[HN Gopher] E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color ...
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E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper
Author : miles
Score : 193 points
Date : 2021-01-17 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (goodereader.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (goodereader.com)
| _Microft wrote:
| Let us hope that there will also be normal, maybe smaller?, e-ink
| displays for PCs and that they will not only be used for eBook
| readers or similar. I for one would love to have a display that
| blends perfectly in with its surroundings and doesn't stand out
| under any lighting conditions.
| underseacables wrote:
| Or ..perhaps..based on your biometric/phone/personal data. Here
| comes Tom. Tom can afford prices to be 15% more. Change the
| price.
|
| We've sort of seen this before with websites showing different
| prices to PC and Macintosh users; based on the analytics that
| people who own a Macintosh would pay more
| _Microft wrote:
| I removed this part of my comment as it distracted from the
| idea of using reflective displays with PCs.
| davesque wrote:
| I've heard people argue that e-ink displays would be in much
| wider use if the patent-holding company weren't so protective of
| the technology. So the news I'm waiting to hear is when E-Ink the
| company decides to loosen up its business practices.
| spoonjim wrote:
| If the patent holding company hadn't bothered, e-ink would
| barely exist though.
| [deleted]
| notRobot wrote:
| If they'd been less strict with their patents then lots of
| other companies would've been able to innovate in the space.
|
| See comments about 3D printer from above in the thread:
|
| > _Don't forget 3D printing that also only really started
| when patents expired._
|
| > _Between 2007-2009, 80+ Stratasys patents expired. Think
| about this - a single company holding back the world in
| advancing forward in 3D printing._
| ianai wrote:
| Too bad one of the megacaps hasn't bought them out.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Yes because the only thing better than a medium sized company
| that won't license its patents is a megacorp that won't
| license its patents /s
|
| No the solution is to incentivize patent licensing and in the
| case of software make it simply not patentable. The corporate
| overlords won't save us from themselves. If they had their
| way patents would simply never expire.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Your first sentence, but unironically.
|
| Big corp probably isn't as devoted to milking one IP asset
| to the detriment of its adoption. And they may have the
| resources to make more products in-house that utilize the
| tech.
|
| I agree that the patent system needs modification in the
| long run, though.
| PeterisP wrote:
| A megacorp sitting on some patents can and will still
| release a whole range of mass market products (large
| volumes, so has to be cheap) that uses those patents and
| makes it available to the masses. A medium sized company
| can't really do that, so at best they will release a niche
| product that makes it available to a few people.
| syshum wrote:
| MegaCorp (like say Amazon) would lock the tech up so only
| their products have it, So instead of being able to pick
| from a Kindle PaperWhite, OnyxBook, and a Remarkable you
| would only have the Kindle... and varitions of the Kindle
|
| Medium Corp will license their patent (at extreme rates)
| to other companies MegaCorp will not.
|
| Medium Corp is better than MegaCorp for consumers most of
| the time. FRAND licensing even batter, and No Patents at
| all even better
| listerOfSmeg wrote:
| not going to happen it s the only thing they have and they know
| its a cash cow if it gets wide adoption unfortunately they have
| gotten greedy and no one will pay it.
|
| They also seem to think their market is digital signage and
| aren't that interested in licensing for other mass market
| consumer products despite the fact the market it has been
| adopted most in is e-readers
| seszett wrote:
| Is it true that e-readers is the largest market for e-ink?
|
| Supermarkets alone use each thousands of e-ink displays for
| shelf price labels for example, I wouldn't be surprised if
| that was a more profitable market than e-readers for e-ink,
| and also much easier to cater to.
| Daho0n wrote:
| This seems to be the opposite of what the article says:
|
| >This technology is not going to be employed for digital
| signage, _but instead will be marketed towards e-reader
| companies_ who want a high resolution alternative to E INK
| Kaleido 2.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| This is why I am so against intellectual monopoly like this.
| It does not create continuous incentive to innovate and
| instead allows companies with just a bit of innovation to
| rest on their laurels. I think there would be much more
| innovation in the world, aka a "higher rate of innovation"
| without intellectual monopolies and intellectual property
| restrictions.
| est31 wrote:
| Why would you want to innovate when the bigger competitor
| can just copy you without paying you anything?
|
| This current situation is unfortunate, but I think it's an
| imperfection of the market. If the patent owning company
| had been a bit less greedy, they could have made far more
| money with it.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > Why would you want to innovate when the bigger
| competitor can just copy you without paying you anything?
|
| Because they can't begin to copy you until you've
| released your product to market, so you have profit
| potential for being the first mover.
|
| This happens all the time as only a small percentage of
| the innovation that occurs actually gets patented.
|
| In some cases it would be possible for a big company to
| take your innovation out from under you but if they can
| do a better job then we're all better off for that. If as
| an inventor you've only got one idea, you're screwed. You
| need to be able to innovate repeatedly.
|
| But the concise way of responding to this is: markets
| already reward innovation. We do not need state controls
| on information to "stimulate innovation". The incentive
| exists as a natural effect of markets.
| z3t4 wrote:
| There are so many people out there with crazy ideas, but
| they don't want to invest in it because they know they
| will be eaten by a bigger fish. Their only hope is to
| stay under the radar long enough so that they will have
| enough money to retire once their idea gets copied.
| est31 wrote:
| Sure there is a tiny reward in that you offer something
| earlier than your competitors, but it might not be enough
| to offset the investments into the research that made it
| possible in the first place. Yes, a lot of innovation is
| not patented, but that's usually the stuff that requires
| little investments.
|
| Also don't forget the disclosure part of patents. If you
| want something be protected by patents, you need to
| publish a description of how you do it. You can't just
| keep the engineers isolated on an island or whatever. A
| no patent world would make manufacturers build in even
| more measures to prevent reverse engineering, engineers
| sharing secrets, etc.
| RobertoG wrote:
| How E ink innovations come to happen?
|
| I think it was developed by MIT and not by E INK, is that
| right?
| hobofan wrote:
| It was developed _by_ professors and students _at_ MIT,
| who then went on to found the E Ink Corporation (and
| presumably found an arrangement regarding the IP with
| MIT). This is the backstory of basically every startup
| founded out of a university lab.
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| For the same reason startups can win over existing
| giants: first to market is important.
| jagger27 wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see it. 32,000 colours at 200 to 300 DPI
| is incredible.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's already here, they speak of the current-generation ACeP:
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression
|
| Saturation, contrast and refresh are still the main weaknesses
| though. Especially because a full-color display uses numerous
| full-page refreshes to achieve all colours which are really
| jarring.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Especially because a full-color display uses numerous full-
| page refreshes to achieve all colours which are really
| jarring.
|
| Can confirm - I have a Kaleido based e-reader and whilst I do
| like that book covers are in colour, scrolling through even a
| small library is jank central due to the multiple refreshes.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I really want an e-ink (I mean an e-ink-only, not a dual-screen
| Lenovo ThinkBook) laptop. And I want it monochrome, low-refresh,
| no-clutter lo-fi. Rich colour, high refresh rates? No, thank you,
| I appreciate the mental silence classic e-ink devices provide.
| Just give me a reMarkable with a keyboard, capable to run a
| terminal and something like Emacs with org-roam.
| willvarfar wrote:
| So I'll ask here as there may be some lurkers who can help me in
| my quest:
|
| I am trying to find a basic e-reader.
|
| I have a simple want: I want a built in browser that will let me
| download ePub and pdf etc from the browser.
|
| I'm not interested in bundled bookstores. I'm not keen on having
| to load books onto it via a pc app nor emailing them nor having
| an Amazon account neither. I just want to be able to browse and
| download FanFiction and stuff like that from a basic browser.
|
| I am guessing I want an android tablet with an e-ink screen? What
| choices do I have and what do people recommend?
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| I use a Kobo Clara HD. It has a Kobo store where you can buy
| books, or you can use the "experimental web browser", point it
| to libgen or your libraries website, and download whatever book
| you want.
|
| More often than not though I just hook it up to my Linux laptop
| and transfer books via usb.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| I use a Kobo Libra H2O which has been quite good to me. For
| people that want to take it to the next level, there's the
| calibre-web project[1]. It's able to tie into calibre and
| push books to kobo devices through the built-in sync command.
|
| [1] https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
| willvarfar wrote:
| Aha, this brand is easy to get ahold of where I am!
|
| Googling suggests the "beta" browser has been beta forever;
| does the software never update?
|
| And does the beta browser support multiple tabs and
| copy+pasting urls? (FanFiction doesn't do ePub, but there are
| several helper websites that provide it if you can copy paste
| the FanFiction URLs)
|
| Thanks awfully for helping me with my research!
| mPReDiToR wrote:
| I got my MobiScribe last week after trying out a ReMarkable
| (v1) for a bit.
|
| The screen isn't as nice to write on, but the software works
| better for me (I hate to say that; it's Android (4.4!)) and it
| has a backlight.
|
| There's the option to sideload apps, but there is a browser
| installed when you buy it. Downloading books and apps can be
| done over WiFi.
|
| I have to say I like it. The option to replace the reader gives
| you flexibility, as did the community offerings on the
| ReMarkable.
|
| MobiScribe costs less, and is smaller.
| smeej wrote:
| I recently bought the Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color. [0]
|
| I love the little guy. Lighter than any paperback I've ever
| owned. Fits in a large pocket. Displays in color! Which lets me
| highlight in color! And runs Android 9.0 with Google Play
| Services (though activating this is a bit hacky). Can install
| whatever Android browser you want. It's the "Gameboy Color"
| stage of color vibrancy, but it's color.
|
| Problem is, to my knowledge, this was a limited run. I got mine
| from Good eReader, but they sold out of this model, and I don't
| know when or if there will be more.
|
| I haven't tested, but I think the Onyx Boox Poke 3 (not color)
| might be able to install GPS too.
|
| [0] https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/hands-on-review-of-
| the-...
|
| ETA: Note about quality of colors.
| locusofself wrote:
| I'd love to see a quality color e-reader, but mostly I just want
| a better black and white kindle. Smoother refresh and better
| contrast.
| kevas wrote:
| What's your thoughts on ever using color eInk for
| coding/development?
|
| - easier on the eyes - hammock driven development
|
| What do you think the refresh rates would need to be to do that?
| randoramax wrote:
| Comic books will start to make sense on eink
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| Probably at least 1 Hz to even be slightly usable as a screen
| you are composing or editing on, but current refresh times are
| multiple seconds so there's still likely a long way to go...
| sircastor wrote:
| I'll be interested to see how long it takes for this to redraw.
| Two color eink panels can be pretty quick these days , but the
| color panels take a while because they're addressing multiple
| layers. This is apparently just one layer.
| listerOfSmeg wrote:
| E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches
| of patents expire. E-ink the company has tied up the tech stack
| in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one
| wants to touch it. E-ink the technology wont go any where for
| 10-15 years when that next big batch of patents expire. Its just
| like 3D displays and VR there will be a massive consumer push new
| batches of patents will be filed progress will grind to a halt as
| no-one can afford everyone else's patent licensing fees on a
| unproven market until the next wave expires and better products
| can be built again repeat
| userbinator wrote:
| What perplexes me more is not the patents (since they are
| public information), but the NDAs. They could've kept the
| underlying technology and manufacturing process patented, while
| at the same time selling mass quantities of the displays to
| everyone who wants to buy some and freely publishing all the
| information on how to drive them (which actually turns out to
| be not that difficult.) I bet that would actually get them more
| profit than the situation today.
|
| That has not stopped the more creative and resourceful
| individuals, however:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14124086
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGVZCEuoccE
| oezi wrote:
| And this is why patent duration should be tied to product
| lifecycle length. Pharma where you need 10 years to pull off
| clinical trials could keep 23 years, but consumer hardware
| where new generation of devices launch within 2 years should be
| limited to 10 years. Software should likely be limited to 5
| years.
| projectileboy wrote:
| I'm so dumb - this never occurred to me, and I've never heard
| anyone express it this way. This makes so much sense. Thanks.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Alternatively, make the cost to renew a patent each year
| increase exponentially, with the base proportional to the
| worth of the individual/company filing the patent at the time
| of filing.
|
| That ties the duration of a patent directly to how much value
| it provides to the company over time, which is the rationale
| for having patents in the first place. A company could only
| afford to hold onto a patent for as long as it causes the
| company's revenue to grow exponentially. Once the patented
| technology matures and growth plateaus, keeping the patent
| would become prohibitively expensive. This would completely
| eliminate patent trolls and patent squatting/speculative
| patents.
| oezi wrote:
| Getting exponential curves right is very tricky though
| (just look at Covid). I believe using such escalating fees
| would just favor the big companies who can stay ahead of
| the curve.
|
| Another idea I think worth exploring is mandatory licensing
| at fixed rates which decline over years and/or are tied to
| revenue the patent holder generates with the patent. The
| goal really should be to increase utility of the patent for
| the public.
| curioussavage wrote:
| Well there haven't really been any competing technologies
| either. Maybe tcl nxtpaper will push eink forward. Or
| ultimately kill it
| syshum wrote:
| Another example of how IP laws have become an enemy of the
| goals society had when passing them, which is not to enrich a
| few corporations but to incentivize innovation, but now it is
| clear copyright, and patents today are doing far more HARM to
| innovation than they advance it
|
| As such we as a society need to look hard at those laws and
| policies to reform them
|
| Sadly the large corporations have a huge amounts of lobby money
| and are rapidly attempting to get the terrible IP laws codified
| into complex international treaties to ensure no nation can do
| any reform at all
| D13Fd wrote:
| I strongly disagree about patents. This is the patent system
| working as designed. It incentivized a company to invent a
| new thing, and gave them a monopoly for a reasonable amount
| of time (20 years). When it ends, others can operate in the
| space.
|
| I agree about copyright, though. Copyright has been expanded
| to cover software and even APIs. Copyright is a giant drag on
| innovation. A single company can tie up a space for life of
| the author plus 70 years, which is absurd. Copyright should
| never have applied to most forms of software, which clearly
| fall into the exceptions of 17 USC SS 102(b). But we are
| where we are.
| syshum wrote:
| Clearly it is not, e-Ink, 3d printing, VR, and hosts of
| other technology has been held back not advanced because of
| patents
|
| Now that is not to say I would advocate for complete
| removal of the patent systems but I do think Compulsory
| FRAND style licensing should be a requirement of obtaining
| a patent
|
| Your distinction between Copyright and Patent is also
| strang as the suffer from the same flaw so it seems your
| only justification is that you believe 20 years is
| "reasonable" but Life is not
|
| I think both are unreasonable, I would personally like to
| see both dropped to 10 years, or some compromise where you
| get 2-3 years exclusive use of the creation then have some
| kind of compulsory license where the creator is compensated
| but can not with hold the creation for 20 years (with some
| kind of scheme that the license be fair and equitable)
| vikramkr wrote:
| Held back might be the tradeoff we have to pay for
| letting them exist in the first place. Developing new
| technologies is not cheap or trivial- especially hardware
| innovations. I'd rather have a delayed 20 year start to
| fast e ink innovation than have e ink never get the r&d
| funding needed to get past the valley of death and make
| it to market in the first place.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 20 years is not a reasonable amount of time for
| technological products in current times.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| Facebook is only 16 years old. Think about that. 20 years
| ago everyone was using 56k modems and JS barely existed.
|
| 20 years is an absurdly long time in tech
| mrfusion wrote:
| Speaking of that, I'd love to get an alert whenever a major
| patent like that expires. It would help predict the tech
| landscape a few years out.
|
| Anyone know of any major expirations in the next few years?
| bastawhiz wrote:
| The trouble is knowing what patents are "big". There are few
| good signals for patents that are holding back innovation.
| Fordec wrote:
| I'd love a newsletter that tracked what patents were expiring
| on any given week. I'm pretty ignorant of what's coming down
| the pipeline from a legal perspective.
| _Microft wrote:
| Don't forget 3D printing that also only really started when
| patents expired.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Between 2007-2009, 80+ Stratasys patents expired. Think about
| this - a single company holding back the world in advancing
| forward in 3D printing. Orthogonally, ever wondered why
| memory on your PC is so expensive? Thanks to Micron, Hynix
| and Samsung triopoly.
| spoonjim wrote:
| But isn't it those same companies that are the reason that
| memory isn't $1000/megabyte?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say here. Are
| you implying that they could price gouge even more than
| they already are and are keeping prices relatively low
| out of the goodness of their hearts?
| est31 wrote:
| I think their point is that these companies gave us cheap
| memory in the first place. Which is an important thing to
| remember. The distruptors of days past are the
| monopolists of today. And they themselves will be
| disrupted one day.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > The distruptors of days past are the monopolists of
| today. And they themselves will be disrupted one day.
|
| I can think of a few that can't be disrupted soon enough.
| dragosmocrii wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the memory pricing?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Here's an article from 2011 doing Moore's Law
| extrapolation of RAM and disk prices:
| https://antranik.org/using-moores-law-to-predict-future-
| memo...
|
| RAM, 2011: "A single 8GB stick of RAM is about $80 right
| now. In 2021, you'd be able to buy a single stick of RAM
| that contains 64GB for the same price."
|
| Disks, 2011: "The price of a 1-terabyte hard drive is $80
| now...
|
| In 2013, a 2TB drive will be $80.
|
| In 2015, a 4TB drive will be $80.
|
| After that the doubling rate may lengthen to 3 years
| instead of 2 years so..
|
| In 2018, an 8TB drive will be $80. And finally in 2021,
| for $80, you'd be able to buy a 16 terabyte hard drive"
| loeg wrote:
| Moore's law was (1) an observation of historical data and
| (2) never a guarantee by vendors to make higher capacity
| products at lower prices. The extrapolation is just
| nonsense wishful thinking.
| Someone wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to expect hard drive capacity/$
| to grow exponentially forever.
|
| Certainly for consumer hard drives, there's a cost of
| getting the drive to the customer (transport, shop rent,
| employee salaries, etc) which is, at best, fixed.
|
| If manufacturing costs drop to zero, price will approach
| that fixed cost (plus any markup sellers manage to
| extract, for example by marketing their drives as
| better/more hip/etc.)
| mendelmaleh wrote:
| For the record, it's 2021 and the cheapest 16tb hard
| drive on pcpartpicker is $335. For $80 you can get a
| cheap 4tb hard drive.
| treeman79 wrote:
| When I was a kid, me and a friend would be amazed at a
| 25,000 dollar 1 TB multi hd array.
|
| We couldn't imagine how anyone would ever need so much
| space.
| ivegotnoaccount wrote:
| Is applying Moore's law relevant, since the manufacturing
| process of DRAM is hugely different from the one for
| usual chips (limited by capacitor size, not transistor
| one) ? Same goes for hard drives. Not saying that price
| gouging has nothing to do with this, but simply saying
| "Moore's law was not followed" does in no way imply
| something interfered with it.
| rudedogg wrote:
| > Orthogonally, ever wondered why memory on your PC is so
| expensive? Thanks to Micron, Hynix and Samsung triopoly.
|
| Should have mentioned
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing. It's not
| just speculative.
| [deleted]
| feb wrote:
| Patents have stalled technology in many areas since a long
| time. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [1] by Michele
| Boldrin and David K. Levine analyze the economical impact of
| patterns on society. They give some surprising examples, like
| how the Wright brothers invested heavily in patents and legal
| actions to stiffle competition instead of continuing
| development of airplanes.
|
| [1] http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm
| bergstromm466 wrote:
| Goddammit I hate patents, trade secrets and intellectual
| property. I want this out there on all my devices. Imagine how
| much less energy we'd use, how much less e-waste we would
| generate, and how grateful our eyes would be if we weren't
| staring at blue lights all day.
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| Its difficult to find the details on this because these
| companies are so secretive, but from everything I have seen,
| the e paper technology we have is completely useless for
| anything but displaying mostly static content. The refresh time
| is insanely slow so simply typing text or scrolling a page
| would be almost impossible.
|
| Also almost all of the full color eink screens I have been able
| to find details on are actually just normal TFT LCD displays
| with some matte film over the top. The core eink tech seems to
| be fairly easily changed to get 3 colours at the cost of 15
| second refresh times but any more colurs seems unlikely.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Nice, but that screenshot looks too good to be real.. Probably a
| render/photoshop?
|
| Unless there has really been a huge improvement recently but I
| doubt it.
| vimy wrote:
| Foldable E-ink screen and you'll have the perfect comic reader.
| itronitron wrote:
| I'm interested to see how this will compare with a printed
| photograph, and whether they are at all distinguishable from each
| other when framed.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _They can display a total of 32,000 colors and 200 to 300 PPI,
| depending on the screen size._
|
| I'm going to guess that's 15-bit colour (32,768 colours) in the
| form of RGB channels, 5 bits per channel (32 possible values).
|
| For full colour imagery, I imagine you'd still want dithering to
| simulate higher bit depths. 300dpi is fine enough that I believe
| you could make it very subtle indeed, so that you could well have
| to examine it quite closely to notice.
|
| > _It will be able to display over 40,000 different colors_
|
| ... but then again, maybe it's not done as RGB data in this way.
| I have no idea what array of inputs a range of 40,000 would
| correspond to. I'm not familiar with this sort of hardware.
| fencepost wrote:
| It may depend in part on the nature and color of the pigments
| being used - they may have 64k colors in theory but not all
| distinguishable.
|
| There are also ongoing discoveries in pigments, for example
| YInMn Blue which still has very limited availability.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue
|
| https://news.artnet.com/art-world/yinmn-blue-comes-market-19...
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I very much doubt they'd shrink 65,536 to 40,000, even if
| some of the values were indistinguishable from others. That's
| not how marketing works! If you have a 3x9 gear combination
| on a bicycle, you call it 27 gears, never mind that a lot of
| it is overlap and that it's even possible for some ratios to
| be identical (e.g. 26:9 and 52:18 is conceivable).
| s800 wrote:
| Wouldn't e-ink be in CMY(K) instead of RGB since it's
| reflective?
| rubatuga wrote:
| No, still RGB. We're not mixing pigments, just using
| subpixels.
| Grustaf wrote:
| The printed dot in a CMYK raster doesn't mix pigments
| either!
| itronitron wrote:
| Each pixel has all eight pigments in it. I'm assuming that is
| RGB,CMY, Black, and White. It's not clear whether they can mix
| two or more of those pigments in a single pixel or if they can
| only switch one fully on and the others off.
|
| It would be nice if they provided some detailed gradient color
| wheel images on the device.
| elaus wrote:
| I'm still waiting for widely available and affordable e-ink
| displays for tinkerers. I'd love to put one onto a Raspberry Pi
| to show some information, but it's just too expensive right now.
| coder543 wrote:
| Define "too expensive". Is $20 really too much?
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/4687
|
| The larger the display, the more expensive it is, but that's
| not unusual, and LCDs aren't much different in price until you
| start to get to really large e-ink panels. (Given the depth of
| the LCD market, I'm sure you can find unusually cheap panels
| somewhere... the point remains. The prices aren't that bad
| these days for e-ink.)
| IgorPartola wrote:
| For that size screen, yes. I think roughly $1-3/screen for
| that size is good. That's what a small OLED screen will run
| you at any kind of volume. For $20 I would want something on
| the order of 6x8". For $35 a 20" diagonal panel.
|
| Granted you linked to Adafruit which is wonderful for their
| educational resources and easy to use high quality
| components, but that's not where I would source parts for a
| project unless they had something truly unique or I was
| buying it for a newbie who could use the support they provide
| (bought some Arduino stuff from them recently for my kids).
| i386 wrote:
| You're quibbling over something that costs less than a
| moderately priced lunch and a parking meter ticket. Buy the
| screen.
| coder543 wrote:
| > For that size screen, yes. I think roughly $1-3/screen
| for that size is good.
|
| That's just unrealistic. Similar LCD screen is also $20:
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/358
|
| If you negotiate directly with manufacturers, or order
| direct from china, I'm certain both of these would be much
| cheaper, but I'm talking about US retail prices and how LCD
| and E-Ink are very similarly priced at this level.
|
| > but that's not where I would source parts for a project
| unless they had something truly unique
|
| I can link you to other retailers who charge very similar
| prices. Direct from china is different, and similarly, you
| can find these e-ink displays for cheaper on aliexpress and
| similar. That's irrelevant to the discussion.
|
| $20 is fine for this. We're not (as far as I'm aware)
| talking about someone making a product to sell in bulk on
| kickstarter. We're talking about buying one to use at home.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| https://a.aliexpress.com/_mr3Zg1T
|
| This is the price you'd pay if you are willing to wait. I
| rarely need just one component and 5 displays at $20 is
| serious. If you want to sell a device, a $20 can easily
| kill your profit margin.
|
| I am talking about direct from China and potentially
| selling products because if you just limit the discussion
| to single component hobby use then no amount is really
| too high. Why not $40? $80? You only need one, right?
| coder543 wrote:
| I literally already said you can pay less on aliexpress,
| and the same absolutely applies to e-ink.
|
| If you're making a point, I can't figure out what it is.
| This is way off topic.
|
| EDIT: you have edited in some more relevant points, but
| there definitely is a price that's too high. If you had
| to pair a $35 computer with a $100 display, most people
| would absolutely find that to be too much in this hobby
| context. They would have to either have a lot of money,
| or a lot of passion for a particular project in order to
| justify that. Most people will find $20 to be reasonable.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| $20 for the LCD is one component among many that you need
| to build a hobby project. It adds up quick if you pay
| retail like that. Meanwhile, if you can reduce that by an
| order of magnitude, the number of projects that will take
| advantage of it will increase. As for hobbyist projects
| vs commercial products, many hobbyists have created
| businesses from their projects, and that goes from
| woodworking to baking to electronics. Seems like 6-7
| years ago there was a lot of excitement around the idea
| of "desktop manufacturing" and realizing the promise of
| 3D printing for small batch electronics. Maybe that was a
| little early in the hype cycle but I very much would like
| to see this sort of thing take off. Every $ counts in
| making that a realistic possibility.
| userbinator wrote:
| http://essentialscrap.com/eink/
|
| Those are 6" 800x600 displays for ~$20-30.
|
| Edit: here's a whole list of related models:
| https://github.com/vroland/epdiy
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Waveshare have them for really small prices.
| https://www.waveshare.com
|
| Also, this is really cool:
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yes a little tablet with the Pi4 compute module would be very
| nice!
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| An 2nd Hand Kindle paperwhite is PS30. <plug>You can us it as a
| monitor https://barwap.com/projects/okmonitor/ </plug>
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| You can get 7" e paper displays for about the same cost as an
| rpi from waveshare and similar.
| amelius wrote:
| Why does every article on e-paper omit the most interesting bit
| of information? I.e. the refresh time.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Because it's bad compared to every other digital display.
| They're always on the order of _seconds_ , and get even worse
| the more colors there are. Tri-color displays (red, white, and
| black) are sometimes up to a dozen seconds or worse. For
| example, [0] has a refresh time of _fifteen seconds_! I'd be
| surprised if this isn't an order of magnitude worse than that.
|
| [0]: https://www.good-display.com/product/223.html
| Mayzie wrote:
| > Because it's bad compared to every other digital display.
|
| DASUNG seems to have a very fast refresh rate on their
| e-paper displays, enough so that they're marketing an e-paper
| monitor.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGblzUc_Z1I
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Bad yes. But that makes improvements even more important!
|
| Especially linked with partial refresh could make this really
| feasible for stuff with small text updates happening etc.
| 458aperta wrote:
| From their photos, this looks mighty impressive!
|
| https://goodereader.com/blog/uploads/images/2021/01/1-75sD-q...
|
| Still not as good as printed ink but this is good enough for many
| applications.
| sosuke wrote:
| The picture presented has 133134 colors in it from my very rough
| calculation. That is not at all how the display will look.
| comboy wrote:
| I agree with the conclusion but how did you do your
| calculation? If you take a picture of a 16 colors screen you
| will find many more colors in that picture (main reason being
| that pixels won't align perfectly).
| ivegotnoaccount wrote:
| How did you get to this result ? (I'm not claiming this is the
| real look it will have, simply wanted to check the metodology)
| Simply counting the number of colors in the image does not seem
| a good idea since even with a real photo, a screen with all
| pixels outputing the same will not give you a single-color
| image when captured with a camera. The issue is even worse with
| e-ink due to their technology.
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