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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

#91

Post by blagie »

hansoolo wrote: post #86
blagie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creator: If you decide to move this to a full-fledged startup, it should: 1) Have a touch screen 2) Integrate with Outlook calendar and multiple Google calendars 3) Integrate with smart home features (e.g. lights, temperature, etc) 4) Integrate with other data sources (e.g. news) At $150, be open-source and open-hardware (at a lower price point, I'd do without). I'm looking for something like that. Until then, neat p…

I could tell you a story of a pi and a touchscreen and just some HTML, CSS and Javascript to make it :)

There isn't a single thing I made more than 15 years ago in my house which:

(a) required an operating system

(b) still works

It all bitrots to hell. For comparison, everything I've made on a PIC, Atmel, ESP, etc. continues working.

FPGAs have a more mixed track record; the devices work, but they're unmaintainable (the dev toolchains require e.g. Windows NT and some activation server which no longer exists).

Things I've made out of wood, metal, and similar materials work too, as do PCBs I designed with analog.

My point is I want a piece of hardware and not a computer.

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

#92

Post by lostmsu »

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…

> custom software requires using a proxy server managed by the device creator

Ugh, otherwise sounded attractive.

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

#93

Post by samstave »

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 (...)

Are there any touch screen/sensitive e-inks - such that you could have one as usb WACOM tablet with a pen?

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

#94

Post by bloopernova »

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.

I'd like a version of Firefox's Reader Mode where it instead sends the text to an e-ink display. Remotely to a Kindle could work, or locally to an attached e-ink monitor.

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

#95

Post by yftsui »

ghostly_s wrote: post #68
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.

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 largest company you mentioned outsourced the manufacture to factories like Foxconn. A common pattern of those "upstart" is they are just a different thin wrapper around some other factories, with a crappier spec but able to sell the BOM with higher prices.

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

#96

Post by rubatuga »

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.

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

#97

Post by esperent »

konschubert wrote: post #83
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.

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.

More like a 100 million, from a quick Google search. It seems highly unfair to complain that a small company can't match Amazon's pricing.

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

#98

Post by esperent »

arsome wrote: post #88
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.

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?

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

#99

Post by esperent »

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…

While I love the idea of this, I can't justify the effort and time required to get it to work versus just using a tablet, or even a normal display connected to a home server. If you want a less shiny display you can get matte screen covers, or even just de-saturate the colors in the settings.

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

#100

Post by beAbU »

konschubert wrote: post #83
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.

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 commercial deal.

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