Comment by iheartmemcache | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iheartmemcache | Hacker News Reader

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I'm an e-reader fanatic, having bought a total of six for myself and friends/family over the years. I have 3 Kindles - one third gen for reading novels in one hand (I don't have particularly large hands but I can palm the 6" while using my thumb to move to the next page by clenching my hand), one PaperWhite for night reading, and one Kindle DX from ~5 years ago that I still use for PDF's.

Believe it or not there's a huge scene for people who love the 8-9" form-factor. A NIB DX runs 500ish on ebay. I was waiting for this release for ages, but I see no reason to buy it. It looks like you're paying an extra $100 just to get back the side-buttons the Kindle fanatics demanded (it feels way more natural to press a button than make a slide motion, to the point where you don't even realize you're pressing the button after a few pages of immersive reading, unlike the slide action which breaks the continuity -- the same reason why I keep my 3rd gen around).

For $100 more, the Onyx BOOX N96[1] is definitely the best buy out there right now for that larger form factor. You get the same Paperwhite tech, the ability to jot notes down with a stylus, and a significantly bigger screen. I don't have one but I've heard nothing but good things about support from Onyx and let's be honest making an e-reader isn't the most complicated thing out there so odds are you won't need much tech support (you can buy a DX 9.7" replacement screen for ~65 and drive it with a uC almost trivially easily).

[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Onyx-BOOX-N96-ML-9-7-E-Ink-Pearl-Dis...

edit: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Cybook_Ocean 8" for 179$ (not "genuine" e-Ink(tm)) http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/PocketBook_InkPad 8" eInk Pearl with front-light for $250 (I've heard great things about this company too)

I had a Windows Tablet PC back in like 2005, and really liked it. I waited for years for a e-ink tablet with a wacom-style input and good note taking software. I stopped waiting at some point. Is that BOOX any good for note taking? Is that something that for example college students could use to take class notes?

Was in the same boat myself. Tried lots of different styluses, and was hoping that a new DX size kindle would come out. Recently I have been really happy with an iPad Pro and pencil since it's basically the size of a pad of paper! A Sony Ereader with wink was just released but it was basically the same price as the iPad Pro. :/

I think given those prices, I'll just get a wacom tablet for my macbook and use xournal. Does the ipad pro even have a decent eco system for note taking apps?

There's a few decent apps that I've enjoyed using. My favorite two are Notes Plus, and Notability. If anything the ecosystem is better than the Mac desktop. There's room to improve as neither Notes+ or Notability fully take advantage of the size and power of the iPad pro. Still, the shape of the tablet form makes it great for note taking -- even if it's more oriented toward student / business notes.

How about a noteslate? assuming they finally deliver this time, it seems precisely what you're looking for...

http://noteslate.com/

This does look pretty interesting. Could maybe be a bit larger. And their website less shiny and more info.

I like that they are offering (by invitation only) a ios and Android app -- so much of a tool like that is the OS and interface, if you can give people a simulated version on a device they already have, that's a pretty good share-ware like onboarding experience.

...On closer inspection, it seems this thing is yet to come out. And even on their most recent video, it still has a fair amount of lag.

Yeah, it was first announced in 2011 (!) I think, and it's still on preorder

I'm waiting on my signature edition though, hopefully they took their time to make it decent enough...

I'd assume the lag is a software issue, it should be solvable with software updates in theory

> it feels way more natural to press a button than make a slide motion, to the point where you don't even realize you're pressing the button after a few pages of immersive reading, unlike the slide action which breaks the continuity

You probably know this already, but on my PW1, you only need to tap the right hand side of the screen to go forward a page, and similarly, you tap the left hand side to go back a page.

Sadly, it feels to me that half of the side taps I make end up pulling up the dictionary on a word. The 3g side buttons were not prone to "misclicks" :(

Not reliable enough in my experience. And you need to either hold the Kindle exclusively with your right hand, or move your hand more than with corner buttons.

Do you have any examples the DX screen being driven by a microcontroller? I looked into this a while back and it seemed a lot more complex than just hooking up an Arduino or something due to the screen's voltage requirements. The projects I saw involved making a custom driver PCB.

I mean, someone in the 'maker community' has a high probability of having some difficulty, but my 12 year old cousin could build the driver on protoboard, no issues, and it's not like he's worked through 2nd order diff non-homogeneous eq's ;). That's the only 'strange' thing about it is the voltages as you mentioned (well that and the somewhat rare flat-flex ribbon used). It needs a jellybean boost converter to get up to the +/- 25V @ a few tens of mA. This guy[1] did it for what looks to be under 10 bucks in parts. Some LT standard (not as standard as the LM317 or 7805, but close) will switch both rails no sweat, all day, then use 2 standard LDOs will get get your -25 up to -15 and regulate your +25 down to +15. (I don't like his value choices for those caps around U4 and U5, but the rest of the design is so well done and I'd imagine he used SPICE and tested every node, so I'm going to just defer to his design, since I'm not an EE haha). Everything else are jellybeans you'll have lying around (except maybe those inductors).

The only thing you have to watch out for is quiescent current, not only for the obvious reasons (leakage == bad), but also because even a minimal amount of voltage drop 'across the FET' will fade out the image, so its double bad. (Each pixel with the characteristics of an N channel MOSFET.) Acting as the source on the FET -- continuously driving "on" for each "frame render" (it's just latched in from a shift register), and the horizontal pixels corresponds to the vertical pixels (which is just a shift register pushing data for each render).

If you have issues with that guy's build, http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay this dude consistently has some of the best documented hardware hacks ever. Those two sources in aggregate and a Saturday should be all you need for a one off.

[1] http://essentialscrap.com/eink/schematics.png

Thanks for the excellent reply, I may just give this a try at some point.

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