[HN Gopher] Glider - open-source eInk monitor with an emphasis o...
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Glider - open-source eInk monitor with an emphasis on low latency
Author : mistercheph
Score : 688 points
Date : 2024-05-14 18:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| Max-q wrote:
| This is an amazing piece of work and the documentation is a great
| introduction to EPD.
| carterschonwald wrote:
| This is great!
| localfirst wrote:
| im not familiar with this industry but
|
| how far are we from magazine quality look and feel using eInk?
|
| like there is a scene from an old 80s sci-fi movie dude whips out
| a game magazine and the screenshot of games are fully animated
| videos...
|
| ive been waiting 30 years now for this tech
| sedatk wrote:
| I believe we need to wait for e-ink patents to expire.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content
| to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and
| making real money
| Qwertious wrote:
| The core patents already have expired. They have competition,
| it's called Reinkstone (and their DES/cofferdam tech).
|
| The reason e-inks are so expensive and progressing so slowly
| is that it's a niche product which doesn't drive much R&D
| spending (compared to LCDs, which sell _billions_ per quarter
| and you 're reading this comment on).
| sedatk wrote:
| Didn't know that they expired. That's good news. We just
| need exciting products now.
| PaulStatezny wrote:
| Given the couple years I spent using a Dasung Paperlike e-ink
| monitor, I think we're pretty far off from that.
|
| There seems to be a direct tradeoff between contrast/image-
| brilliance and latency/frames-per-second. Many monitors can be
| switched along that spectrum, but the current tech doesn't seem
| to be able to deliver both simultaneously at a reasonable
| price.
| ant6n wrote:
| As a not so proud owner of a Dasung color I have to agree.
| The product is absolutely atrocious. It has like 8 colors,
| not thousands. The contrast is shit, ,,white" is brown, black
| is ... some darker brown. It's reflective. It heavily relies
| on unstable dithering (so moving the mouse will jitter around
| a large area of nearby pixels), which also makes everything
| unreadable. The color processing is shit, it won't even try
| to approximate displayed colors with the ones it can display.
|
| You have to fight with the settings to just get something
| that is vaguely usable, and set up the OS with custom colors
| and an accessible theme. But even then it's so much more
| straining to use than a normal monitor, because of the
| reflections and shit contrast.
|
| I think you could probably get something more useful by
| building a 28" wall paper of game boy colors.
|
| Worst purchase ever.
| card_zero wrote:
| What we need is a structural color display, using octopus
| proteins.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Variabl
| e...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| A lot of the components you'd need for that sorta kinda exist:
|
| Flexible e-ink displays
|
| Color eink displays
|
| High-ish refresh rate eink displays
|
| The problem is AFAICT there's no device that covers all 3.
| Color displays have pretty big tradeoffs in terms of
| resolution/contrast/latency. However they're still way ahead of
| where they were 5-10 years ago.
| exceptione wrote:
| Impressive breadth and depth of information in just the README
| alone.
|
| When this kind of stuff gets in the open like it does here, I
| expect rapid innovation and disruption from the crowd.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I would hope that the Pine Note people look at it. Progress for
| them has been quite slow (I follow the discord), and they are
| struggling with a lot of basic stuff.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Because someone needs to be paid to land Rockchip drivers in
| mainline, and Rockchip aren't going to do it.
| dheera wrote:
| At least this is real ePaper and not that previous bull that
| was trying to pass off monochrome LCD as low-latency ePaper.
| 3abiton wrote:
| You were not kidding, it's much more detailed than I
| anticipated down to the physics theory of they work.
| tonymet wrote:
| I've been using a Kindle for 10+ years now , but the poor
| responsiveness has always irked me. I can't tell if it's a
| hardware or software issue. I'm glad to see this project is
| focused on reducing latency on the hardware side.
|
| Does anyone know why the Kindle is such a bad product? I use it
| because I like e-ink and the e-book market is comprehensive, but
| I don't think it's actually a good device.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's responsive enough to do what it was purpose built for -
| read a book. It _can_ do other things, but it 's not made or
| marketed to do them, so they keep the cost low by not
| innovating on responsiveness. Instead, they make it more
| comfortable to use in other ways, such as how it's held and
| navigated, and the backlight.
| tonymet wrote:
| There are many high-quality products at a competitive cost.
| That's a pathetic excuse.
|
| A lot of time was spent integrating social features that no
| one uses. That time could have been spent on quality &
| latency.
|
| I understand their business goals and objectives. It's still
| a low-quality product.
|
| A profitable product can also be terrible.
| Tagbert wrote:
| from what I've read, responsive screen refresh is inversely
| related to battery life. A more responsive screen results
| in less battery life. Amazon, and pretty much all other
| eink readers have prioritized battery life over absolute
| responsiveness.
|
| They have made significant improvements in responsiveness
| over the years. Do you remember how slow screen refreshes
| were on the original Kindle? It's just that that is not a
| high priority for their main use case of linear reading.
|
| If you want to use it for reading PDF reference books, you
| probably should look to one of the eink Android tablets
| that are more general purpose devices and may have a faster
| refresh rate.
| jsheard wrote:
| There's also an inverse relationship between response
| time and image quality with e-ink, speeding up the
| display comes at the cost of more smearing/ghosting.
| There's often a software option to tweak that balance one
| way or the other depending on your preference.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| As someone who worked on them a decade ago:
|
| To be clear, the displays are not created by Amazon /
| Lab126. Instead, they're a product of Eink Holdings, Inc.
|
| From what I remember, most of the screen refresh algorithms
| etc are Eink IP. And by the way, the cost of the display
| module alone was eye-watering, especially when compared
| with LCD displays...
|
| With e-ink, you can drive it faster, at the expense of
| massive power consumption or terrible ghosting /
| artifacting. You're not going to get the 6 weeks of use out
| of a battery doing that.
|
| For reading a book, smudges / ghosting sucks, so they
| optimize for full screen refreshes just often enough to
| clear that up (that's when the screen goes black then
| white, followed by the update).
|
| It's kind of a physics based fundamental limitation -- the
| display is closer to a mechanical display of old than an
| LCD.
|
| The kindle is a product that does one thing well: display
| static text in any lighting condition with a similar
| quality to the printed page.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Instead, they're a product of Eink Holdings, Inc. From
| what I remember, most of the screen refresh algorithms
| etc are Eink IP. And by the way, the cost of the display
| module alone was eye-watering
|
| Layman here, but what you describe sounds very much like
| innovation held back by patents:
|
| At the core, it's really promising tech with actual major
| advantages over LCDs with applications already in many
| domains and possibly many more in the future; all you'd
| need really is incremental improvements, similar to the
| journey of LCD. Remember the shitty TFT(?) monitors from
| 20 years ago? Ghosting, low resolution, delay, low
| contrast, backlight bleeding, etc.
|
| If we hypothetically had 20 companies competing the
| traditional way, throwing international manufacturing and
| material science know-how on these bad boys, I'd bet $100
| that we'd see massive gains in ability at a fraction of
| marginal cost - from incrementalism alone - way before
| you reach physical limitations. And with a bit of luck,
| there might be a breakthrough in the core tech as well.
|
| > It's kind of a physics based fundamental limitation --
| the display is closer to a mechanical display of old than
| an LCD.
|
| I hear you. But brilliant people have been wrong about
| these statements in all kinds of areas before. Could you
| share more detailed what those hard limitations might be?
| treflop wrote:
| The core patents have already expired.
|
| AFAIK manufacturing e-ink displays is still difficult.
|
| I also have worked with e-ink displays for hobby projects
| and you're flipping tiny balls of ink. Unfortunately
| e-ink displays are extremely slow and it only gets worse
| if you want colors or anything you might want in a
| display. E-ink displays look cool and sound cool but
| really suck to work with.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There are high tech eInk devices that can refresh much
| faster than a Kindle and that you can buy right now, but
| any eInk discussion on Hacker News lives in a parallel
| universe where those devices should never be mentioned
| and we should pretend that the technology is where it was
| 10 years ago.
|
| With the rapid rate of development recently, I would
| expect eInk displays to break the "magic" 24 fps barrier
| in 2025 and hit the mainstream in a major way.
| Considering that offices worldwide have been constructed
| to block out sunlight to accommodate display use, this
| tech has the potential to change everything.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Very cool! Do you have a link to a demo to see what it
| would look like?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Check out the Boox devices, there's a YouTuber called
| "mydeepguide" who makes extensive reviews.
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| Sharp MIP! I drove over locked a small one at 120FPS
| once. Wouldn't do 240fps though.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >Layman here, but what you describe sounds very much like
| innovation held back by patents
|
| It's not patents, it's economy of scale: LCDs ship
| _billions_ per quarter and are used in phones
| /watches/laptops/PC monitors/TVs/car-dashes/coffee-
| machines/fridges/kiosks/etc etc etc, whereas e-ink
| screens are used in e-readers, supermarket tags, e-notes
| (stylus tablets), and basically nothing else.
|
| When LCDs ship orders of magnitude more SKUs, they
| inevitably have lower costs. That's just economics.
|
| Besides which, Amazon ships Kindles at-cost, there's no
| way they'd be price-gouged - if E-Ink tried to screw them
| then they'd buy E-Ink Corp. It wouldn't even be the first
| passive display company they bought. See: LiquaVista.
|
| >Could you share more detailed what those hard
| limitations might be?
|
| The ink in the e-ink needs to be shuffled up and down
| with each refresh, but if they're pushed too quickly then
| they pound the capsule they're in and damage it, or get
| permanently stuck. Either will break the display. And
| it's _powder_ not a solid object, so the display needs to
| move _all_ the ink, down, or you 'll have ghosting.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Besides which, Amazon ships Kindles at-cost, there's no
| way they'd be price-gouged - if E-Ink tried to screw them
| then they'd buy E-Ink Corp. It wouldn't even be the first
| passive display company they bought. See: LiquaVista.
|
| Imagine you own E-Ink Corp. You know Amazon needs your
| screens. You can sell them the screens or you can sell
| them the company but you can price-gouge them either way.
| (Of course E-Ink Corp is a stock corporation. The ability
| to price-gouge amazon is priced in. There's no reason to
| assume Amazon would save money by buying the company.)
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I've tried to read manga and graphic novels on e-readers
| which makes EVERY page turn take longer, and it's very
| clear to me that e-ink latency is a huge problem. Boox is
| notable for having faster page turns since they're
| essentially just customised android tablets with an e-ink
| screen.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| > A lot of time was spent integrating social features that
| no one uses. That time could have been spent on quality &
| latency.
|
| Goodreads integration is the best! I track books I want to
| read with it and then when I'm ready for a new book use the
| integration to download a sample on the spot
| tonymet wrote:
| that's good maybe I should give it another review. It
| seemed like a neglected part of the OS
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Kindle is now the kleenex of ebook readers, certainly not a bad
| product by any stretch.
| tonymet wrote:
| what qualities are good? I admit they have a good ebook
| selection , networking features are good, and the price point
| is good when on discount.
|
| But the software is awful and the application of the eink
| hardware is terrible too.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's a better book than actual books for 98+% of books I've
| read on it.
|
| Taking as many books as I want onto an airplane for a
| business trip is great. My kids and wife read theirs
| literally daily. I'd have to look up how old they are, but
| the newest one is 2 years old and I think mine is around 10
| (it's a first gen paper white).
|
| The e-ink display updates fast enough to not distract me
| from reading. The battery lasts multiple business trips,
| even on my very old unit.
|
| I'm surprised how negatively you feel about it, given my
| and my family's very good experiences.
| tonymet wrote:
| The ability to take a library with me is great,
| obviously. I also primarily read on kindle.
|
| The complaints I have are all qualities within their
| control that seem to be lagging due to neglect
| (responsiveness, UI, stability, degrading performance
| over time, keyboard, search)
|
| Now ignore the library aspect and compare reading a
| single book to reading a single e-book and the gaps will
| be more visible.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I was recently given a physical book as part of a work-
| related book club and took it along with my Kindle on a
| family vacation in April, so I ended up doing a direct
| comparison. The physical book was not better than a
| Kindle version would have been. It was bigger, heavier,
| was only one book, was harder to read in the evening,
| harder to highlight passages and find them later. I think
| the only thing is the around double resolution of the
| print version, where the Kindle's ~300dpi is entirely
| passable, and the fact that the book's "battery life" is
| >100 years while the Kindle needs charging once per
| month. Still a big Kindle win.
| amenhotep wrote:
| You really threw me for a second with talking about your
| kids reading and then saying "I'd have to look up how old
| they are, but the newest one is two years old"!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Depends on your perspective. If you sell kindles you
| probably are pretty pleased with almost 100 million units
| sold. Not a lot of products get those numbers. It sold
| quite successfully I'd say.
| paulcole wrote:
| Incredible book selection. Ease of buying books. Great
| battery life. Great screen and light. Great reading
| experience.
|
| I read 100+ books a year on my Kindles.
| tonymet wrote:
| Yes the cloud sync and the marketplace are great , with
| some reservations on licensing and ownership.
|
| The device itself is neglected, underpowered,
| unresponsive, unreliable , sluggish with a terrible UI.
|
| Decompose the concept.
| paulcole wrote:
| > The device itself is neglected, underpowered,
| unresponsive, unreliable , sluggish with a terrible UI.
|
| UI is great! I can easily read on the thing. What is
| "terrible"? Who cares if the device is underpowered or
| whatever? I tap on the screen and things happen. I've
| owned nearly every kindle ever released and never had any
| of the complaints you do.
|
| It's great for reading, I'm not mining bitcoin on the
| thing.
|
| It's an excellent single-use device.
|
| What exactly do you want the Kindle to be?
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| What are you trying to do with it that you're concluding it's a
| "bad product" due to the slow refresh times? Kindles have
| always been the benchmark ebook reader and the most common
| piece of e-ink technology that you can actually buy. Hardly a
| "bad product" in any dimension that matters in business terms.
| tonymet wrote:
| Successful doesn't necessarily mean good. the UI is slow. It
| crashes with large books. The hardware is seemingly under-
| powered. The OS degrades in usability over time. Search
| indexing is poor. The lack of responsiveness makes the
| keyboard unusable.
|
| I've heard similar pitfalls about Kindle Scribe, the write-
| able Kindle.
| pnw wrote:
| I use a Kindle Scribe almost every day, have read dozens
| and dozens of books and documents on it. Maybe we have
| different expectations but I love mine and take it
| everywhere. It's never crashed.
|
| When I am trying to focus on reading a book, I appreciate
| that the Kindle doesn't have too many bells and whistles. I
| don't want notifications popping off and the distraction of
| fast Internet access.
| Qwertious wrote:
| The Kindle Scribe is way more expensive than normal
| kindles (and has to handle the more computationally
| demanding task of vector graphics), so it would have a
| faster processor, and would be able to handle ebooks way
| easier than a cheap Kindle.
|
| Not saying you're wrong, just that your anecdote doesn't
| mean much about $100/$50 Kindles.
| tonymet wrote:
| I looked into Scribe and it sounds like they upgraded the
| hardware to making writing more responsive. that's good
| news.
| darby_eight wrote:
| They've been the benchmark for amazon kindle books. They suck
| for pdfs or anything with graphics.
| tonymet wrote:
| Again, you're confusing market success with quality. Many
| beautiful products fail and many awful products succeed.
|
| I'm talking about aesthetics. In this case, elegance,
| utility, responsiveness, durability, efficiency .
| Tagbert wrote:
| you are confusing your needs with the use case of the
| Kindle which is heavily focused on linear reading of text,
| mostly fiction. Graphics and PDFs are much lower on the
| priority scale.
| darby_eight wrote:
| > Graphics and PDFs are much lower on the priority scale.
|
| Unless of course you read books that have graphics or
| come in pdf form.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Which is not the business that Amazon and Kobo are in.
| t-3 wrote:
| PDFs and comics are not a small use case at all - the
| push to larger screens is mostly driven by people who
| want to read scientific papers, business documents, etc
| which come in pdf form, or manga and other graphical
| works (the drive for color ereaders seems to come almost
| entirely from this segment). The smaller "ebook only"
| readers are much cheaper and marketed less aggressively.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Even optimized e-ink devices are not particularly
| suitable for those kinds of materials and most of the
| e-ink reader manufacturers have not tried to address that
| market. It is generally better served by LCD tablets.
| kimixa wrote:
| I think e-readers are pretty much a solved problem for books
| that consist of solely text - it's got to the point where
| they only differentiate themselves on things more related to
| personal taste than any technical merit. And price, of
| course.
|
| I consider myself a heavy user of ereaders, probably
| averaging over an hour a day, and have had a few in my time
| (Kindle paperwhite, Kindle Voyage, Kobo Aura H2O, latest the
| Kindle Oasis - which I got in Jan 2019). The only real time I
| felt like I got an "upgrade" was the slightly denser screen
| on the voyage, then the slightly larger screen on the Aura.
| The Oasis feels functionally the same for my use case (again,
| 99.9% text, no images or diagrams or animations, so can't
| compare them). But really the only reason I "upgraded" after
| the voyage is leaving it on a train or got damaged in my
| luggage one time.
|
| And what can they really improve on it? There are denser
| screens - but they don't make the font size I use actually
| look any better. There are larger screens, but it's already
| about the limit of what I want for portability, and much
| larger would be harder to read not easier. There are faster
| refreshing screens, but I've never even noticed the page
| refresh speed, as it's lost in the time it takes to realign
| my eyes to the top of the page anyway.
|
| So what's left? Looks? "Premium" materials? Thinness? The
| oasis is already at the point where any thinner or bezels any
| smaller and you couldn't hold it. I don't read comics on it,
| so don't really need a higher resolution, or colour panel
| (though can see the advantage if you did). Same with flash
| size - every book I've ever read on it (nearly 3000) is still
| on my 8gb model, and it's not even at 50% capacity.
|
| And now my Oasis battery is starting to fade - it doesn't
| more than a few days anymore - and somehow it feels weird
| considering buying the same thing again - or pry open the
| back off and try to replace it - though who knows what that
| would do to it's water resistance. I guess the newer models
| have an amber backlight option, which would be nice, but
| still doesn't feel like an _upgrade_ to something I purchased
| over 5 years ago now? Or even more as I only got _that_
| because the (functionally equivalent) predecessor got crushed
| on a plane.
|
| So I think my point is that for the "Reading Books" use case,
| a kindle has already reached the maxima. Any "improvement"
| would almost be a waste - why improve refresh times when it
| won't actually affect the user experience one bit?
|
| Is there something I'm missing? Is this just a local maxima
| where you'd look back on and feel stupid for not seeing the
| "obvious" improvement path? Or is ereader "development" just
| a waste now as it's now just a commodity?
| Qwertious wrote:
| >Is there something I'm missing? Is this just a local
| maxima where you'd look back on and feel stupid for not
| seeing the "obvious" improvement path?
|
| A handle. My hand is not L-shaped. Make it hand-mirror
| shaped and shift as much weight as possible into the
| handle. Preferably a fold-down handle.
|
| A folding screen. Or rather, two screens with a hinge, no
| need for fancy flexible screen tech. It doesn't matter if
| there's a visible bezel between the screens, you're only
| displaying text. Ideally, you'd cram it _just_ small enough
| that it can fit in your pocket when folded.
|
| Also, once you have a handle you don't need bezels.
| kimixa wrote:
| A handle is an interesting one - I'd be a bit worried by
| having that you'd make it so you can't hold it any other
| way. As I read I naturally reposition my hands, sometimes
| both on the device on each side, sometimes one gripping
| the side. Sometimes my thumbs supporting it from the
| bottom, sometimes the thumb over the top corner. It's
| light enough you don't really need that much "grip".
| Sometimes not really gripped at all, but leant against
| sometime, like my hand or the back of a seat tray table
| on a train. I do the same thing with paperbacks.
|
| I can't imagine holding a hand mirror for any length of
| time comfortably - especially if there's only a single
| orientation you can grip it with the screen upright - but
| that may be the weight distribution as you mentioned.
|
| Folding would be useful for putting it in a bag or
| fitting it somewhere, which hasn't really been a big
| issue for me. A flat profile is already fine when putting
| it in a laptop bag - it's thin enough it just slides down
| the side of the pocket. I wouldn't be surprised if
| decreasing the total volume is pretty much at it's limit
| already with being able to be held - but maybe putting
| that is a more square package when stored would be easier
| in some cases?
| mariusor wrote:
| Probably you've seen already, but Kobo is now experimenting
| with colour screens, plus note taking. People on the
| internet seem enthusiastic about the colour screens at
| least.
|
| So maybe zines and comics is where ebook readers are
| heading.
| tonymet wrote:
| i'm compelling people that it's not solved given how
| critical reading is. It should be better than reading a
| book in every way. Right now the library sync features are
| better but the reading experience is worse.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| E-ink devices have improved a lot over the last 10 years,
| across the board: refresh rate, latency, computing power,
| responsiveness, you name it.
| tonymet wrote:
| Indeed, and though Kindle has improved, it hasn't improved by
| much. I've owned 4 generations and they are all a bit better,
| especially when new.
|
| It's the same complaint people make about iOS devices
| degrading to force upgrades.
|
| I don't think it's deliberate but I do think it's
| deliberately neglected.
| dools wrote:
| > Does anyone know why the Kindle is such a bad product?
|
| Because it's made by Amazon
| mcast wrote:
| To be fair, the Kindle is primarily used for reading books
| and doesn't require a fast refresh rate. It also lasts for
| weeks (months?) without charging.
| tonymet wrote:
| It's not about refresh rate it's about responsiveness. As
| close to 0ms as possible. On kindle there's a frustrating
| amount of input lag
| TillE wrote:
| The response you're waiting for is a refresh of the
| screen.
|
| The Kindle excels at being a low-cost device for reading
| novels, or linear non-fiction with no graphics etc. For
| anything fancier, it's simply not built for that.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| Isn't it funny how the CEO is always saying that user
| experience is their primary focus, and you get such a
| mediocre experience?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I used few ebooks and Kindle is the only one that actually
| works as expected. Some ebooks I used drained battery in few
| days, not delivering promise of long life. Some ebooks were
| just crap and broke after few months. Kindle works few weeks
| from one charge for my use (1-2 hours of reading per day), it's
| water-proof so I can read my books while taking a bath
| (priceless). I never had any particular issues with it.
|
| Its UI seems oriented to promote Amazon Store and I never used
| it, sending books over e-mail and deleting after read, that's
| OK with me. I'd prefer for its library to have folders and I'd
| prefer for it to work as USB stick like other ebooks do, so I
| can connect it to PC and organize things inside as I want, but
| those are not necessary.
|
| So may be Kindle is bad, but rest are worse, I don't know a
| single ebook brand of Amazon scale. They all seem to be Chinese
| no-names which come and go without investments to quality and
| reputation.
| tonymet wrote:
| I agree with all of this, and I've noticed as much with the
| other readers. Some users promote Kobo reader as a quality
| alternative, but I haven't tried it.
| lidavidm wrote:
| Kobo works quite well: you can set it up without an account
| (needs a bit of manual fiddling) if you really want, and
| either way after that you can just plug it in and drag-and-
| drop epubs to the device. Battery life, responsiveness,
| etc. are all fine to me (the older devices actually did a
| bit better IMO and it mostly only gets bogged down for
| comics, regular books are fine)
| hex4def6 wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| I like tools that do one thing well. The Kindle has hit that
| spot for a long time. There were incremental improvements
| (faster processor, 3G/4G, front light, higher DPI / contrast,
| etc), but it's surprising how similar a 2010 kindle is to a
| 2024 one.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| After registration, I have never connected my Kindle to the
| internet - 6-7 years now. This has prevented updates that
| degrade performance, and Amazon getting my usage data. I just
| copy over ebooks using usb, optionally after converting to
| mobi using Calibre.
|
| Works perfectly.
| callalex wrote:
| >I'd prefer for it to work as USB stick like other ebooks do
|
| Have you tried Calibre? https://calibre-ebook.com/
| graypegg wrote:
| I use a pocketbook right now, and was using quite a few kobos
| over the years prior. At least with those, I've noticed that
| we've kinda reached some ceiling for responsiveness, and I
| think it's the software/computing hardware not the screen
| hardware causing it. Stuff like page turns can be quite fast,
| but closing out of a book and opening another really feels like
| you're straining the poor thing.
|
| Pocketbook particularly takes ages to reflow text if you rotate
| it. I think it's reflowing the entire ebook to get page numbers
| + chapter positions? Very annoying if you forget to turn off
| the accelerometer.
| Liskni_si wrote:
| Try using KOReader instead of the built-in reader software.
| It's a bit faster (doesn't wait to reflow the entire book if
| you change fonts, margins, orientation, whatever), and also
| it's easier to achieve consistent rendering of books (fonts,
| spacing, etc.) as it supports overriding the stylesheet, and
| just generally handles HTML/CSS better.
|
| Oh, and speaking of responsiveness, I found that it depends
| on temperature a lot. E-ink apparently has a sweet spot at
| room temperature, but when I use the device outdoors, in
| either sub 10 @C temperatures or over 30 @C the screen
| changes noticeably slower.
| green-salt wrote:
| It becomes a much more stable device when you jailbreak it and
| put something like KOReader. You can put books on it with
| Calibre or just SFTP afterwards.
| tonymet wrote:
| thanks for the recommendation I've started on the jailbreak
| for my old kindle. I'd like to turn it into an offline
| wikipedia & public domain books reader.
| pquki4 wrote:
| I don't know which kindle you have, but my Scribe is noticably
| faster than the Oasis 2nd gen from 2017. Almost makes me want
| to replace the Oasis with the latest Paperwhite.
| tonymet wrote:
| my paperwhite 2022(ish) seemed faster than the previous one
| (2017?) but now it's nearly as bad
| karunamurti wrote:
| I think it's always e-ink, their patents, their evergreening
| patents, and their lawyers.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I recently bough Onyx Boox tablet. After degoogling device I'm
| really enjoy possibilities of android system more then closed
| one like Kindle or Kobo or Pocketbook.
|
| Main purpose is reading a lot of sheet music documents, making
| annotations and share with choir/orchestra. I discovered that
| Calibre is excellent tool for organisation of large database of
| sheet music documents.
|
| What surprised me most is how responsive drawing/writing by
| stylus is. Weird part is that apps need optimalisaton for fast
| responsivness which some apps have and some don't. Which mean
| eink technology capabilities are limited by SW quite
| significantly.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| > I can't tell if it's a hardware or software issue.
|
| it's neither, it's a physics issue. Moving electrically charged
| particles isn't going as fast as making current flow flow
| through semi conductors
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I want to make a Compact Mac clone with an eink display like
| this. How wonderful would that look.
| afandian wrote:
| I'd settle for an eink Newton.
| WillAdams wrote:
| I'd be glad of a contemporary device w/ a b/w LED --- still
| saddened that there wasn't a replacement for the Asus Eee
| Note EA800 --- and I'm still annoyed that Apple has yet to
| make a device to replace my Newton (at a minimum, I'd want
| Apple Pencil support on an iPhone (or iPod Touch if they'd
| bring that back) or Mini iPad), but using something other
| than an LCD for daylight viewability would be something I'd
| be glad of (trying to out-bright the sun on a battery-powered
| device is just as stupid as it sounds to my mind).
| tonymet wrote:
| or reboot Palm pilot
| jollyjerry wrote:
| I wish I could find my Palm V. That device _felt_ like
| quality in your hand. Metal back with satin finish, leather
| cover, the stylus was a snug fit.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It can look good [1] but I haven't yet seen the refresh rate of
| eInk that I thought could handle a moving cursor. Maybe with
| the right driver you can these days.
|
| [1] https://engineersneedart.com/systemsix/systemsix.html
| jwells89 wrote:
| A machine with the 12" Macbook form factor and an e-ink display
| with optional orange glowlight for night running something akin
| to Classic Mac OS would make for a very zen, highly portable
| writing machine. Would probably get battery life measured in
| weeks, too.
| thetinymite wrote:
| I think this is the original repo:
| https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider
|
| based on this tweet:
| https://twitter.com/zephray_wenting/status/17901730074884506...
| SushiHippie wrote:
| The GitHub repository description also says:
|
| > Open-source E-ink monitor. Mirror of
| https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider
| megous wrote:
| On the other end of the spectrum, there are production devices
| driving eInk displays using a regular LCD controllers. :)))
|
| Anyway, I appretiate the waveform format documentation and tools.
| Might kick me back to working on my Pocketbook display driver.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| So so grateful for the open sourcing of all the knowledge about
| Eink in your brain zephray!!!
|
| So much great information in your readme about Eink. I've already
| read a decent bit of it, and am going to reference it for the
| years to come!
| OptCohTomo wrote:
| "Optical teardown of a Kindle Paperwhite display by OCT":
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.05174 OCT = Optical Coherence
| Tomography This paper shows what is going on inside the display.
| rkagerer wrote:
| What a great primer in the readme!
| karmakaze wrote:
| _[I know nothing for real in this area.]_
|
| The Limitations section was interesting to read about. As I was
| thinking about it, I began to wonder if 1 memory cell per pixel
| could be used in an analog fashion (if it could mimic the panel
| response) with a high speed ADC. Seems more complicated and less
| accurate that what's described, and perhaps not cheaper if
| possible at all.
| snvzz wrote:
| Every eINK controller sucks. This person took upon themselves to
| fix that, and released the result, which is now the state of the
| art, as open source hardware.
|
| I love people and projects like this.
| beacon294 wrote:
| I was interested in e-ink solutions for a long time due to eye
| fatigue and dry eye.
|
| It turns out I had a very minor stigmatism. My eye doctor did not
| recommend correcting it, but upon correction my dry eye and eye
| fatigue completely went away.
|
| So, get your minor astigmatism corrected via computer glasses,
| regardless of the eye doctor, best practice for minimum
| prescription strength.
| snvzz wrote:
| >computer glasses
|
| What is this?
| idle76 wrote:
| Glasses for working at a computer. The same as reading
| glasses. The word is directly translated from the common name
| for it in my native language.
| snvzz wrote:
| Oh. So the glasses correct the astigmatism. Understood.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Glasses dispensed for reading often don't work well for
| computer use. Historically "reading" meant looking at a book
| held in your hands, but computer monitors are further away
| and at a higher angle than a book. If you spend a lot of time
| using a computer, you need to discuss this with your
| dispensing optician when you buy glasses to make sure you get
| the right lenses for your needs. You may benefit from a
| dedicated pair of glasses for computer use, or a properly
| designed varifocal lens. This is especially important if
| you're over 35 and are likely to have some degree of
| presbyopia (look for an "add" value on your prescription, or
| different prescriptions for near and distance).
|
| There are a lot of special lens technologies and coatings
| that are advertised as being able to reduce eye strain when
| using digital devices. Most of these have little or no
| evidence to support their efficacy, so be wary if they try to
| upsell you on expensive extras.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Basically intermediate distance glasses.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I sat at my home desk and measured the max and min distance
| between my eyes and all parts of the screen. I then presented
| those measurements in my next eye appointment, and the
| optician (not sure of American terms) was very appreciative
| that he had specific values to work from. He then simulated
| text at the different distances, and adjusted my prescription
| to work correctly over that distance. I think it was 18
| inches minimum, 30 inches maximum.
|
| I got computer glasses from that, no special blue filtering
| or whatever, just set to give me the best view.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Seconding this. I have a very minor astigmatism in my right
| eye. Getting it corrected with custom reading glasses instead
| of just using regular readers, even though perceptually it's
| fine with the cheap ones, is night and day in terms of eye
| strain and headache. I was genuinely surprised when I figured
| out how much of a difference it makes.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Whoa. So, on a whim, I got my eyes measured when my wife was
| picking up her glasses. Very slight astigmatism in my right
| eye.
|
| And like you say, even though it's a minor abberation, the
| difference it makes in fatigue is incredible, especially
| after a day of coding work behind a screen..!
|
| Straight up the best 200 bucks I spent in terms of QOL
| improvement. Well that and a very nice thick blanket to sleep
| under.
| rthnbgrredf wrote:
| I'm glad that you have found a solution. Dry eye and eye
| fatigue often go hand in hand. Theres a whole forum dedicated
| to the topic of eye strain from LED based screens. Might be
| worth a visit for some with similar issues:
| https://ledstrain.org/
| birdlogic wrote:
| It's a fun coincidence that this is named "Glider", since a fair
| number of glider (sailplane) pilots use e-ink displays (rooted
| kobo/kindle readers usually) due to great sunlight readability,
| commonly running something like XCSoar:
| https://www.xcsoar.org/hardware/
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| So submarines are controlled with logitech controllers, gliders
| use e-ink readers as displays. Wonder what other tech is being
| reused inside of niche transportation methods :)
| lionkor wrote:
| code I wrote as a 12 year old beginner in python is running
| all of the Deutsche Bahn, I think. I suspect it anyways, it
| has the same performance characteristics.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I think python would be too usable for DB :D Probably still
| on COBOL.
|
| Beginning of this year, they were apparently looking for a
| Windows 3.11 Administrator [0]
|
| [0] https://www.heise.de/news/Deutsche-Bahn-sucht-Admin-
| fuer-Win...
| b3orn wrote:
| Interestingly they're also looking from Smalltalk
| developers, didn't expect that.
| Alex-Programs wrote:
| You can't just say that without context! What does the code
| do? How did it end up in DB? I'm really curious now.
| bemmu wrote:
| One of my tasks at my first job at 17 was writing some
| visual basic involving train track tilt formulas for a
| national railway. I dearly hope no-one is actually using it
| anywhere, and has never used it anywhere.
| bestouff wrote:
| Paraglider pilots also use the exact same combo.
| feverzsj wrote:
| Yes, you can make eInk refresh faster, but with ghosting and
| limited grayscale level. eInk hasn't advanced much since its
| advent, and no sign it will, as it's controlled by one company.
| girvo wrote:
| > eInk hasn't advanced much since its advent
|
| Yes, it has. Even purely from the consumer facing side: the
| latest panels are far better in grayscale depth, sharpness and
| refresh rate (and their controller still kind of suck). Not to
| mention colour e-ink panels in consumer products seeing rapid
| improvements gen over gen.
|
| > and no sign it will, as it's controlled by one company.
|
| That's less true today, and there are multiple implementations
| of this idea that are being commercialised.
|
| Though, sadly, e-ink the company bought one of them...
| amelius wrote:
| Did anyone ever investigate the idea of adding feedback control
| to e-ink displays?
|
| I get the feeling that all this flashing and latency of e-ink
| displays is entirely due to the open-loop nature of the
| controller.
| sneak wrote:
| What's the fastest cpu/highest ram COTS device that has an eInk
| display?
| niek_pas wrote:
| I'm sure I'm missing it, but is there a video showing the 'low
| latency'?
| feverzsj wrote:
| For 'low latency' in eInk, it's about the same time to turn
| over a page.
| mistercheph wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| Of course it's Wenting. Hopefully that means a video about it,
| too.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@nbzwt/videos
| ploek wrote:
| They have a video where they have an eInk display show video at
| 60 Hz. In contrast to a previous video, where the display was
| running at 2.4 Hz and the video then sped up by 10x, this is
| not sped up. What kind of black magic is this?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4
| sotix wrote:
| The linked GitHub is a mirror of the original Gitlab repo:
| https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider
| sotix wrote:
| This is a really cool resource! I have been wanting to make a
| device that uses an sink display for learning purposes for a long
| time, but I don't know where to even start with that since I've
| only ever worked on software. This looks like it will help quite
| a bit with some of that learning.
| elevation wrote:
| Any idea what tool was used to create this diagram?
|
| https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider/blob/main/assets/glider...
| ansgri wrote:
| Looks like draw.io / diagrams.net
| yboris wrote:
| Related: _eYd_ - https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
|
| It lets you auto "re-flow" diagrams using different algorithms
| (e.g. fewest intersections between arrows, center-out, etc).
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