

the reason we're a bit scant on technical details so far is partly because we have spent most of our technical resources on actually making the device. but we'll try to get out a more technical blog post soon. another reason is that we can't share too much about what we're working on in case some journalist picks up some wording as promising some feature we can't deliver on. a lot of the stuff we're working on is stu…

You wrote:

> really interested in how we have solved the latency problem, and we don't want to help them.

But just before that, you also wrote ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13072333 ):

> One of the issues I personally want to solve is the lack of a hackable e-paper device.

So which is it? You want to make a hackable (I interpret that to mean free and open source) e-paper device where you let everyone see how you solved the latency problem? OR do you want to make a closed source thing where only you and you alone have this magical device that has the lowest latency E Ink panel by a factor of 2?

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#82

Post by sandsmark »

davman wrote: post #68
sandsmark wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

our goal for solving it was to get it down to where it wasn't a detriment for the writing and sketching experience. one of the first things we did was gather data and read what research there was on what kind of latency was noticeable and lead to writing feeling "wrong". so we solved our goal, but it's always possible to get better.

So obviously without actually trying one myself I can't say that you are incorrect, but certainly the demo video you provided still has a feeling of wrongness. Its like with animation, we're still stuck in the uncanny valley but you are definitely climbing out of it.

this is one of the reasons we need to get this in the hands of some kind of ambassadors that can test for themselves and give us some validation. imho the video doesn't do it much justice.

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#83

Post by linuxkerneldev »

sandsmark wrote: post #54
scottlocklin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're just reusing the hardware module Sony uses on its Digital Paper DPTS1 thingee and putting Android on it. Assuming it's a legit project.

no, we don't use Android, unlike pretty much everyone else. and the EPD is designed by e ink based on our requirements, e. g. the size and high DPI.

> no, we don't use Android, unlike pretty much everyone else.

Most companies making EPD products use the base OS provided by their SoC vendor. Based on your spec which says 1GHz ARM A9 , I'm guessing you're using the NXP (formerly Freescale, now Qualcomm) i.mx6 SoloLite since that's the only 1GHz ARM A9 with an EPDC controller on the market. Freescale gives you a Linux EPD and an Android EPD Linux BSP, both of which use the same epdc driver with pretty much the same latency which is definitely pretty high, much higher than 55ms for sure.

> EPD is designed by e ink based on our requirements, e. g. the size and high DPI

Are you claiming that E Ink manufactured a custom 10.3" panel just for you?

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#84

Post by sandsmark »

FroshKiller wrote: post #73
alimw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too struggle (and fail) to keep physical papers organised. But I'm not sure why electronic papers should be any easier? Unless there's some amazing software that can recognise content automatically...

You can't grep paper.

just to clear up any possible confusion; don't expect text recognition.

it's probably the most requested feature, but it's a really, really hard problem.

but please send me a message at martin.sandsmark@remarkable.no if anyone have any tips about solutions to this (we're talking with a couple of vendors, but we might have missed some).

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#85

Post by kartoffelmos »

sandsmark wrote: post #79
kartoffelmos wrote: post #75

I've tried the prototype device, and I'm very excited that this is finally coming to market! That said, and it might be nitpicky of me, but the choice of micro-USB for charging is a real annoyance. This is a premium device at a premium price point which I'm expecting to keep for many years. USB-C for portable devices is something that I'm considering a must-have at this point. Will probably wait for the first hardwar…

the reasons we decided against usb c are a) the device would have to be thicker, b) our industrial designer didn't like how it would look, and most importantly; c) I still have a hard time finding usb c cables. I always have to bring my own.

As for point C: I fully believe that the opposite will be the case in three years time. Just feels a bit... shortsighted. I mean, even Nintendo is going for USB-C in their upcoming device (and even Apple, in their own hamfisted way :P )

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#86

Post by sandsmark »

linuxkerneldev wrote: post #81
sandsmark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the reason we're a bit scant on technical details so far is partly because we have spent most of our technical resources on actually making the device. but we'll try to get out a more technical blog post soon. another reason is that we can't share too much about what we're working on in case some journalist picks up some wording as promising some feature we can't deliver on. a lot of the stuff we're working on is stu…

You wrote: > really interested in how we have solved the latency problem, and we don't want to help them. But just before that, you also wrote ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13072333 ): > One of the issues I personally want to solve is the lack of a hackable e-paper device. So which is it? You want to make a hackable (I interpret that to mean free and open source) e-paper device where you let everyone see how…

it won't take many weeks (or days) from we release the device until our solution is reverse engineered, no matter how much we lock it down. but until then we want to keep as much as possible secret.

as for hackable device; we don't intend to release the magic sauce that makes the latency goes down. what I meant with hackable is that I've wanted an e-paper device which I could run my own code on, without having to look for security holes in the software running on it.

but again; we can't promise anything at this point wrt. hackability; we have limited time and resources, and our focus is on making the device as good as possible. our focus is not on making an open source device, we're not going to release the gerber files. :-)

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#87

Post by linuxkerneldev »

sandsmark wrote: post #86
linuxkerneldev wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote: > really interested in how we have solved the latency problem, and we don't want to help them. But just before that, you also wrote ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13072333 ): > One of the issues I personally want to solve is the lack of a hackable e-paper device. So which is it? You want to make a hackable (I interpret that to mean free and open source) e-paper device where you let everyone see how…

it won't take many weeks (or days) from we release the device until our solution is reverse engineered, no matter how much we lock it down. but until then we want to keep as much as possible secret. as for hackable device; we don't intend to release the magic sauce that makes the latency goes down. what I meant with hackable is that I've wanted an e-paper device which I could run my own code on, without having to loo…

> we don't intend to release the magic sauce that makes the latency goes down.

Ok.

> what I meant with hackable is that I've wanted an e-paper device which I could run my own code on, without having to look for security holes in the software running on it.

If your software is closed source, then I don't understand how anyone other than you effectively (or practically) would be able to solve or fix any security holes.

> we're not going to release the gerber files

You're setting up a strawman there. I was not asking for your hardware design or even mentioning it in anyway. I was pointing out that you are contradicting yourself when you say your product is hackable to software developers and then 30s later say that there will be "magic sauce" in software that will be closed.

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#88

Post by sandsmark »

linuxkerneldev wrote: post #83
sandsmark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, we don't use Android, unlike pretty much everyone else. and the EPD is designed by e ink based on our requirements, e. g. the size and high DPI.

> no, we don't use Android, unlike pretty much everyone else. Most companies making EPD products use the base OS provided by their SoC vendor. Based on your spec which says 1GHz ARM A9 , I'm guessing you're using the NXP (formerly Freescale, now Qualcomm) i.mx6 SoloLite since that's the only 1GHz ARM A9 with an EPDC controller on the market. Freescale gives you a Linux EPD and an Android EPD Linux BSP, both of which…

Again, I can't discuss too many technical details. But yes, it's an i.MX6SL, I thought we mentioned that on the web page.

And there are actually several drivers for the EPDC available. Two from freescale for the imx6 and imx7 (though there are some other improvements in the _v2, apart from imx7 support). There's also another one written by lab126, but I'm not sure if they actually use it. there's also some minor variations in the drivers in the different kernel branches and trees from NXP. And then you have the u-boot drivers. And I think there might be one in the bare metal SDK, but I haven't looked. And then you have the 5bit waveform support, which is a whole other story (with iffy GPL implications for some vendors I won't name).

And the display was designed based on our requirements, but we don't have any kind of exclusivity on it. there's already other devices coming out with it (you can find them if you google the specs, especially the awkward resolution we got thanks to the limits of the technology and our DPI requirement).

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#89

Post by FroshKiller »

sandsmark wrote: post #84
FroshKiller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't grep paper.

just to clear up any possible confusion; don't expect text recognition. it's probably the most requested feature, but it's a really, really hard problem. but please send me a message at martin.sandsmark@remarkable.no if anyone have any tips about solutions to this (we're talking with a couple of vendors, but we might have missed some).

Yeah, to be clear, I was talking about the advantages of electronic documents over paper in general, not any specific application of this device.

Re: ReMarkable Paper Tablet

#90

Post by linuxkerneldev »

sandsmark wrote: post #88
linuxkerneldev wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no, we don't use Android, unlike pretty much everyone else. Most companies making EPD products use the base OS provided by their SoC vendor. Based on your spec which says 1GHz ARM A9 , I'm guessing you're using the NXP (formerly Freescale, now Qualcomm) i.mx6 SoloLite since that's the only 1GHz ARM A9 with an EPDC controller on the market. Freescale gives you a Linux EPD and an Android EPD Linux BSP, both of which…

Again, I can't discuss too many technical details. But yes, it's an i.MX6SL, I thought we mentioned that on the web page. And there are actually several drivers for the EPDC available. Two from freescale for the imx6 and imx7 (though there are some other improvements in the _v2, apart from imx7 support). There's also another one written by lab126, but I'm not sure if they actually use it. there's also some minor vari…

> it's an i.MX6SL, I thought we mentioned that on the web page.

Your website only says: "Processor 1 GHz ARM A9 CPU"

> Two from freescale for the imx6 and imx7

Ok, but you are using imx6.

> There's also another one written by lab126

Nope. That's the same driver from Freescale. You can download the kindle source to verify. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

> then you have the u-boot drivers.

u-boot just draws a splash screen.

> you have the 5bit waveform support, which is a whole other story (with iffy GPL implications for some vendors I won't name).

I don't understand what you're trying to communicate. Why would a EPD waveform have any GPL implications? An EPD waveform is not software, it is a set of timing values and that's it.

> the display was designed based on our requirements

I'm having difficulty understanding what that means. It sounded like you were saying E Ink designed a panel for you, but maybe what you're saying is just that E Ink had a panel that met your requirements.

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