[HN Gopher] The E-Ink Badge
___________________________________________________________________
The E-Ink Badge
Author : nate
Score : 251 points
Date : 2023-02-28 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (census.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (census.dev)
| mrinfinite wrote:
| I love my Dasung 253 paperlike!
| xenon7 wrote:
| I honestly wasn't expecting the device to use coin cells, but I'm
| glad that it does. Not everything needs to be rechargeable.
| oneearedrabbit wrote:
| I built/assembled them. I carried out some informal experiments
| and found that it requires roughly one million full screen
| refreshes on two coin cells to completely drain them.
| Furthermore, given that Badger operates on an RP2040 and a
| battery holder comes with a toggle, it is astonishingly durable
| device. It is like a smoke detector, which can operate for a
| decade straight on a single battery.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Note: CR2032 is awesome and all, but be careful about
| extrapolating like this out to decade+ timeframes.
|
| CR2032 only has 235mA-hrs of life down to 2V. x2 and that's
| only 470mA-hrs and 2V probably browns-out the circuit (so...
| 470mA is already a stretch. You'll probably get less than
| that on practice).
|
| Over 10 Years, that's 5uA of power usage on the average.
|
| ----------
|
| IIRC, an aluminum capacitor has ~15 uA of leakage current,
| and Tantalum is ~1uA of leakage current. So Aluminum caps are
| already disqualified, and Tantalum capacitor leakage-current
| already uses 20% of your power budget. Given the "Burstiness"
| of this workload, I know that these capacitors need to exist
| somewhere.
|
| You probably can get a year out of this in practice. To get
| better than that, you'll need to spend an incredible amount
| of energy on finding every 1uA "leak" and plugging the leak.
|
| And its crazy how many things leak 1uA. Not only capacitors
| leak 1uA, but so do MOSFETs, diodes (reverse bias currents,
| especially in schottky diodes)... diode-protected MOSFETs (oh
| no, twice the leakage!).
| oneearedrabbit wrote:
| After I completed the project, I made a somewhat
| lighthearted personal vow to try to design a custom PCB
| next time I fall down the rabbit hole of hardware
| tinkering. I suspect, these days it is a commodity skills,
| and curious if you happen to have any suggestions or
| articles that could serve as a starting point?
| dragontamer wrote:
| PCBs are a dark art, and I focus on lower-speed (below 30
| MHz) to try and avoid any issues.
|
| I know that the faster the PCB is, the more issues you
| get. Above a certain frequency, inductors look like
| capacitors, capacitors look like inductors, and PCB-
| traces look like transmission lines with reflections and
| other such nonsense. Staying at a slower speed helps
| negate these issues.
|
| Most application notes, be it from STMicro (for STM32) or
| Microchip, or really any other microcontroller
| manufacturerer, will have recommended hardware designs +
| their thought process fully documented.
|
| Start there. Here's Microchip's ATMega328 hardware design
| notes: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/AN
| 2519-AVR-M...
|
| STM32F4: https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/
| an4488-getti...
|
| ---------------
|
| Study up on the "reference designs". For ATMega328p,
| that's Arduino Uno. For more recent AVR chips (such as
| AVR DD), that's "AVR DD Curiosity Nano". (See schematics
| here: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-
| tool/EV72Y42A)
| stavros wrote:
| The sibling comment is too specialized, I feel. It
| depends on what you want to do. If you just want to
| connect a few components together, you can learn the
| required skills in a day, watch some KiCAD videos.
|
| I made a sensor board the other day (I'm just printing
| the case for it now), and it was very enjoyable, and even
| came assembled for $1.7 per board:
|
| https://gitlab.com/stavros/sensor-board
|
| Feel free to email me if you have any questions or just
| want to chat.
|
| Also, I don't think I've ever wanted something in my life
| more than this badge thing.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > The sibling comment is too specialized, I feel. It
| depends on what you want to do. If you just want to
| connect a few components together, you can learn the
| required skills in a day, watch some KiCAD videos.
|
| That's fair.
|
| Lets put it this way: if your circuit works on a
| breadboard, you don't need to know anything about PCB
| design. The PCB will pretty much always be better than
| the breadboard.
|
| Things get troublesome as you enter mixed-signal (analog
| + digital), or high-frequency.
| stavros wrote:
| Agreed, but you still need to know a ton of things that
| seem hard when you haven't done them before. Even
| exporting the Gerbers, or the BOM for assembly, or any of
| those things seemed too hard to me before I did it for
| the first time, so I don't want to underestimate people
| asking "I want to connect a few components into a custom
| PCB, how do I do it?".
| nickthegreek wrote:
| That has to cut down on the thickness as well since the
| Badger 2040 is designed to take AAA. Wish there was a side
| shot to see your total thickness.
| oneearedrabbit wrote:
| Exactly! The device is approximately 12mm thick. I will
| upload a side shot shortly. I appreciate you bringing this
| up, it's an excellent point! To be honest, it is still a
| bit thicker than I had initially hoped for; however, when I
| weighed my options - solder 26 devices by hand vs use pre-
| made components -- the decision was much more clear.
| outworlder wrote:
| > That has to cut down on the thickness as well since the
| Badger 2040 is designed to take AAA.
|
| Would it be ok with the lower voltage of NIMH
| rechargeables? I really dislike primary batteries.
|
| Edit: found the answer.
|
| > 2x AAA rechargeable (NiMH) batteries only puts out 2.4V
| which is, strictly speaking, not enough for Badger.
| However, in our tests it keeps on truckin' down to an input
| voltage of 2.05V (without the LED), so if you want to use
| rechargeable batteries that should be fine.
| dragontamer wrote:
| AAAA is popular and as cost-effective as CR2032 (aka: bad
| value, but less-bad value than most other batteries of this
| size). Note that CR2032 is toxic, so AAAA is somewhat
| preferred.
|
| AAA and AA have much more energy-per-dollar. I mean, so
| does lead-acid but I guess that's too big lol.
|
| ---------
|
| Specialty batteries, like CR123A, seem to fit the bill for
| this size much better. But those are so, so much more
| expensive. I feel like the only two cells worth really
| considering are AAAA and CR2032, despite their
| deficiencies.
| VLM wrote:
| Really the "hidden story" is the pimoroni board is like "ten
| bucks" whereas two years ago the exact same application was
| available from Adafruit for "fifty bucks".
|
| I have two of the adafruit variety and it works fine with
| circuitpython and all that.
|
| Someday the "wifi connected eink screen" will drop to maybe five
| dollars and that will be interesting in the market, open up some
| product ideas.
|
| The adafruit product uses most of its power sleeping and
| occasionally waking up to check the wifi in the apps I played
| with, the screen itself doesn't use much power. I suppose it
| depends how often you want to refresh.
|
| An example of interesting/weird apps for this technology is we're
| already at the point where its probably cheaper if you want a
| remote thermometer displaying on your wall to skip owning an
| actual thermometer and just display some web API of the current
| airport temperature or whatever. I wouldn't invest in consumer
| grade high resolution temperature sensors, you can replace all of
| that with a little wifi traffic right now and it's only going to
| get 'worse'.
| Psychlist wrote:
| > skip owning an actual thermometer
|
| Doesn't that rely on you living next to someone else's
| thermometer that's published? My not very accurate setup gives
| me more than a degree just down my property line (~30m) largely
| because one end is next to a road and the other on lawn
| surrounded by trees. Albeit neither are proper meteorological
| stations so accuracy in that sense isn't even an option.
|
| I publish a few readings but have never really looked into the
| exact accuracy of the https://www.uradmonitor.com/ sensors. My
| actions in response are pretty coarse so it doesn't matter a
| huge amount... PM10 goes over 300 and I close the doors and
| windows sort of thing.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| Tangent: My gas station replaced grade-selection buttons and
| rate/volume/price LCDs with one huge (20") touchscreen.
| Unfortunately because of the distance, it's brighter than the
| overhead lights at night. No one thought to add a little
| brightness sensor to the several thousand dollar machine.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Cool... but I really wish it didn't have bezels!
| abraxas wrote:
| This century's pocket protector!
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Am i as a visitor, supposed to push the buttons on your badge?
| brk wrote:
| Not sure if they're still available, but I have a handful of
| "Badgy's" along the same lines:
|
| https://www.tindie.com/products/sqfmi/badgy-iot-badge/
| masklinn wrote:
| Apparently out of stock.
|
| The linked badger 2040
| (https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/badger-2040) is half the
| price and apparently in stock. TFA is a 3D printed case around
| that, and custom software for the badge. It's also powered by a
| more capable dual-core M0+, however wifi is lost.
| sxp wrote:
| Another good starting point for an e-ink badge is
| https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-...
|
| It won't work as a badge out of the box, but if you know how to
| program an ESP32, it's easy to get it to use the demo libraries
| to load a JPG. It also has a touchscreen and 3 physical buttons
| for basic interactivity.
|
| It's $85, so it's pricy for being used just as a badge, but it's
| a cool gadget that I use for a desktop display.
| crote wrote:
| The only thing which would make this even cooler would be
| RP2040-controlled NFC. I wonder how hard that would be to add?
| oneearedrabbit wrote:
| Badger comes with a built-in Qwiic / STEMMA QC connector. I
| believe it should work out of the box with Adafruit ST25DV16K
| I2C RFID: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4701
| sadpolishdev wrote:
| Isnt badger an old news by now? I had mine for quite time:
| https://twitter.com/piropro/status/1505054493305671681
| IronWolve wrote:
| I thought e-ink was fad, but finally broke down and bought an
| e-ink ebook reader, the battery life that lasts a month is
| amazing.
| malfist wrote:
| I use my kindle all the time and I totally forget about
| charging it. Then suddenly it tells me it's low on battery and
| I remember "oh yeah, I've not charged this in like 3 months"
|
| What other modern battery device has that many
| interactions/uses without needing near daily recharges? It's
| like magic
| IshKebab wrote:
| Why did you think it was a fad? Just curious. Had you ever seen
| one in real life?
| knodi123 wrote:
| And I try to convince my family about it, but just _cannot_ get
| it through to them that "kindle the tablet" and "kindle the
| ebook reader" are entirely unrelated products. What a terrible
| bit of branding.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I will always take the opportunity to read without a backlight.
| It's a hugely noticeable difference on the eyes for me. I'm
| just glad I don't have to print out thousands of sheets of
| paper just to read documents comfortably any more.
| IronWolve wrote:
| I was reading on a normal android tablet. When I saw a sale
| on a kids bundle for 99 bux, decided to pull the trigger.
| Been my night time reader for months when going to sleep.
| It's amazing how easy on the eyes it is. I just read until I
| start to nod off.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| I bought a badger2040 recently. I mainly wanted it for the ebook
| feature. A pocket-sized eInk device could make reading throughout
| the day so easy. I used to always have a paper book in my back
| pocket before phones.
|
| Anyway, it's a great device with one small caveat. None of the
| GPIO pins are exposed, the only IO is buttons, usbc or a
| QT/Stemma connector. This would all be fine by me, except that
| there is only about 1mg of free space on the device. Doing any
| serious reading would require me to use external memory and
| without GPIO I can't do that. Making a few pins accessible would
| make attaching an SD card completely trivial.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| Because the RP2040 is so dynamic, the QT/Stemma connector _is_
| two GPIO pins, even thought it can do I2C or SPI.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Are you saying interfacing with an SD card should be possible
| using only 2 pins?
|
| https://content.instructables.com/FJT/PT8T/KROXES4A/FJTPT8TK.
| ..
| whiskers wrote:
| If you look at the back of the badger you'll see that we put a
| set of pads to solder to for GPIO!
|
| It also has a "Qw/ST" connector (STEMMA + Qwiic) that exposes
| an I2C bus so is ideal for adding sensors, or you could bash on
| an IO expander for a heap more pins!
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Sensors don't fit my use case, but I can't believe I didn't
| notice those pads. I'll see if I can make them work.
|
| I don't believe that SD cards can be interfaced with over
| i2c.
|
| If I were you guys I would consider having a built in SD
| reader in version 2.0, as it would add a lot of value.
| adolph wrote:
| You might be interested in the Serial Wombat which can expose
| gpio as as I2C, for which it has pads on the back.
| https://www.serialwombat.com/
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Hey! What's wrong with csv files?!
| iwebdevfromhome wrote:
| Anyone else using this for cool ideas ? Please share!
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, I just got my Badger W few days ago and I'm pairing it
| with a temperature/humidity/CO2 sensor - I designed and 3D
| printed a bracket for it, I'm going to mount it on a wall in my
| kitchen. It's also going to show brief weather forecast and the
| current price of my energy tariff(it changes daily).
|
| That's what it looks like(just assembled it today so I haven't
| written code for it yet):
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/NjdisB8PbfFiGgkk9
| toyg wrote:
| I have a badger2040, looping through a few different screens -
| one with a QR code pointing to my linkedin. The lack of
| integrated battery is annoying though - either you stick a
| potentially hazardous one to the back, or you're carrying
| around a bulky AAA enclosure.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| E-ink in general?
|
| I did a desk calendar that looks like an old Mac:
| https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SystemSix
| samizdis wrote:
| My favourite e-ink application was in the Yotaphone II [1]
| some years ago, but sadly discontinued. I had one sent from
| the UK to Australia, where I was working for a few years.
| Reading books, docs or emails via the e-ink screen was a joy
| (no probs with bright sunshine), as was calling up your
| airline pass on the screen and turning off the phone, because
| the image on the back was retained. Even writing emails/docs
| was fine for me, despite the e-ink lag. I needed to charge it
| only every other day, and that still left plenty of margin.
| Best phone I ever had.
|
| [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/yota_yotaphone_2-6959.php
| sho_hn wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| I linked my framed e-ink newspaper build elsewhere in the
| thread, here's to e-ink hacking :)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I love the "it's trash day" being represented as a full trash
| can on the desktop!
| bobbiechen wrote:
| At the beginning of 2020, I worked on a project to create a
| status indicator for real life, to help people in the office
| communicate whether it's okay to interrupt them or not. We
| ended up using a Pimoroni Inky with Raspberry Pi to auto-sync
| calendar/Slack status - easy to work with and reasonably
| pretty.
|
| Of course, we didn't have a chance to deploy it before the
| pandemic hit, but someday I'll come back to it...
|
| Here's my teammate's writeup of the project, including
| photos/video: https://www.timmychiu.com/dash
| dragontamer wrote:
| Some notes about my E-Ink studies.
|
| 1. E-ink requires a number of external components, even with
| their "chip on glass". In particular, E-ink requires a high
| voltage to change and charge the ink. I've seen inductors on most
| of these reference designs (ie: suggesting a boost converters of
| some kind).
|
| 2. E-Ink is very slow especially at this price range. Static
| images are fine, but don't expect animations.
|
| 3. E-ink protocols take a "temperature". In my cases, I've just
| been hard coding it to 25C / Room temperature, but this suggests
| that low-temperatures or high-temperatures may change the
| behavior of the screen.
|
| 4. E-ink is very "bursty" with power, using more power than LCD
| when changing images, but then zero power for most of its life.
| Be sure to think carefully about the current associated with this
| burst, especially if you're using small CR2032 coin cells (which
| have ~10 to ~100 ohms of internal resistance). A ~100mA draw on
| the charge inductor isn't out of the question (at 10-ohms, that's
| a voltage drop of 1V, which probably browns-out the RP2040). A
| slow-start circuit could solve this but you'd need to consider
| the longer charge times. Another method is to have 2x CR2032
| cells in parallel, which lowers IR (parallel resistors lower
| resitance). I'd be most interested in studying the power-network
| of this design, I bet there's some interesting things going on
| here.
|
| 5. Most E-ink screens seem to be some kind of SPI protocol (4
| wire). This is very similar to mini-LCD screens.
|
| ---------
|
| LCD screens use more power, but get you color, more resolution,
| animation and seem to be cheaper still. Furthermore, LCD requires
| fewer external components (maybe a charge-pump set of capacitors,
| but some LCD screens don't even need that). Note that
| color/resolution/animation all costs processor power / storage /
| RAM, so be careful what you wish for.
|
| LCD might be more suitable for beginners. But e-ink is very cool
| and awesome.
| samstave wrote:
| First ; Gosh I wish I had the knowledge you have on electric
| transfrerence/resistance==ohms/volts
|
| But given that coin discs input/output are heat-dependent based
| on your comment, and no knowledge, would it not be sound to
| place CR coin batts in a baffle of graphene-aero-gel which
| could be just mm thicc and shield them from said temp
| inflections? This would greatly increases life, and can be
| moulded and produced en-mass with little effort and minimal
| cost (especially if you encase batteries used in space flight
| etc - and one may use the non-conductive format to use
| aerogells as an extremely light and thin insulating layer for
| many a thing.
|
| Imagine the ability to 'spray' an AeroGel sealant onto a
| component which is heat sensitive to its accuracy...
| dragontamer wrote:
| Its not hard. But you often need someone to "initiate" you
| with the correct documents.
|
| Try reading these: https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/cr2032.pdf
|
| https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/lithiumcoin_appman.pdf
|
| Hopefully that answers any questions you have. You might need
| to research some other bits of knowledge to build up your
| base EE skillset, but once you're able to read those
| documents + understand them, I think you'll be in a good
| spot.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I've recently built a little "automatic newspaper" home deco
| piece using a 13.3" e-ink display, mainly as an excuse to try
| out Rust on an ESP32:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/PqkhdGd (edit: corrected link to album with
| finished pics)
|
| This is using an IT8951 EPD controller I wrote a little Rust
| driver for, which indeed talks SPI, although its SPI frontend
| is really a quirky/leaky abstraction over an I80 interface so
| you have to e.g. do chip select using I80 semantics and send
| preambles and such. Still, pretty breezy overall.
|
| Can confirm the power draw is of course "bursty" during the
| update. Also, yes, e-ink refresh times get slower in colder
| temps. e-ink refresh also works poorly in direct sunlight. The
| displays can also "dry out" from it and it can cause artifacts.
| But the envelope for normal operation is overall fairly good,
| certainly for home/indoor use.
|
| There's a fair amount of manufacturing tolerance and during
| testing manufacturers will usually record preferred drive
| voltages for the individual unit, etc. It's quite important to
| configure software to make use this information for optimal
| performance.
|
| I'm hoping it will run for about a year without recharging from
| that little 1100 mAh LiPo pouch at one update a day (the
| newspaper is rendered on a common home server RasPi using
| LuaLaTeX+Ghostscript and then retrieved over Wifi), having
| taken self-discharge into account.
|
| For more du-jour hype points I'm considering using OpenAI on
| the backend to summarize articles down to size to fit the
| layout! Or make it do style transfer to "1870 newspaper".
| bostonvaulter2 wrote:
| That looks great! How much was the e-ink screen itself?
| sho_hn wrote:
| About $400 + shipping from Waveshare.
| oneearedrabbit wrote:
| I love it! On a somewhat related note, I've been working on a
| tiny Forth interpreter lately, and I think the e-ink device
| it could be an interesting choice to explore and test it on
| as a dedicated computational environment. Inkplate looks very
| appealing: https://soldered.com/product/inkplate-6plus-e-
| paper-display-...
|
| You might want to check out Kagi to summarize articles:
| https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum. It does the heavy lifting of
| producing nice outputs for you.
| renewiltord wrote:
| What's the screen? Where did you get it from?
|
| It looks really cool!
| sho_hn wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| It's this product, which is built around a ED133UT2 panel
| by E Ink: https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-pape
| r/epaper-1/...
|
| You can find this unit and other IT8951-based driver boards
| for it on a few different places/in different catalogs but
| Waveshare's easy and the price seems OK.
|
| The ED133UT2 is a Carta 1200 display. The latest Carta gen
| is the 1250, but AIUI it's only relevant for color displays
| with the change being a thinner film that allow plastic
| color filters to be closer to the ink to improve contrast.
| I think the current greyscale 13.3" offered by E Ink's
| direct shop for $449 sans driver is still a 1200 - at least
| many vendors list VB3300-NCB as just an alternate name for
| the ED133UT2. The Carta range of displays are well-known
| from Amazon's Kindle and many other reader products, so my
| newspaper is basically a big honking DIY Kindle.
|
| They also offer a 10.3" panel with even higher resolution
| for half the price of the 13.3" that's supported by the
| same controller and should be fantastic for all sorts of
| home dashboards.
| anoncow wrote:
| I worked with 7.5 inch screen a few years ago for a
| desktop Todo list, but the display faded overtime (1
| year).
| sho_hn wrote:
| This seems to be pretty common with E Ink displays
| unfortunately (you hear the same about many commercial
| ebook readers). At least the larger ones are more or less
| all from the same manufacturer (E Ink). I don't know if
| there is binning going on and Amazon gets better batches
| than Waveshare does ...
|
| Direct sunlight can also be a big problem for this
| display tech, so I'm intentionally hanging it on a wall
| facing away from the most intense daytime sunlight I get.
|
| Hope it survives at least a couple of years.
| erksa wrote:
| Thanks for the info!
|
| I saw something like this a couple of years ago and
| wanted to do it myself. However the cost was relatively
| unattainable at the time, I'm glad to see it is getting
| more affordable!
| alexose wrote:
| Shoutout to the EPDIY project, which supports the
| ED133UT2 and is planning to support the 10.3" ES108FC1 in
| a future revision!
|
| https://github.com/vroland/epdiy
| sho_hn wrote:
| This is extremely cool!
|
| While cobbling together my project I was really tempted
| to go custom PCB with the ESP and the ITE controller on
| one board. Looks like this eschews the seperate
| controller entirely and instead uses ESP32 PSRAM for the
| framebuffer and has the driving waveforms embedded in the
| MCU firmware etc. Very neat, also one further level of
| "go deeper", would love to try one!
| stavros wrote:
| This is great! Would you happen to have the code available
| somewhere?
| sho_hn wrote:
| Not yet, sorry! It's still very fresh; I'll be releasing on
| GitHub pretty soon after cleaning it up a little and
| writing some documentation. When getting around to it I'll
| remember your comment and drop you a line.
|
| https://github.com/eikehein/hyelicht <- I get a little
| obsessive with that when documenting/releasing DIY stuff
| ... :-)
| stavros wrote:
| Wow, haha, that's extensive. However, I'd urge you to
| release first and write docs later (or even release first
| and make it work later). I'd get a lot more value from
| code with no docs than no code at all!
| sho_hn wrote:
| I'll try to RERO!
| bsder wrote:
| > Another method is to have 2x CR2032 cells in parallel, which
| lowers IR (parallel resistors lower resitance).
|
| Don't do this. It will work for a short time, but this
| basically just drains one of the CR2032 cells dead.
|
| The issue is that lithium cells have very little discharge
| slope, so by the time the two voltages equalize, one of the
| cells is about to die.
|
| This is in contrast to alkaline batteries which have quite a
| bit of discharge slope, so the two batteries can equalize
| voltage with most of their battery life still remaining.
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| For very small stuff, OLED displays are another possible
| alternative. Great contrast, and there's no backlight so you
| don't spend power on the "off" pixels.
|
| You could start with SSD1306 (monochrome, 3.3V) and SSD1331
| (16-bit color, boosted voltage required). They speak I2C and
| SPI, and have decent software support.
|
| The cheap and cheerful ones are <=1" diagonally though, so you
| need to step off the happy path to find badge-sized ones.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| > small CR2032 coin cells (which have ~10 to ~100 ohms of
| internal resistance). A ~100mA draw on the charge inductor
| isn't out of the question (at 10-ohms, that's a voltage drop of
| 1V, which probably browns-out the RP2040).
|
| n=1, but I'm using a single CR2032 with a Badger 2040 (same as
| OP) and a DS3231 in parallel and it works just fine down to
| ~2.8 volts.
| sho_hn wrote:
| By the way, for the e-ink project I just linked in the other
| comment I ended up discovering the RV-3028-C7 RTC module.
| Idle power draw 45 nA at 3.3V instead of 110 mA for the
| DS3231 for similar functionality and +-1 ppm accuracy with an
| internally sealed oscillator. Awesome for battery-powered
| stuff and cheaper at low qty on Digikey.
|
| I hope more of those little DIY/maker breakout boards adopt
| it. Pimoroni sells one. The one in my project is a free
| sample dev board that Micro Crystal sent me on request -
| which I guess is working out for them considering I just
| shared their product with you all.
| oneearedrabbit wrote:
| Recently, I have come across some interesting developments in
| the e-ink space. Although I haven't had the opportunity to test
| DASUNG monitors myself, but I read positive reviews. It is
| impressive, these monitors have extremely fast refresh rate.
| Yes, they are pricy. I am intrigued if something has changed
| technologically?
| sho_hn wrote:
| Your comment made me curious, but after looking at a teardown
| blog the 13" Dasung Paperlike uses the same ED133UT2 panel by
| E Ink as in my DIY newspaper project, which is a panel
| originally released about 2016/2017.
|
| That said getting good partial refresh performance out of a
| panel like this requires a good controller and good code
| (after having written a driver for one such controller
| recently), and developers and product integrators have gotten
| more refined at this. Refresh speed and display quality are
| still a trade-off here though, expressed as different
| waveforms when driving the same display.
| roughly wrote:
| Second the power draw on refresh - that surprised me for the
| projects I was using it with. Especially if you're planning on
| any kind of animation or dynamic display, it can eat your power
| budget a whole lot faster than you were expecting.
| Animats wrote:
| > But e-ink is very cool and awesome.
|
| E-ink should be, but it never seems to get there. Too low-
| contrast and/or too expensive. It's been a Real Soon Now
| technology for about two decades.
|
| There was another persistent display technology - chomeric
| displays. They came from a company called Chomerics, which was
| acquired by Parker Hannefin, which dropped the product line.
| Almost everything about those has disappeared from the Web,
| except that the former factory is now a Superfund site.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/CurSites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...
| WillAdams wrote:
| I've been using it since my previous job bought me a Sony
| PRS-505 (a co-worker got an Amazon Kindle).
|
| Works well, w/ great battery life, and it really has come
| into its own w/ the new Kindle Scribe --- a large screen
| e-ink device which works as an e-reader and has useful note-
| taking and annotation capabilities (looking forward to seeing
| what competitors do w/ it --- probably would have bought an
| Onyx Tab Ultra if the Scribe hadn't been available).
|
| I'd really like to see an affordable display suited to a
| Raspberry Pi, ideally w/ touch.
| amluto wrote:
| I'm cautiously optimistic, because two decades is the
| lifespan of a patent. E Ink the company has been a terrible
| steward of the technology. May they lose their state-
| sponsored monopoly and fade into irrelevance in peace.
| fossuser wrote:
| Unfortunately it's not that simple.
|
| I talked to someone building related tech in the industry
| and E-Ink the company has a stranglehold on suppliers and
| leverages that to force compliance despite the patent
| nearing expiration (blocking anyone else from getting
| access to those suppliers).
|
| The patent has allowed them to become entrenched and all
| current suppliers to depend on them. This will be hard to
| correct even with patent expiration.
|
| I don't remember the specific details (unfortunately) and
| it's second hand info, but I was disappointed to hear it
| from someone more involved than I.
| amluto wrote:
| I wish the FTC would crack down harder on exclusivity
| deals like this.
| Animats wrote:
| Why? E-Ink is a tiny niche in the display sector. Now,
| if, say, only Apple had E-Ink phones, it would be a
| monopoly issue.
| amluto wrote:
| E-Ink is apparently engaged in anti-competitive
| practices. Why should it matter that the market in
| question is small?
|
| Lots of companies do this. Amazon demands exclusivity for
| certain book sales, and they have contracts with sellers
| that make it hard for other marketplaces to undercut
| them. Qualcomm is famous for abusive practices. The list
| goes on.
|
| In general, IMO companies should be able to compete by
| offering a superior product and/or a superior price point
| and/or a superior experience. They should not be able to
| compete by getting in each others' way.
| outworlder wrote:
| Expensive yes, but low contrast? Doesn't it have the opposite
| problem?
| zamnos wrote:
| Maybe for you. But the first Kindle came out in 2007, and
| Amazon has sold tens of millions of them. The latest, the
| Kindle Scribe, even allows users to write in books with a
| pen.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I have an e-ink tablet (Boox Tab X), which is like a Kindle
| Scribe except it's also a (more or less) full featured
| Android tablet.
|
| I have a very nice setup with Zotero, where I can sync
| papers I want to read to the tablet (running Zoo for
| Zotero), read and mark them up, and then sync the marked up
| version back to my computer.
| bitL wrote:
| I use Onyx A4 reader and it has completely replaced paper for
| me. Making notes directly to PDFs while I read them is
| fantastic. And it saves my eyes. The only drawback is the
| price (around $1k). I am not watching videos on it though.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Sharp's Memory LCD technology (made famous by Pebble
| Smartwatch) was pretty good IMO.
|
| They still sell those on Digikey:
| https://sharpdevices.com/memory-lcd/
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sharp-
| microelectr...
|
| This is an LCD screen with active-power measured in micro-
| amps. This means that memory-lcd is more power-efficient than
| e-ink even if it updates once every 5 minutes. (though the
| less you update, the better e-ink gets).
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| People don't realize that e-ink and related technologies
| simply _suck_, and rather make up crazy conspiracy theories
| about eInk for some reason sabotaging their own product.
| Consumers don't want eInk. Consumers cannot distinguish
| eInk from LCD. Most companies that have made non-LCD based
| products are simply out-sold by LCD products and go
| bankrupt. I could probably name half-a-dozen non-LCD
| reflective technologies which are _dead_ today without even
| checking Wikipedia, like Gyricon, Mirasol, the stuff the
| OLPC used, Flepia, etc. All of them dead or niche.
|
| Even price displays are usually LCDs, with only a minority
| being eInk, but as you can see here, even casual hackers
| have a hard time distinguishing between them.
|
| Th small displays they put on smartcards (showing a 2FA or
| the like) are also LCDs, and even with a practically
| minuscule battery they last for a decade, and that's
| refreshing itself once per hour... there's absolutely
| nothing that would improve with eInk, save for perhaps if
| you wear polarizing glasses...
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > E-ink should be, but it never seems to get there. T
|
| Every price tag at my local grocery store is eInk. Like there
| must be thousands. I'm guessing there are updated by wifi. I
| mean that is pretty damn good use and the refresh rate means
| you saw real energy over LCD.
|
| https://www.mrbdvr.com/products/e-ink-price-tag-99
| donio wrote:
| If you wanted to make these cheap couldn't you have tag
| contain nothing but the eink matrix and a connector and the
| have all the electronics in the burner caddy?
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Funny you should bring this up, I just thought about it
| today what a terrible development those electronic price
| tags are from a consumer perspective. Because of course the
| next step is constantly changing the prices based on
| customer data telling them how to extract the maximum
| amount of cash from shoppers. Which is what I noticed at
| stores where they do have them, in extreme cases they
| change the prices of some products multiple times a day.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Wait until they change price as you approach the shelf.
| Maybe put that phone in airplane mode when you shop.
| dmonitor wrote:
| I can confirm that they start to act weird around high
| temperatures. Just exposing it to the sun for a few minutes on
| a hot day can make dots not transition correctly
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| One very widespread use of two-color (red and black) e-ink
| screens is grocery store price labels. They're everywhere in
| Canada, and they work great. Even the fine-print (price per
| 100g) is clearly readable.
|
| I don't know if they have batteries and wi-fi, or if they're
| updated manually with NFC, but either way they can't be too
| expensive if there are 5000+ in every store. They're a bit
| smaller than the badges these guys made, but they might be a
| lot cheaper and easier to work with.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I don't know if they have batteries and wi-fi, or if
| they're updated manually with NFC
|
| Yes, yes, yes, and other methods. These are called
| "Electronic Shelf Labels", and there's a whole slew of
| competitors.
|
| WiFi is very high power, so its "pull only twice a day" kinda
| setup. You have a radio that only turns on twice a day to
| contact the server. Zigbee is also a solution, though that
| requires a Zigbee router (coordinator? I forget the
| terminology). Much less power on Zigbee, but if you're
| deploying hundreds/thousands of these ESLs, I think the
| benefits of Zigbee low power outweigh the penalties.
|
| NFC exists but I don't think I've ever seen them in person.
| Probably too much effort since it'd require a human walking
| around the store?
|
| I've even seen ESLs that work off of infrared. You're
| supposed to install IR LEDs all around the store, and they
| can it all shelf-labels to update. IR receivers are the
| lowest power, so this is the only way you can feasibly "push"
| data to a shelf label. (Wifi and Zigbee are "pull only").
|
| So some computer blasts the IR signal around the whole store,
| which is enough information to transmit to change all the
| prices apparently. Like a giant broadcast remote control.
| philipphutterer wrote:
| There was some information only recently on HN about
| reversing those Electron Shelf Labels [0] that was quite
| interesting, but your comment makes me wonder if you could
| eavesdrop these wifi price updates in such stores. Also,
| searching for that term on HN gives some other fun
| projects.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34738649
| TheAdamist wrote:
| Ive seen similar (maybe the same) red black eink screens at
| best buy in the usa for pricing labels as well over the last
| year, so they're not exclusive to north of the border. Far
| fewer labels than a grocery store though.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| eInk price labels always make think about time of day
| pricing, and even differential pricing based on computer
| vision.
|
| Sure, you can't do it today, but I'd be surprised if we don't
| see it in 20 years.
| Ballu wrote:
| Could you recommend any good similar size as well as
| functionality LCD for my personal project? Charging is not an
| issue (short term use), minimal equipment and clarity at screen
| are key requirements.
| dragontamer wrote:
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/lcd-oled-graphic
|
| These are cheap enough that you can pretty much buy what you
| want and sample them yourself.
|
| I know there are other stores that have better prices. But
| Digikey has a very good selection and has data-sheets for
| most of their offerings.
|
| ---------
|
| I personally like the Sharp memory-lcd display. But your
| milage may vary. Monochrome is fine for my uses
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