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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Same here last time ReMarkable came up. Saw the marketing page and really liked the hardware and expected it to be locked down, so moved on to reading the comments. Bunch of comments describing how it's open, runs linux and you can basically just ssh into it and run stuff. Made a pre-order right there and then and now waiting for it.

I think we're simply such a small user-base that they don't think to include it on their landing pages. Most people probably don't care. But since we're on HN, we most likely care to some degree.

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Same boat lol. Saw the open-source comments and decided to buy one so I could make a sheet-music reader that changes pages automatically using facial cues from an ESP32-CAM

What a great idea! How can I learn if/when you build that music reader app?

I'm slightly astonished (have been for a while) at the fact that no-one (as far as I know) have developed a Guitar Hero style e-ink sheet-music reader. Imagine how much easier you'd make life for kids learning how to play music! Software and hardware wise, it's got to be well within the realm of feasibility.

You should check out Rocksmith. Its guitar hero with real guitar, pretty cool stuff. I don't see how a scrolling format like guitar hero would fit the slow refresh rate of an e-ink display, but perhaps you imagine something different.

Absolutely love that toy, unfortunately they stopped producing DLCs for it some time ago to do something else... I wonder what that is.

Custom DLC is still going strong

They are working on RockSmith 2, you don't know this from me.

I remember a couple years ago getting Rocksmith for my ps4 and absolutely loving it. The controller mappings were a little unnatural in places but I did reasonably well with reading their notation/tab. Fast forward to when I tried to pick it up again a few weeks ago ... I can't read their notation/tab for the life of me. It's so confusing. Need to rewire my brain somehow.

Or Yousician. I'm not a fan of the Rocksmith presentation which relies on small position differences and colours, but there are alternatives.

I ordered my remarkable2 yesterday. Wrt sheet music, Not exactly what you were talking about but there was a great app called jammit that did something similar --playing along with sheet music with existing songs, and either isolating the instrument or muting it. The app just disappeared one day and the community reverse engineered the app and you can still get it under the facetious name "crammit" on Mac and windows. I found it very helpful to learn drum set notation.

The Kala Ukulele app is a chords only version of this. It also includes videos showing how to play each section, and it plays accompaniment into your headphones as you play along.

I found it super helpful, and I believe it's based on technology originally developed for teaching guitar.

Not sure if it's open for programming your own songs in or not, and much of the library is behind a paywall.

ePaper does not refresh fast enough to do the falling notes thing you are thinking of. An ipad works infinitely better, costs less second hand (I got an ipad air 2 dirt cheap and its still getting updates) and it does more.

Also my experience with using those things is that you would be better off spending the time to learn sheet music because once you get past twinkle twinkle little star, the falling note style videos don't work. You can't keep up with them live and paused they only show you the very short term future.

Yep, you might as well just learn to read music the traditional way. It's very common for musicians to be reading the sheet music a long way ahead of the actual music being played, especially while playing fast and complex pieces.

Having said that, an e-ink reader that could read visual cues would be awesome, but I feel it could be very frustrating unless it was incredibly smart. Maybe some kind of blink gestures might be useful.

I think the best UI would just be a page change foot pedal. Not particularly difficult to implement and very reliable.

That's what many big-name classical pianists use, a pedal hooked to an iPad.

Why iPad though? I’ve seen a specialized electronic music sheet (seemingly based on e-ink) in some videos, I guess pages are flipped using a pedal since I didn’t notice any visible interaction with it to do so, e.g. https://youtu.be/oB-gF2Ncphg

I think the question quickly becomes why not an iPad. They're easy and pretty cheap to get hold of, have good screens, lots of people can easily write new software for them and they're also a tablet. Many people may already have one and so using hardware they already have is much cheaper than buying new special hardware.

Also, eink screens are nice to look at but so expensive for non-kindle sizes.

I've played so much live music with an IPad, but after the 4-5th time having it freeze up mid live performance I gave up on the dream. It's just not 100% reliable, and nothing like standing there like an idiot desperately trying to swipe to the next page to make your realize how great paper is

that really sounds like the software you were using not the ipad itself. most people essentially NEVER have their ipads freeze.

chucking the ipad because of that is like chucking the baby out with the bathwater because the bathwater got cold. The baby still has value. you just replace the water.

cool video. looks like the remarkable, actually two of them. now i need to buy TWO

Probably because you could just make an application like that on an iPad...

Not sure about the Guitar Hero bit, but there’s a really nice, albeit very expensive, e-ink “sheet music” device. Product name is Gvido (not a typo). I’ve been using it professionally for about a year. Clunky UI, but hugely nicer than carting around books and sheet music. Form factor is more like traditional sheet music size than is an iPad, and it opens like a book—two side-by-side big, non-backlit pages. Turn pages with a Bluetooth pedal.

Thanks, link for convenience: https://www.gvidomusic.com/

you mean like this? not animated but up the same street. nothttps://www.padformusician.com/en/products/18-18-padmu-3.htm...

That's why I'm saying I'm not sure about the average customer, so I'm not feeling comfortable assuming people responsible for sales strategy (who are obviously professional marketers) are bad at their job. But I seriously don't want to dismiss this thought. After all, are we "such a small user-base" that it doesn't matter? Maybe, but I don't know. We likely would be if they actually had customer base Apple has, but they surely don't. And given they don't have such a remarkable brand-recognition, it actually makes it kinda more likely that they are selling it to us, whether they like it or not. I mean, this thread here is the first time I've ever heard about them, so I'll probably be the first guy in the office that gets the tablet, and then if I'll like it some people who don't read HN will hear an endorsement. In fact, it wouldn't even be the first product introduced this way to numerous non-technical people I know (who now own one).

And even if I'm mistaken and none of this matters, well, after all a sale is a sale.

> I mean, this thread here is the first time I've ever heard about them,

They have been on HN a lot[1][2], and one of the founders posted here on some of the threads. My understanding is that they couldn't reach all of the openness they were hoping for, and in recent times they've taken VC money and (I predict) that will affect version 2 negatively for hacker types.

I recommend the Youtube channel "My Deep Guide", he uses Remarkable long term as a normal person (not trying to hack it) and has done several video reviews over the years about firmware changes, what he likes and dislikes; it's not a "great device thanks for the freebie, like and subscribe" hype channel, it's thoughtful and detailed: e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1B04TSL2cY (Looks like he's just done reviews of Remarkable version 2, I'll have to watch)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16321531

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

It's not incompetence, it's most likely just resource prioritization. There's nothing in principle stopping companies (not just ReMarkable) from having a separate landing page / marketing copy targeted at the hacker audience. With a device like this, it would most likely have a positive ROI. Just not positive enough compared to other things the marketing team could be spending their time on.

I think including such details in marketing would even detract from the "it's easy and intuitive for everybody" point they try to make.

I really think they should push this, because if you are in the market for an e ink notebook like this, you are probably a niche customer to begin with. Everyone else and their mother draws on an iPad. This is nerd hardware, and they really should lean into it with the marketing.

There are various types of nerds, and an "I like paper" nerd seems mostly orthogonal to an "I like hackability" nerd. I mean, _I_ am the right type of nerd to appreciate the hackability, and yet I only use mine to scribble notes and read papers.

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