[HN Gopher] Introducing the PineNote
___________________________________________________________________
Introducing the PineNote
Author : DanAtC
Score : 364 points
Date : 2021-08-15 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pine64.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pine64.org)
| rvz wrote:
| At least this one is using modern 64 bit hardware with more RAM
| and disk space on the system, unlike the reMarkable 2 [0].
|
| Great job from the Pine64 folks, looking forward to the second
| version of this product.
|
| Downvoters: I'm trying to give you a good deal here. PineNote is
| almost the same price, if not cheaper and can store more files
| than the reMarkable 2's 8GB of internal storage. No need to rely
| on the cloud for external storage.
|
| What is wrong with having another competitor coming in with an
| alternative that uses modern hardware even when it is close to
| the same price as the reMarkable 2? Think about it.
|
| [0] https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/36000669953...
| danShumway wrote:
| Oh, this is exciting. The performance and latency is a huge
| variable though.
|
| For a lot of these experimental hacker-friendly devices, I'm
| willing to tolerate a lot of compromises. Even here, the
| software, the out-of-the-box experience isn't really that
| important to me. Arguably, you can get away with even more
| compromise on a device like this than on something like the
| Pinephone. But it has to have amazing pen performance, or it's
| just not worth working with. Everything else except that is
| either fixable or something that probably isn't getting in the
| way of the core point of the device.
|
| IMO Remarkable got this right -- their software support is by
| many metrics quite bad (although I guess it's slowly started to
| improve). Their device handles PDFs kind of poorly from what I
| can tell. It's expensive. The interface seems slower and more
| laggy than many other EReaders. But none of that really matters,
| what matters is they have arguably the best pen latency and
| physical texturing on the E-ink market, and that writing on the
| device feels good.
|
| So the same thing applies here: the price seems completely
| reasonable to me, I have no issues with a $400 price tag. I'd pay
| $600, the price isn't the issue. But I need to see videos and
| testimonial that the pen latency isn't just "acceptable", but
| that it's really good. Otherwise it's not even worth $100.
|
| Writing experience is one of those things where once you get used
| to a lack of latency/offset, and used to a more accurate feel, it
| gets progressively harder and harder to go back to anything
| that's worse.
| tadfisher wrote:
| The thing is, the ReMarkable isn't doing anything special
| hardware-wise to achieve that latency, as they're based on NXP
| reference designs with the same integrated EPD every other
| E-ink device is using (besides the Android-based devices, of
| course). The magic is essentially that they have nothing
| running on the device except a Qt app which writes directly to
| the framebuffer, and they have an extremely simplified
| framebuffer driver that allows the Qt app to implement the
| complex parts of updating an E-ink screen in userspace. The
| Wacom input is standard, the other kernel bits are standard,
| and they're even running systemd.
| danShumway wrote:
| That's really positive if that's the case -- I was under the
| impression that some of this had to do with the hardware
| itself.
|
| At the very least though, aren't they are doing some special
| stuff with how they mount the screen and where they're
| sourcing their plastic texture cover from? I thought that
| offset was one of the big reasons they didn't have a
| backlight -- which the Pinenote will have I think.
|
| But this makes me feel a lot more confident about the
| PineNote if most of the latency at least comes down to
| framebuffer access.
| Naac wrote:
| Looks like a direct competitor to the Remarkable[0] which I own,
| and is a great device. The Remarkable is also "mostly" open. The
| main binary running the UI of the system is proprietary, but the
| Linux system underneath is ssh-able, and the hacking community of
| the device is pretty active and large [1].
|
| Looking at the announcement page of the PineNote I'm very
| excited! I'm hoping the open software running on the PineNote
| will be comparable to the Remarkable, and if it is I'm definitely
| going to be making the switch.
|
| As a side note, I'm hoping maybe this encourages the Remarkable
| team to open source their proprietary binary. Their advantage
| here is definitely the hardware not the software.
|
| [0] https://remarkable.com/
|
| [1] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _As a side note, I 'm hoping maybe this encourages the
| Remarkable team to open source their proprietary binary. Their
| advantage here is definitely the hardware not the software._
|
| I dunno, reMarkable's low pen-to-screen latency is an important
| part of the device's experience, and they've historically
| mentioned that as a key factor in not open-sourcing it, because
| they reckon they've done some fairly clever stuff in it.
|
| The reMarkable experience is very much a combination of
| hardware and software.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Seems fairly different from reMarkable; they both use e-ink
| displays and they both support pens, but I'd say that's about
| the extent of the similarity.
|
| reMarkable has focused very tightly on its writing niche to the
| exclusion of other things, and it shows: the pen-to-screen gap
| is small, the surface is pleasant to write on (not paper but
| not awfully far off it and certainly not glass), pen-to-screen
| latency and performance is finely tuned throughout in the
| software and hardware (for writing, it performs better than
| competitors with double the single-core performance and
| quadruple the cores), it doesn't have speakers, the processor
| isn't very powerful at all, it has very little memory or
| storage by current standards, that kind of thing. They've done
| a good job with the experience; I really enjoy using my
| reMarkable.
|
| Meanwhile, PineNote has a hardened glass surface (leaving
| achieving a paper-like surface to third-party films), is at 7mm
| thicker than the reMarkable (6.7mm) and reMarkable 2 (4.7mm),
| has speakers, has lots of storage, has a powerful CPU, has lots
| of memory, has a frontlight (yay!), has a bigger battery (4Ah,
| against reMarkable and reMarkable 2's 3Ah) supports a pen but
| in a way that feels like an afterthought, and isn't concerning
| itself with the software side of things at all. They're
| producing a device for developers to see what they do with it,
| and maybe the developers will help them turn it into something
| suitable for normal humans.
|
| I suspect I'm still going to get one.
| tadfisher wrote:
| The reMarkable also uses a glass surface with a plastic film
| providing the texture. Don't pull it off!
| als0 wrote:
| reMarkable 1 doesn't have any glass, although they changed
| to a glass display in reMarkable 2 for some
| reason...possibly to reduce the effect of scratches
| https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/36000263439...
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I preordered the new Remarkable and ended up having to re-gift
| it
|
| Tablets used to suck, doubly so when using them with pens. The
| screens were low res, low brightness, they were slow to respond
| to pen strokes, battery life sucked, I could go on.
|
| So e-ink digital notebooks made a ton of sense. They solved a
| lot of these issues in exchange for some limiting general
| utility.
|
| -
|
| Now fast forward to 2021 and a $300 iPad has one of the fastest
| responding pens in the industry, the screen is bright enough
| for daylight, it comfortably does a full day of work without
| charging...
|
| It's an amazing piece of tech with huge amounts of utility,
| incredible drawing and plotting apps.
|
| I feel like that muddies the waters for digital notebooks.
|
| I know it used to be taboo to say that ("Tablets are tablets
| and eReaders are eReaders!!!") but I don't know anymore.
|
| If you're someone who will tinker with your Remarkable (or
| PineNote), I seriously recommend trying an iPad.
|
| The Remarkable still wins for distraction-free work in stock
| form, but if you're one to tinker for utility, the utility is
| just there with the iPad, and doesn't sacrifice that much in
| the writing department
| auggierose wrote:
| Yeah, I hear you. I got a Remarkable 2, but I just couldn't
| justify owning one besides my iPad Pro 12.9 inch, so I sent
| the R2 back. Didn't regret it. As an ereader the iPad Pro is
| superior in every way, it has a great screen, color, and can
| display PDFs comfortably. And I don't take handwritten
| digital notes, I prefer either keyboard or paper.
| feanaro wrote:
| You've described why iPad doesn't suck terribly compared to
| the Remarkable but I didn't see you mention any of its
| advantages. Are there any?
| jason_slack wrote:
| For me it is the distraction free environment. I can deep
| dive into the material. It also feels a lot like real
| paper. Having all of my thoughts on various topics, school
| notes, books I've read, therapy notes, etc.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Is much more utility not an advantage?
|
| Like I said, for some people it's not an advantage. They
| want something that is about as "dumb" as a stack of papers
| and so the iPad is not even an option.
|
| But once you get into people who tinker and want to add
| features and integrations, like I imagine many PineNote
| owners might skew, well the iPad does that a lot better.
|
| -
|
| It's also just a generally snappier device. In theory being
| barebones should make the Remarkable faster, but between
| the limitations of eInk and the low power hardware (which
| yes, I realize come with some great benefits) picking up
| the iPad for a quick thought always ended up feeling more
| fluid.
|
| Also while the Remarkable is better in daylight the current
| iPads are much more usable than used to be. Meanwhile the
| iPad is useable in little-to-no light but not the
| Remarkable.
|
| (side note on screens: pen feel is also a little oversold
| imo. A random matte screen protector made my $20 Apple
| Pencil knock off feel 9 tenths as the $99 stylus I got for
| the Remarkable and improves daylight performance too.
|
| The 1 tenth is down to personal preference, I'd say the
| iPad felt like a nice pen, the Remarkable like a nice
| pencil.)
| catillac wrote:
| This seems right to me. I had an iPad Pro and it was
| kinda meh. Basically just collected dust. Got a
| remarkable 2 and basically use it every day for note
| taking and sharing between it and my computer. Annotate
| PDFs, make drawings like in a notebook. It's so
| lightweight and hassle free, battery lasts ages, super
| easy to have alongside my MacBook to get stuff done. I'm
| super happy with it, haven't touched my iPad Pro since I
| got it.
|
| The only thing I would like on there remarkable, which
| seems to be more of an eink limitation, is the ability to
| create multiple colored highlights. I find myself drawing
| a lot of graphs and often need the ability to create
| different lines that can be distinguished when the graphs
| get complicated.
|
| But other than that, remarkable has been basically a
| dream as a replacement for pen and paper (which I didn't
| use that often anyways).
| zdiscov wrote:
| >If you're someone who will tinker with your Remarkable (or
| PineNote), I seriously recommend trying an iPad.
|
| Like you rightly stated in the previous para, I cannot
| disagree more with this statement.
|
| eInk like passive displays are in a league of their own
| compared to active displays even if it is Apple who is making
| those.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > but if you're one to tinker for utility, the utility is
| just there with the iPad
|
| Listen, I think the iPad is a pretty versatile little piece
| of hardware. The amount of work required to turn it into a
| decent writing experience is almost comedic, though. I know a
| few artists who use iPads, and they _cannot_ use it without
| the basic accessories: matte screen-protector, proprietary
| $100 pen (of course), battery bank, etc. On the other side of
| the spectrum, I see Mac users frustrated by how unintuitive
| their desktop is compared to their iPad.
|
| If you want to fight your hardware to get it to do what you
| want, get the iPad. If you want to _tinker_ , look elsewhere.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You realize I'm comparing it to my Remarkable right?
|
| The Remarkable a digital notebook, not an alternative to a
| Wacom tablet.
|
| Like if you think iPad drawing tools are bad... the
| Remarkable didn't even have layers until the new model
|
| -
|
| To get my iPad to where my Remarkable was cost $25:
|
| - $20 pen (which is a proper active pen, not a weird
| stylus)
|
| - $5 matte screen protector.
|
| That's $325 all in vs $450 minimum for a Remarkable (I
| think mine was a little cheaper with preordering, but the
| upgraded pen and case make it a wash)
|
| Battery life without a battery bank has never been
| problematic. Even forgetting to charge it overnight is
| fine. It doesn't barely loses any battery in standby, and
| charges quickly enough.
|
| It sounds like you have an ax to grind against the iPad for
| other purposes, which is fair. But for an alternative to a
| Remarkable, there's just not that far to go, it's a low bar
| that's been set.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Meanwhile, if what you want is a thing that will let you read
| ebooks and comics while maximizing value per dollar, I
| recommend Amazon's Kindle Fire HD10. For just over $100 when
| it's on sale (several times per year), you get a perfectly
| serviceable Android tablet with a 10.1" 1900x1200 full color
| screen, a WiFi connection, some storage, and enough processor
| and memory to run a comic-book reader, an ebook-reader, a web
| browser to control your music system, and Netflix if for some
| reason you really want to watch on a tiny portable screen.
| Add a bluetooth remote control and a stand that mounts to
| your headboard, and you have the perfect device for reading
| in bed even when you've got a fever and have difficulty
| turning pages.
|
| As a gaming device, terrible. As a device to take around the
| world, mediocre -- it's not built particularly well. As a
| device to entertain yourself with in one spot, pretty much
| optimal right now.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I bought the earlier edition and I couldn't say enough bad
| things about it.
|
| - interface wasn't snappy
|
| - screen was merely ok
|
| - can't use Google apps
|
| - can't use third party home screen apps and the Amazon one
| is the worst one ever created for Android
|
| - hassle to root
| filleokus wrote:
| > The 10.1 inch, 3:4 panel has a resolution of 1404x1872 (227
| DPI), can display 16 levels of grayscale and is capable of a 60hz
| refresh rate
|
| 60 hz!? This + some paired keyboard + wifi-tethering + SSH (or
| even a remote session with VS Code!?) would probably be an
| awesome code-while-in-the-sun-setup.
|
| Really excited to see where this ends up.
| solarkraft wrote:
| The 60Hz must be a mistake. That type of rate plain isn't
| possible with e-ink.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Edit, of the first level reply for visibility:
|
| _Refresh Time: 450ms_ (from the datasheet)
|
| Edit 2: and that value of 450ms must be the Grayscale Update
| value - A2 surely remains around 125ms. So, a classic EPD.
|
| --
|
| It is probably the display of
|
| https://shopkits.eink.com/product/10-3%cb%9d-epaper-
| display-...
|
| so, in this case, a classic E-Ink display - not a miracle
|
| (where "miracle" may be some technology similar of that of
| MIT/Taiwan E-Ink, but not quite the same, with some boosted
| feats but compromises elsewhere).
| megous wrote:
| It's ES103TC2
|
| https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineNote#e-ink_Display
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Confirmed, so:
|
| https://www.eink.com/product.html?type=productdetail&id=7
|
| Though in the other link I pointed to the ES103TC1 - the
| differences to the ES103TC2 are not clear.
|
| [Minimum] Refresh time - which surely some have mixed
| with that "60Hz": 450ms
| megous wrote:
| That's just some arbitrary number. :) Unless refresh is
| clearly defined, there's not much point throwing around
| arbitrary numbers.
|
| 450ms may be minimal time for a screen clear + update,
| just by the looks of it. That is the screen blinking
| black/white to clear the screen and then painting the
| final image. That's not something that will be happening
| all the time...
| slim wrote:
| I heard 16hz
| green7ea wrote:
| I think so too but if the 60Hz is not a mistake, it will
| change my life. I hope it's not ;-)
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| at 60hz, an electro phoretic display (EPD) or eink will
| start to degrade very rapidly and consume more power than
| even a bright OLED panel will.
|
| Eink is efficient only when you are NOT refreshing the
| screen constantly as it persists the last image drawn to
| screen, but if you wanna do any kind of scrolling, zooming
| etc, just use another kind of display tech.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _degrade very rapidly_
|
| E-Ink displays were declared having a lifespan of 10
| million switches per dot: you would have to do a study
| about how often the average pixel is changed, but if that
| value were 5s, the lifespan would be "five years of short
| week 9-to-5" - that is not bad.
|
| I am not sure if A2 mode or Greyscale Update with
| frequent dot switching is a stress that makes the dots
| degrade faster (not simply "decrease the life count going
| towards the max", but "decreasing the max"). I supposed
| not dramatically.
| spijdar wrote:
| 60Hz for total, full screen refresh would indeed be a
| staggering feat, however I don't believe that's what these
| figures are.
|
| One of the things that makes e-ink so hard in the first place
| is the multiple and proprietary algorithms for doing partial
| paints or clears on the screen in the most time-optimal way.
| I can only assume the 60Hz figure refers to a partial paint
| on screen, so "60Hz refresh of the line you're drawing", not
| "60Hz fullscreen video".
|
| That, or it's 60Hz with incredible ghosting, which I believe
| has been done before.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Multiple and proprietary algorithms"? It's just an
| ordinary control problem, how hard can it be to come up
| with an openly-available solution? Ultimately,
| quality/latency/etc. will be a matter of how much effort
| the user will put in calibrating the driver to their
| screen.
| megous wrote:
| Inputs: temperature, particular display's batch
| characteristics, what you want to draw, what was drawn on
| the display in the past, available timing options for how
| long you can leave gate open for each row, vcom voltage,
| other voltages (there are 4), how long since last full
| refresh clear, ...
|
| It's not so much of a problem to have a nice output if
| you can always do a full screen clear and then paint your
| image. But that's quite power intensive thing to do and
| disruptive to the user.
|
| Other than that, with no prior knowledge or know how from
| eInk, you'll be struggling with previous image
| reappearing from the dead in parts of the display even
| after "full screen clear" after a few updates, ghosting,
| grayscale support, and crap like that.
|
| And you'll have to do all the calculations in real-enough
| time on a CPU so that you can keep up with raw refresh
| rate requirements (85Hz). On this high a resolution it
| will probably be quite a lot of work, and you'll need to
| code everything up in NEON C intrinsics or assembly.
|
| So while it may be an ordinary control problem, it will
| be a bit of a struggle. I'm not aware of anyone going
| this deep. Most of the semi-open implementations are
| using proprietary waveform data/violating GPL
| (Pocketbook) with a closed source kernel driver/or hiding
| the complexity in the HW controller.
|
| It will certainly be interesting to watch how will people
| deal with this, because it will need a unique
| intersection of knowledge and dedication.
|
| I guess whatever display controller is in the SoC will
| help with some of that in some way. But it will still be
| quite complicated, because it's undocumented, and the
| driver is only available as a binary blob.
| spijdar wrote:
| I've not worked in this space, but see:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17993174
|
| and https://www.waveshare.net/w/upload/c/c4/E-paper-mode-
| declara... for a description of some available display
| modes within a waveform table, along with a description
| of the waveform firmware itself: The
| waveform flash memory file contains temperature look-up
| tables (LUTs), waveform sequence data, algorithm data,
| voltage data, controller settings, and manufacturing
| data. Each AF waveform is specifically adjusted for a
| particular display module lot. This specification
| document is for use by E Ink Corporation and their
| customers under non-disclosure agreements. E Ink
| Corporation will be responsible for maintaining and
| controlling specification revisions.
|
| To my knowledge, there are very few reverse engineered
| waveform files or custom controllers for eink displays,
| and those that exist have inferior display properties
| compared to the e-ink provided waveform tables.
| megous wrote:
| 60Hz at that resolution would be ~20 MHz on a 16bit
| parallel bus (2bits per pixel), which sounds about
| manageable.
|
| The display spec says the display has max 85Hz raw refresh
| rate.
|
| https://files.pine64.org/doc/quartz64/Eink%20P-511-828-V1_E
| D...
| spijdar wrote:
| You're correct; another project using this display panel
| documented their process towards getting it running:
| https://www.zephray.me/post/archer_bringup_notes
|
| They go into some detail on the display and getting it to
| display a picture, along with some pitfalls. Worth a read
| for anyone else interested.
| megous wrote:
| eInk displays have 85-90Hz refresh rate. Just look up the
| datasheets.
|
| Though it does not mean the same thing it does for LCD
| displays. It just means you can stuff raw data to the display
| at that rate. Pixels are sticky so you're either driving them
| towards white or black or not at all (individually). And you
| may need to drive them multiple times (or for different
| periods of time), to get the correct shade of gray, or
| whatever.
|
| So you still need several full scans to perform what user
| would think of as a screen update.
| nabilhat wrote:
| > _The PineNote is one of, if not the, most powerful e-ink device
| available on the market. It shares in much of the Quartz64's
| pedigree, sporting the same RK3566 quad-core A55 SoC paired with
| 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 128GB eMMC flash storage._
|
| There's so much opportunity in the e-ink space just waiting for
| something to crack open. E-ink devices have felt so much like the
| TI-84 of the tablet world, or inkjet printers 25 years ago -
| overpriced and underpowered.
|
| There's a lot of work ahead for the Pine community to get to
| performance on par with existing e-ink tablets. Remarkable's
| setting the example now, which is frankly quite an achievement on
| two 1.2GHz cores with 1GB RAM. Pine's twice as many, ~50% faster
| cores, with 4x the RAM should help.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| reMarkable 1 is 1GHz single-core with 512MB of RAM, and that's
| entirely sufficient for what it's primarily designed for,
| writing. PDF rendering is the main thing that can be slow,
| agonisingly so in some cases. I imagine that's the main reason
| why they boosted reMarkable 2 to dual-core 1.2GHz and 1GB of
| RAM. (It wasn't for things like startup time--
| https://old.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/jfgpqw/rm...
| shows both 1 and 2 taking about 20 seconds, with 2 actually the
| _slower_ by a second or so.)
|
| Quad-core 1.8-2GHz and 4GB of RAM is, if used fairly sensibly,
| massive overkill for most purposes e-paper has been used for so
| far, with image-heavy PDFs being the most likely exception
| (incidentally, I'm not sure if such rendering can be
| parallelised or not). It's easily enough to run full desktop
| environment stuff. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what
| comes of it. Screen latency is certainly the key to the whole
| puzzle.
| squarefoot wrote:
| This is really interesting. I was searching for something like
| that: big screen, no cloud or other services dependency, FOSS,
| nice price, etc. I just want to see its performance when dealing
| with old books and magazines that are 100% scanned graphics with
| no OCR, and/or PDFs with complex diagrams, schematics etc. Those
| usually bring to knees the less powerful readers and would
| probably require some serious CPU power along with more RAM and
| storage. It would also be nice if the software could sync with a
| NFS or SMB/CIFS local (or remote via VPN?) server plus local
| caching so users can have their entire library at hand without
| using USB keys or SD cards. Also please, add one 3.5 headphone
| jack if it's not already there (from the article it seems not).
| And the PinePhone keyboard also looks gorgeous!
| chrismorgan wrote:
| A 3.5mm jack isn't going to be _easy_ to fit into a tablet
| that's 7mm thick. It's about a millimetre thicker than USB-C.
| dom96 wrote:
| I am really amazed by the amount of products Pine64 is releasing.
| Anyone know how they are able to do this/what their story is?
| megous wrote:
| They don't waste time with the software side of things. :)
| paulcole wrote:
| Unrefined. Low build quality -- remember when one of their
| product pages effectively said, "Don't buy this if you can't
| handle a couple dead pixels." Their goal is to ship as much
| stuff as possible and then leave it up to the "community" to
| improve the software while the hardware is at-best third-rate.
|
| Result is a bunch of releases people want to like but never
| measure up. Best reviews you'll see are like, "It's passable
| for the price if you can live with..."
| commoner wrote:
| I've found the PineTime to be extremely well-built and
| comparable to the original Fitbit Versa in terms of hardware
| quality. No dead pixels. For $27 plus shipping, it was an
| excellent deal.
|
| For customers who are looking for a buying experience similar
| to traditional retail stores, Pine64 previously announced
| that they would launch online Pine stores selling products
| with longer warranties and broader customer support at a
| higher price point:
|
| https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-store-community-
| prici...
| solarkraft wrote:
| I'm a bit underwhelmed by the price. This costs as much as the
| current-gen Remarkable, with more power, but likely worse build
| quality and software and only slightly higher hackability.
|
| That said I'm still excited for cool e-ink applications, like
| finally an optimized browser. Also: Competition to those Onyx
| devices with Android apps running through WayDroid (should be
| possible on the Remarkable, but I haven't seen anyone try it).
|
| ... which raises an interesting point. Will these things come
| with a working Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) for modern
| Wayland compositors to run?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Looks cheaper than remarkable. For me (UK) it is PS399 + PS99
| for a pen (!) which is in fact a consumable. If I want a book-
| cover type thing, that's another PS99. And it's GBP not USD. So
| that's probably altogether about 50% cheaper?
|
| I love the idea of remarkable, but cant justify PS600 spend on
| a better notebook.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _PS99 for a pen (!) which is in fact a consumable._
|
| The pen _tips_ are consumables, the pen itself isn't.
| rjsw wrote:
| Build quality has been good for all the Pine64 products that I
| own.
| chucky_z wrote:
| This blog post just got me so excited. I've seen what Pine
| started with and now in my head I just keep thinking "keep going
| keep going!!" This is hopefully the kick in the pants the tech
| giants need, a small company slowly eating up even a tiny
| percentage of their sales and doing it with cheaper and
| completely open (and arguably better?) products.
|
| I am mostly all-in on Apples ecosystem because I've been so
| continuously disappointed by the fragmentation on the Android
| ecosystem, and this is something that's seriously giving me a
| real hit of excitement!
| zepto wrote:
| Yes. I couldn't agree more. No amount of complaining at Apple
| will make them build an open ecosystem. It's just not in their
| DNA. Supporting these guys will help _them_ to do it.
|
| Buy their stuff, but equally important - contribute to the
| software ecosystem to make these devices ready for regular
| users to adopt.
| dchuk wrote:
| This is a pretty sweet looking device. Even despite this call out
| "As for the actual user interface, we're currently talking to the
| good folks at KDE and trying to figure out whether Plasma Mobile
| or regular Plasma (with panel-specific tweaks of course) will be
| the best fit for this particular device. As you can probably
| tell, this is an uncharted territory for all parties involved,
| but we'll figure it out. Needless to say, the software isn't
| finished - indeed, we don't really even know yet what will work
| well with this technology and what won't. It is just the
| beginning of our journey with e-ink technology, and it will take
| a long time and much effort to make the PineNote end-user
| worthy." This still seems worthwhile to pre order if you're a
| heavy reader and note taker.
|
| Anyone know how this compares with the remarkable?
| rvz wrote:
| > Needless to say, the software isn't finished - indeed, we
| don't really even know yet what will work well with this
| technology and what won't.
|
| Exactly. This why I would wait for their next version of this
| product to see if they have made more improvements.
|
| From [0]:
|
| Compared to reMarkable, PineNote is using modern hardware with
| more RAM and disk space.
|
| But ultimately, I would wait for version two of this device
| rather than to be an early adopter on the first version.
|
| [0] https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/36000669953...
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I will probably buy this, but if the pine people are reading
| this, please please create a larger one
| megous wrote:
| The post doesn't go much into details of the effort that went
| into the firmware development for the PinePhone keyboard, but
| I've documented it along the way, for the curious, together with
| options of what may be possible thanks to me writing FOSS
| implementation of the whole SW stack for the keyboard, and the
| surrounding tooling.
|
| Most of the last few month's worth of posts here are about the
| keyboard https://xnux.eu/log
| mtrovo wrote:
| Wow that's wild, really nice write up. I see this kind of post
| and feel humbled by the effort to create something that I take
| for granted. Is this normal procedure for integrating a new
| keyboard or this particular model was an outlier?
| megous wrote:
| I don't know. This is my first keyboard firmware.
|
| Anyway, the EM85F684A is a really obscure MCU, so there was
| no other way than to start completely from scratch, to have
| FOSS development/flashing tooling and the firmware itself.
| There's nothing pre-existing available online. I've never
| heard about Elan before starting this project.
|
| It would have certainly been easier to support a more common
| MCU. Certainly more than half of the effort went into reverse
| engineering and figuring out the unknowns.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Was hoping for more details about their RISC offering. I briefly
| looked for an entry-level board and they're either vastly
| underpowered or way out of a "hobbyist" price range.
| fireTwoOneNine wrote:
| The latest Pine board is the Quartz64, which is basically the
| same platform as the PineNote.
| https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64
| megous wrote:
| Seeing cypress touch controller used in PineNote... Mainline
| cyttsp4 driver is buggy, incomplete, sucks and there are no docs
| for the touch controller. You can't even do calibration with the
| mainline driver, which is necessary to have a usable touchscreen.
|
| The vendor dropped the ball on that driver right after getting it
| mainline years ago - they didn't touch it ever since. It doesn't
| even support device tree.
|
| So there's gonna be some pain, for whoever will want to get that
| thing working mainline.
| Klasiaster wrote:
| Choosing HW components which are not supported in mainline
| Linux or don't even have an upstreamable driver ready is the
| main criticism I have, too.
|
| I wish there was a way to have the hardware designed so that is
| works from day one with a recent Linux kernel instead of the
| mess with the PinePhone: the WiFi driver is of such a bad
| quality that it's not upstreamed, and of course totally buggy.
| Also, a similar situation can also be found with the device
| firmware: both the USB controller and the modem don't have a
| good vendor firmware and the community needs to debug this
| stuff - I wish only known-to-be-working components get selected
| in the first place.
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