I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2 | Hacker News Reader

I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

operand.ca

335 pointsgreenhathacker235 comments

I work part-time for my university's help desk and I was both impressed and disappointed the first time I came across one of these--one the one hand, its highly customizable and supports SSH access. On the other hand, there is shockingly no way to get the MAC address without connecting via SSH, even though this is popular among academics who often need to get onto MAC filtered networks.

In hindsight, we probably could have connected it to the guest network, gotten its IP and then had the networking group look up its MAC on their logs. What we wound up doing is telling the user to go home and check their own router for the MAC, which is obviously less than ideal service.

You can connect it via USB and ssh locally. Obviously showing it in the interface would be better but that would work.

It also fully supports 802.1X, which surprised me.

Yeah... screw that. reMarkable's crappy UI shouldn't necessitate a bunch of extra work on the grandparent's part. They're completely justified in telling end users to go home to get the MAC.

Yeah, that's bananas. Even the cheapest of cheap IOT devices expose that, even if it's just on a sticker.

I was under the impression that having the MAC address on the device's label was some kind of regulatory requirement for Wifi - I have never seen a wireless device without it.

I think that's for APs, given pretty much no smartphone has its MAC printed on it.

Oh, true! I thought it was the MAC address in tiny print on iPhones but it's actually the FCC ID and IMEI. On the other hand, all smartphones have the MAC and serial number easily accessible in their settings menu.

Many phones let you rotate your MAC too, to prevent profiling...

> I thought it was the MAC address in tiny print on iPhones but it's actually the FCC ID and IMEI.

iPhones haven't been doing that for years - they have no markings other than the apple logo on the back.

You must not have seen an iPhone in quite a while. There is absolutely nothing printed on iPhones these days, all of the regulatory stuff is under the Settings menu.

Depends on the country. Although they have been hiding it pretty well, and usually it is only symbols and not detailed information like IDs.

Where does your phone have this sticker?

In the battery compartment.

No, or at lease, not on iPhone: https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/QAtX1WnxfYrMhOZg.hug... (13 on the left, 12 on the right; via iFixit)

It is a requirement, although you can now use "e-labels". Such as, a page in the settings that has the FCC information. (IANAL)

Just connect to a wifi you have admin access to. This is very sad.

https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000267477...

Huh? You still need the root password which you only get once you open the settings menu. I protect my remarkable with a PIN code, so only I should see the root password.

If you connect the device to a wireless network, you can see the MAC address from the perspective of the network. You can't connect without advertising your address.

The reMarkable is surprisingly good for its primary purpose. Everything else it does... is limited. They things they did do are done well given how they are implemented. The epub/pdf experience sucks because it doesn't have a real pdf reader. It just renders the epub to pdf and then throw the pdf into the note-taking app.

Arguably, none of the functionality is half-assed. It works very well as a writing tablet. It absolutely sucks as a general purpose device because everything except the very core experience is flat-out missing.

There isn't a good general purpose eInk tablet and the reMarkable is the closest thing we have. :(

Maybe keep an eye out on the PineNote. It's bound to be much worse than the reMarkable as a writing tablet, but it should also be general purpose in a lot of ways the rm isn't.

Don't have the skills to hack on one myself but I can't wait to see what people do with it. :)

The Onyx Boox series is really good. The writing experience is almost as good as a Remarkable. The reading experience is excellent, and it's runs Android.

> and it's runs Android

I apologize for the snark, but I refuse to see how this is a plus over "it runs vanilla linux".

I would also add that last I heard Onyx was probably violating the GPL if that is a decision factor for anybody reading this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735962

(please correct me if there were more recent developments)

If you have ebooks in a number of different ecosystems, perhaps kobo, comixology, kindle, adobe digital editions, pdf, actual epubs, microsoft word documents, then it's amazing having access to the official apps to read those file formats and connect to the online services.

vanilla linux doesn't have any good ereader apps

koreader is one of the best reader apps out there.

https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Koreader has a lot of options but IMO the UI is perhaps the worst I've ever used. Also has giant use case gaps that will never be fixed like the fact it can't handle vertical Japanese writing.

It's a plus when talking about a tablet-sized device with a touch screen - there are more Android apps for those use cases than Linux ones.

That will hopefully change with the PineNote.

There's no vanilla linux version of Libby, Kindle app, Kobo, Marvel Unlimited, Pressreader etc. At best you can maybe use a web browser for those which is a sub-par experience. For reading content Android is IMO better because there is general an app for DRM'd content. Linux doesn't have that and not all content can be made DRM free.

Have you used Linux on a mobile device? It is getting better, but it is not an enviable experience yet for your average user.

Take something like Spotify, for example. There is a desktop Linux client and an Android app. Guess which one works better on a small touch screen with only a bit of power?

You have access to the Android app ecosystem.

In the event you're not a fan of prorprietary Android apps, the BOOX also does F-Droid quite well.

(I use a mix of F-Droid and APK-Mirror sources.)

There seem to be a good set of mostly-works-on-eink apps on Android. Onyx's bookreader and note-taking apps (native and with better e-ink support) are also quite good. I've been disappointed by Linux e-book support on desktop, and the even smaller tablet space is quite probably worse.

Another available tool is Termux, and while no Linux replacement, it vastly increases the usefulness of Android devices.

I just ordered a boox max lumi, I noticed that there’s an option to install play services.

I am hesitant to do it, except for the security fixes Google apparently brings to Android via these updates. Boox might not update the device in the future which is my main worry.

The Max Lumi is what I picked up this past March. It's big, but an excellent choice for scientific articles, note-taking (a surprise --- not my intended use but one I'm finding I do make use of extensively), or reading comics at full-size.

Onyx updated the device once shortly after it arrived, but not since.

I've not been able to activate the Google Play Store ... I think because of Google's "you must register an account" bullshit, so I've just stuck with F-Droid and APK-Mirror for a couple of apps (mostly Pocket, as the F-Droid version is badly out of date).

Since I install few apps regardless, this is not much of a handicap, and I consider it a benefit.

hmm I found the eBook functionality to be passable. I read ebooks and PDF's on my Remarkable 2 all the time

>It absolutely sucks as a general purpose device because everything except the very core experience is flat-out missing.

As is intended, I do not want a general purpose device, I want an electronic notebook, to replace what used to be many many paper notebooks I used to keep meeting notes, daily activity logs, quick todo lists, etc.

I do not want email on it, I do not want notifications on it, I wanted to replace my paper notebook, and be able to read ebooks

The Remarkable 2 replaced my Paper-white and all physical notebooks for me.

I am completely on your side, that's the same reason I bought mine.

But damm I sure wish I had a way to take a note on my iPhone and have it show up on my Remarkable. That would mean when I pick up the Remarkable it has all my notes on it.

Anyone know a good way to do that?

This is one area I agree they should look to improve or have offical API's so the community could improve.

I am not in the Apple echosystem but I would love a way to better sync with OneNote, and/or have my Task list manageable by ToDo, ToDoist, or some other task manager, but appear on the Remarkable to check things off.

What do you mean a real pdf reader? The pdf reader displays pdfs, allows you to navigate the document and to scribble on it. Sure, it could do some things better, but it's perfectly functional as it is.

> It just renders the epub to pdf and then throw the pdf into the note-taking app.

I found it weird at first... But then you realise you're supposed to be able to write on the pages any time. The moment you support general epub rendering your pages are no longer fixed and your notes should move around as well. The moment you change your font size, all your notes, drawings and highlights no longer match the underlying text. I actually think "render to pdf", or more specifically to some fixed page format, is the ideal experience on this device. Realigning your notes is an impossible problem to solve and if I were a dev I would also discourage any features that reflow text on demand.

Missing features (search in document, bookmarks, whatever) should be implemented for both pdfs and epubs.

> Realigning your notes is an impossible problem to solve

Kindles have solved this problem, but instead, notes are not visible on the page but must be specially consulted.

It seems like a different problem if they are not rendering handwriting on the 'page' of the epub.

OK, but both problems are "realigning your notes".

It is possible to render an element to the side of the main text in a flowing epub; I did this when I wanted to include line numbers in a text. You could use that idea to keep visible notes near their original location while reflowing the epub. But it wouldn't work at all with notes that appear over the main text.

It's also possible to just print the notes within the text; this is the approach taken by this recent edition of a selection of the 太平广记 ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/7540351934/ ). Rather than being reproduced images of older printings that include notes, it's all flowing text and marginalia is reproduced inline, within brackets and in a smaller font. (This goes so far as to indicate which part of the page the marginalia originally appeared in, though I think this is more a matter of there being different words for marginalia from different locations.)

That approach, of course, will not handle non-textual notes well.

I think OP could have used a more specific description for the sake of clarity.

The idea is that using a reMarkable is just like using a pad of paper, so you can make arbitrary handwritten notes on the text. It's hard to imagine how arbitrary notes like that would be displayed on different epub renderings, so I think it's understandable why they use their approach. I also think it's a different problem than kindles have solved.

Marginalia does not generally appear over the text on which it comments, because that would make both the text and the marginalia difficult to read. (Just look at the word - it's text that appears in the margins.)

So for practically all purposes, treating each note as an image which should be rendered to the side of a particular part of the dynamically-flowed text will solve the problem. This isn't that hard to do.

If someone is underlining parts of the text itself, that isn't independent of the flow of the text, and so it's harder to reflow. But I'm taking "notes" to mean commentary.

> So for practically all purposes, treating each note as an image which should be rendered to the side of a particular part of the dynamically-flowed text will solve the problem.

I don't think this is true. Even without underlines, which are common in notes, people place their notes based on a combination of the layout of the page and their personal preferences. I don't think it's possible to know, given one layout and note placement, how to place the note in a new layout.

It is also worth saying that many historic uses of marginalia (for example, commentary on the Tanakh) are also associated with particular parts of the text and could not be laid out as you are describing without losing intended meaning.

> It is also worth saying that many historic uses of marginalia (for example, commentary on the Tanakh) are also associated with particular parts of the text and could not be laid out as you are describing without losing intended meaning.

I don't understand this. What part of the intended meaning would be lost? I have a printing plate of part of a Chinese Buddhist text with traditional commentary attached, and it works almost identically to this modern HTML from Harvard Law Review ( https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/06/commonwealth-v-mccarthy... ) - there's an area on the page for the text, another area for the commentary, and symbols identify which comments apply to which parts of the text.

But the Harvard Law Review piece is exactly what I just described, except that the notes do not appear near the text to which they apply.

There are different traditions of how to annotate text and not all of them follow the conventions you're describing. Here's an example from a hebrew bible from the 16th century: http://www.sothebys.com/content/dam/stb/lots/N09/N09589/550N....

I can't read that; can you elaborate on how it's different?

I can't read Hebrew either! But the way these books were typeset was to balance commentary with the text. For instance, you can see that the right page has a pretty substantial chunk of scripture in the middle (the central columns are scripture) and the left-handed one has only a couple of lines. This style doesn't have the central text with commentary as an optional note, it's a blending of text and commentary. So one "page" of text might be 100% Tanakh and the next might be 10% Tanakh and 90% commentary. Rendering either one of them as a contentious text stream (or even interwoven paragraphs) loses some of the authorial intent.

Obviously this is a pretty specific literary tradition and most marginalia works exactly like you describe, but I think it's worth remembering that our experience of text being one way is often more about the texts we've happened to encounter than any limits to the diversity of how humans have written.

A few thoughts:

The Chinese religious text looks basically the same as the right-hand page. It's surrounded by commentary on three sides instead of four sides, but that is a minor difference.

    +-------------+
    |  commentary |
    |             |
    |  +-------+  |
    |  | text  |  |
    +--+-------+--+

The left-hand page is obviously different, but it's not clear to me how much I should think of it as text and how much I should think of it as artwork / talismans.

Anyway, I agree that the commentary is presented as being at least as important as the text, but I don't see that as contradicting what I was describing above.

> So one "page" of text might be 100% Tanakh and the next might be 10% Tanakh and 90% commentary.

This style is also common in contemporary legal documents. (I searched briefly earlier for a good example and didn't find one.) A page will usually not be 90% footnotes, but it's not so rare for a page to be more than 50% footnotes. I think this is a pretty natural outcome of the fact that some parts of any text attract much more commentary than other parts. Despite the very high volume of footnote material in these documents, though, they are always presented in a manner that suggests the text comes first and the footnotes come second in importance. For example, the footnote to a particular bit of text may not all occur on the same page as the text it footnotes.

I would argue that the difference between the religious texts and contemporary legal briefs is that the commentary really is more important than the text in the first case, and really isn't in the second case. The religious texts have been preserved for so long that they don't have much meaning left independent of the interpretive tradition that the commentary provides.

But your own personal notes on something you've read are unlikely to be as centrally important as the accumulated interpretive tradition associated with a multi-thousand-year-old text. If you wrote it in the margin initially, keeping it in the margin seems fairly safe. That commentary you see printed around the scripture on the right-hand page didn't come from the book owner.

> But I'm taking "notes" to mean commentary.

In the context of the reMarkable / this conversation, “notes” means whatever the user draws on the device with the stylus: underlining or circling or crossing-out words or drawing lines between them, drawing pictures or hand-writing in the margin or between lines or on the words, etc: whatever you would or could do with a physical book and a pen/pencil.

(A primary design goal of the reMarkable tablet is to be as similar to paper as possible, so (if I understood your suggestion correctly) telling users that their "notes" will be treated as images to be re-rendered to the side of the text, instead of where they put it—anywhere—would break the similarity, and apply only to a small subset of possible "notes", namely "commentary", as you said.)

It's a small subset of possible notes, but it's a very large subset of notes that are likely to come into existence.

I don't think so. The entire point of remarkable is to interact with the text. That is also How I have seen people use them at Uni. It's more like 99% of notes are tightly coupled to the text.

> The entire point of remarkable is to interact with the text.

You might be surprised. I just ordered one, and for me the point is to read scanned PDFs of large books.

I don't see why you would buy a reMarkable for that. There are e-readers that can do that that are both much cheaper and more fully featured.

I guess the affordances of the device influence what notes/annotations are likely to come into existence. On the Kindle, where IIRC input is through a keyboard (apart from highlighting), textual notes would be more common. On printed books and on the reMarkable (I'm even more "trigger-happy" on a reMarkable than on paper, probably because of undo and perfect erasing), annotation tends to be more free-form and varied, with more marks, scribbles, arrows etc, and a bit less text. Some of these annotations could also be understood and associated with corresponding text in principle, but it's not trivial. (Some examples of annotations from printed books: https://entropymag.org/writers-their-margin-notes/ )

Honestly, for marginalia I would love it if you could just insert blank notes pages within pdfs and write on them! Also that you could read the pdf with those notes pages enabled/disabled, and easily copy/move them to a separate document later.

That is exactly what I meant. The simplest UX you can have for arbitrary notes of any kind, scribbles, drawings, highlights, is to not encourage page reflow. You can come up with a bunch of other funky weird technical solutions, but once the user hits them there's a strong chance of confusion.

For tablets which encourage writing on your document, the rm2 approach of "just render epub as you would a pdf" feels by far like the best strategy.

The original epub is still stored within their document format btw. You could technically still do things with that file if you wanted.

The remarkable 2 still doesn't support pdf bookmarks? Seriously?

I use a Fujitsu Quaderno (was from Sony). Similar idea, no epub support but pdf links and bookmarks, on device search? These all work.

Not yet. But honestly, the latest few updates have been great! Navigation between docs is much much better, pinch to zoom was a great addition, and screenshare is now better than on any eink tablet.

In general, I haven't felt like I'd reaaaaally need bookmarks since software version 2.8 (but that's a matter of taste).

Pdf links and pdf table of contents work.

User generated bookmarks in PDFs are not supported yet.

Search is rudimentary/useless and only goes through document titles.

I find my Boox Note Air pretty good. It runs Android basically every app I've thrown at it works although the fact that's eInk means stuff like Netflix, games etc. is obviously not a good experience. Some apps take a little fiddling to get working well on eInk like filtering out page turn animations or page refresh settings but once that's done it works well. The stock reader is very good at PDFs and passable at ePubs but you can just download another app so it's no big deal.

Remarkable seems like it's still a little better at writing feel/writing latency but the Boox line is very good as eInk tablets.

Have you been able to use a drawing app different from the stock one? I own the nova3 and nothing else refreshes the screen properly.

No that is one other caveat I forgot to mention. Apps need to use Boox's API to refresh the screen properly but as far as I am aware no 3rd party apps do. I think the API is available on their github page. I find the built in one is at least decent.

That fact that it isn’t a general purpose device is a huge plus for me honestly. I don’t need it to be much more than digitally enhanced paper

In defense of the Remarkable its primary purpose is a very useful use-case. No iPad or Android tablet could get me to ditch paper and notebooks altogether. The Remarkable did it.

And since it is hackable the community made interesting strides in other use cases as well

> There isn't a good general purpose eInk tablet

I have a Boox Note Air that's fantastic and about the same price as the RM2 after import taxes. The built in Epub reader is far better than most off the shelf apps, because it supports E-ink centric features such as "embolden text" and "darken image" that are especially helpful when reading colour PDFs.

Note taking quality is more than good enough for me with the stock pen, although there are fancier options available. Best of all, you can split screen between the note app and the reading app, so you can take notes as you read.

Hm, you can't get the wifi MAC by connecting via USB, and ssh in over USB, then using iwconfig or looking at dmesg?

You could also of course turn off the ineffective MAC filtering, was this option considered?

I doubt that they are actually using MAC filtering, but probably some kind of captive portal that the Remarkable doesn't have support for (without setting up a SOCKS proxy, which doesn't count as a solution, IMO)[0]. Most of these captive portal systems allow someone with privileges to add a MAC address to the system manually, so that device has access without having to go through the portal itself. In the old days, that was the kosher way to get Xboxes and the like on hotel Wi-Fi (they'd often have a number you could call from the room to get a network admin to put your widget on the list).

0: https://remarkablewiki.com/tips/wifi

(Also, given that OP's a part time helpdesk person, they can't turn the MAC filtering off anyway).

I have a Hololens 2 on my desk that is the same way, you have to log in and sign in with a Microsoft account to access the MAC. Getting it onto my corporate network was a massive pain. Worse, to log in with our directory service we need to be on the corporate network that is MAC blocked so I ended up having to make a throwaway MS account and tethering it with my phone. Prior to this I didn't even realize you could omit the address, for some reason I thought it was a requirement to have the MAC address printed somewhere on the device/packaging.

Considering their target market, that's a valuable feature suggestion.

If you have time I'm sure they would appreciate the feedback.

Well, you know that MAC filtering is really useless, right?

And so is expiring passwords but every company does it so what?

Not trying to shill too hard, but it's rare I fall in love with a device the way I've fallen in love with my Remarkable 2.

I can't say it was 100% worth the price (half was paid as a gift), but everything about it is refreshingly elegant and simple.

Great to know recovering from a brick is possible too.

I got one as well, almost mad at myself when I did because I was 90% sure I would use it for a week and then never again.

But I said what the hell. And I'm so glad I did, it's a great device that definitely fills a niche in my workflow. I mostly use it for brainstorming sessions. I like it a lot. I wish it synced more seamlessly but perhaps that'll happen at some point.

Me too! I thought it'd be a paperweight, but I immensely enjoy it. It's esp. nice if you throw a custom calendar on it (via reCalendar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be)

Killer app that I didn't know I needed: its built-in screen-share feature lets you easily and reliably share the tablet's screen with a desktop app over wifi. This has been super useful for whiteboarding/diagramming over Zoom.

(Older versions of the software had a very buggy implementation that has since been fixed.)

You can screenshare the rm2's screen while diagramming on it? Interesting! Any useful links for that?

I used to have nothing but trouble with the syncing features. But it all seems fixed as of the last update--both in terms of notebook/PDF syncing and the new ScreenShare, which replaced the incredibly buggy previous incarnation of live sharing.

Would you mind sharing a bit about you use case? Do you use it for any sketching or artwork or primarily notes/etc?

I'm not the OP, but I absolutely love my RM2.

Use case: I work in a publicly funded institution where the contents of my notes are often required for lawsuits, settlements, and general FOIA inquiries on occasion. Being able to carry around 50 different notebooks for various uses, cordon them off from each other, and reproduce them in either original form, or converted to text is a remarkable time saver.

The only thing it doesn't have that I desperately wish it did is to be able to tag pages and search via tag. That would make my life so much better.

It's fun to draw on, but I'm a garbage artist. So it's pleasant to be able to doodle while I'm thinking in meetings and then immediately erase the doodle, but I don't use it for more than that.

Marking up pdf or other files is pretty great, too.

How well does text conversion work for you? Including the search function? It works poorly for my colleagues.

Does it have the option to straighten lines? Say that I draw a box, will it make it square or a circle round?

Are annotations to pdf searchable as well?

So it works better than any other item with written to printed text conversion that I've found. My handwriting is especially bad, and I would say it has an 80-90% correct rate, compared to my last system that I tried (neonotes smartpen) that is light years ahead. That was less than 10% correct.

I have never used the search function. I do not convert to text unless I have a specific use. This is why I wish we could tag pages and search via tag - I had to create my own recordkeeping system via headers that you can see in the gridview to be able to quickly find what I need.

>Does it have the option to straighten lines? Say that I draw a box, will it make it square or a circle round?

When you are drawing, it follows your pen. From what I can tell, there is no 'snap to grid' or whatever option that might be. That might be nice. If you are talking about once you convert to text, it does not convert drawings.

Overall, the search is pretty terrible. Just adding tags would alleviate that, and make this, for me, the perfect tool for work.

I don't have a rm2 but I already love the idea of being able to tag pages (hopefully even multiple tags), and perhaps even to a lesser extent, tag sections of pages. And then search by multiple tags to drill down into specific pages/sections.

My primary use-case right now is storyboarding. The RM2 has dozens of templates (notebook paper, grid paper, etc.) and three of them are storyboard templates at various sizes. I haven't been able to adjust to Wacoms etc., but drawing on the RM2's display feels "right." I can zip through drawing up storyboards and then email the PDF immediately to collaborators. I can choose to send individual pages as PNGs, too. Only small downside is lack of color, but that's the eInk breaks.

I also use it for annotating and displaying PDFs as well as sheet music when practicing piano. I don't read many eBooks on it because I have a smaller Kindle which has a light, making it more versatile when I'm in the mood for reading.

Hope this helps!

It does— thanks. Storyboarding is about the level of graphic capability I'd need. I keep trying to adjust to using my iPad Pro w/Apple Pencil 2. It's an incredibly capable set of tools, but I just can't get comfortable with it.

I can't speak to iPads but the RM2 really almost feels like paper, it's very close to having a real sketchpad.

The iPads feel like... drawing on glass with a plastic pencil. The expressiveness, pressure sensitivity, and tools are all incredible... but it's definitely in the drawing tablet realm of mark making rather than the paper realm of mark making.

My main gripe is lack of direct bookmarking of pages in ebooks or even listing jump links to highlighted areas. I like writing on it but also want to use for reading large ebooks, highlighting important info, and keeping notes in context. Not realistic to do that if have to scroll through all pages.

I haven't done it yet myself, but I've read it's fairly easy to install KOReader on the Remarkable 2 to provide a better ereader experience. Though when using this software, you wouldn't be able to mark up the text or add notes in the 'remarkable' way.

It is indeed easy and very worth it. The rm2 is the _best_ way to read text books and comics I've ever seen (using koreader), and separately it's great for taking notes. Those two uses don't really overlap for me so it's fine that they're in separate OSes, especially because it's one gesture to switch between them.

The one and only thing that really bothers me about the device is the storage is pretty small. It's fine for books, but not great for comics, you end up having to swap out old ones instead of just having your whole library available.

> The rm2 is the _best_ way to read text books and comics I've ever seen

Comics? I thought it was black and white only. I'd assume an iPad (or other tablet) was better for comics.

The comics I read are grayscale anyway for 99% of pages. YMMV if that's not true for your collection I suppose.

I tried this and promptly bricked it, although in a more recoverable way than the OP. It’s not hard to do it right (I’d got some version of a dependency wrong) but there seem to be few guardrails. I just convert epubs to pdfs now for rm2 reading

I installed koreader and I'm quite happy with reading long books that way.

koreader is my goto reader on RM2 too. If only the device had a smaller size.

I use 2 pages view in landscape mode. It's better, still does not provide the comfort Kindle Paper White offers.

Also some back/frontlight could be helpful.

Bookmarks would be super nice. Also, a more secure way of storing the stylus. When I slide mine into my backpack I have a high chance of swiping the stylus onto the floor because it knocks off very easily. A couple of times, I haven't noticed and ended up going somewhere and being unable to use the reMarkable because it was at home under my desk or couch. One of these days I'm going to do that while I'm not at home and I'm going to be incredibly annoyed that I have to buy another $50 stylus.

I have rm1 with the simple case marker slot. The rm2 magnet approach is something that would have me constantly checking to see if I lost it.

Joining the bandwagon of happy remarkable users. It's the only device I own that respect my attention and focus. I use it mainly to take notes of (paper) books I read and to send web articles to it via its awesome browser extension.

I'm just waiting for them to release a bigger one. I want either US letter or A4 size.

It's decent enough for sheet music at least. :) As long as you have good eyes.

I'm glad that you enjoy yours. Mine has been sitting in my dead technology drawer since about two weeks after it arrived. The pen is too laggy, the contrast is too low for me to read PDFs comfortably, and the note-taking experience doesn't come close to what I get from a good pen and good paper. Nice try, but meh from me.

I spent the money only to find out I don't actually take notes in any form other than with a keyboard. I have used it to do some sketching though, but I don't really do that much either.

That was my experience after getting an ipad pro. I imagined all the great architecture drawings and design notes I will take on it but in reality typing in Notion is faster and more organised + tools like PlantUML are just plain better for creating diagrams because you don't have to worry about arranging your boxes and arrows in space.

I’ll take it off your hands if you’d like ;)

I thought about selling or donating it, but I have no way to be confident that I've wiped it of all credentials and content.

Could have returned it for a full refund within 30 days. Any reason you decided to keep it in the dead technology drawer instead?

It's a really impressive product. The fact it runs Linux makes it exceptionally interesting.

> Codex — A purposely designed Linux-based operating system for low-latency digital paper displays

I wonder how it works. Are the drivers proprietary?

It's an eInk screen, so yes-ish.

We get around this by just piggybacking on the build in application's screen display routines[0]

https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer

My problem with it is that I'd rather have an iPad and a cheaper e-reader to get access to many more apps and functions. If it was 1/2 the price it would be at least interesting but I use the iPad to read ebooks, to browse the web, to paint in procreate, to sequence synths and record using an audio interface, to watch YouTube in the kitchen or Netflix in bed, and with a logitech keyboard work on documents in Microsoft office. As I find new useful apps it becomes more and more useful itself.

The remarkable does cost less than the iPad but it has maybe an 1/8th or a 1/16th of the functionality, and my Kobo reader cost me less than $100 for most of the benefits of having an e-ink reader. It lacks an app ecosystem and seems aimed as a tinker device instead of an end user product.

But I guess if you have to have a larger e-ink tablet the remarkable seems to be the thing.

I absolutely cannot read for any significant period of time on an ipad screen, it kills my eyes. I love my rM2, but agree that not having support for 3rd party apps seriously sucks, its (IMO) the one thing thats really missing from the device.

Turn down the brightness, use something with an inverted colour scheme, adjust the text size to something reasonable, and don't read in the dark if you're doing that

But as I said I also have a Kobo reader for reading on its own, and it was very cheap compared to the remarkable.

The point of a remarkable is to be an e-ink notebook to write in. It has a few extra features, like, it CAN be used as an e-reader, but it's not really its primary focus.

So with that in mind, an e-ink reader doesn't make for a good writing device, and an ipad is lacking the wacom style e-ink tablet.

Is it overpriced for what it is? Yeah, probably, that's the curse of small batch hardware in the world of Google and Apple.

But an ipad and an e-reader don't really replace it's niche. If you're cool with the writing experience on an ipad, then the Remarkable is essentially useless to you.

Personally, I really, really love my Remarkable 2 (I also had the original, but the 2 is way better).

Imho the only thing the iPad loses over Wacom is the shape of the pen (my pro pen 2 is head and shoulders more comfortable to use than the apple pencil). The remarkable pen is not much different than the apple pencil. Wacoms strength is their application support/drivers support which remarkable doesn't have and iPad has its own ecosystem. I suppose also that you can get very large tablet displays with Wacom too while the iPad tops out at roughly 13".

Facebook has been pushing ads for this device at me since it was available and each time I look I can't imagine why anyone would want one except that they have money to burn and time to waste beta testing on something that doesn't have an ecosystem but has a low power screen.

Amazon is already a major consumer of eink screens and could eat their lunch tomorrow and close the whole company down in a year. There's no future for it without an app ecosystem and a more compelling reason to exist

An iPad and an e-reader do much more than a remarkable for not that much difference in cost. I dont see a long term future for their company or product

I don't have a rm2, but I am intrigued by all the praise for the paper-like feel of the pen/screen combination: have you tried it and not noticed any difference, or are you simply talking based on the specs?

Honestly wondering because it's too expensive to be an impulse buy for me, on top of not being available to my country, so I'd have to jump through hoops and pay extra to get it locally, but I am hoping I can replace gobbles of paper with one device like that.

I got a matte screen protector for my iPad with a similar feel. Neither the iPad with the paperlike protector nor the remarkable actually feel like paper, but they do feel better than drawing with a plastic pen on a glass screen. My 16" Wacom display tablet also has something similar applied from factory to provide a texture to it

To further clarify, you have actually compared reMarkable 2 (and not reMarkable 1, which was never equally praised) to all the other devices you mention?

(Basically, that would make me not get a reMarkable 2 before I can try one out, and if my impression matches yours, I wouldn't bother and would instead wait out for PineNote)

Remarkable 1 was pretty similar to the 2 in that respect (most of the wins of the 2 are unrelated.)

I don't really agree with the previous poster. Drawing on a Remarkable really feels much better than alternatives (similar to a Wacom tablet, which imo is pretty unique), no matter which kind of screen protector you put on it.

I've only tried an Ipad Pro once, but it really wasn't close.

There's also the battery that's nice. I only need to charge this thing once in a blue moon (more often than a Kindle, but still). Because of WFH I haven't used it as much (I prefer typing my notes if I can be at my desk. I use my tablet on the go), and using it only a few minutes here and there the battery's at 60% after several months.

it feels like drawing on an ipad with a matte screen protector. depending on the screen protector they have slightly different feels. overall it doesn't feel like paper, it just has more friction than drawing on glass with a plastic pencil tip.

given another poster's post in this page describing their return experience, I would advice you to not a get a remarkable 2 until you can try one in person no matter what people say.

I think the “problem” is that iPad’s hardware / sw quality is so high it makes seemingly similar tech products seem overpriced or shabby or both.

I feel the same way about the kindle oasis. Amazon seems to care less than nothing about that whole product line, it is so neglected.

I had one for a couple weeks right about a year ago. I was very impressed by its ability to mimic paper. Unfortunately, it didn't do much more than mimic paper, so I sold it and bought some nice notebooks.

However, I think that was before the software projects mentioned in this post. I never tried to SSH into it, so maybe it's possible to use it for things that you can't replace with paper.

I mean, this is like saying a Kindle isn't worth it because you can only read books on it. Sure, if you don't value the fact that it is digital (almost inifite capacity, delete without making a mess, backup to computer, send PDFs of the notes that you created, etc.) it's "not more than a notebook" but then you really missed the point of the device...

It goes a little farther than just mimicking paper. Being able to rearranged my notes notes just by dragging and dropping was the killer feature for me.

I bought one and I don't understand the love. The device itself is wonderful. It's great that you _can_ ssh into it and do whatever. But by default, you can't even hook it up to DropBox/iCloud/GoogleDrive/whatever. The only supported way to get things off the device is by email, so in effect, in order for it to be useful, you _must_ set up rsync or some other custom process and risk bricking it and voiding your warranty. I'm pretty sure I could do that safely, but for almost $500, I shouldn't have to risk that. I returned mine.

> you can't even hook it up to DropBox/iCloud/GoogleDrive/whatever.

Dropbox and Google Drive integration arrived with the latest update earlier this month.

> The only supported way to get things off the device is by email

I think you're forgetting reMarkable's own built-in cloud storage which syncs the device with the desktop and mobile apps. Additionally, you can access a built-in web interface on the device whenever it's connected to your computer via USB.

Oh, that integration does changes things. I admit that I did forget about the built-in cloud storage, but that was more cumbersome than email for me. And plugging in a USB cable seemed particularly low-tech for 2021.

I used a reMarkable 1 for my stint in grad school and it was invaluable. A PDF reader that wasn't hard on the eyes. I also really appreciated reMarkable's syncing software that let me see the notes I made on a laptop without the lag of eink.

That said, it seems clear that the reMarkable team is not focused on the "taking notes on PDFs" use case. It works pretty well just because reMarkable is a good reading and handwriting platform, but it could be a lot better.

Same here! I am generally not interested in shiny new tech. After I had the experience of a v1 TomTom runner watch, I decided I don’t want a v1 of anything anymore. Also new tech makes me too worried about breaking it or losing it or having it stolen. But the reMarkable 2…. I could not resist! I did the waiting list and was genuinely excited about it and use it every day. My partner also loves his, though he is very much a shiny tech person.

Oh boy do I have opinions with this one. This seems like a lot of work to avoid using a perfectly good package manager on the device.

They could have used rsync without installing rsync on the device. The target device doesn't need to have rsync for rsync to be used.

They could have installed the package manager and left it. It doesn't run anything in the background on my device. It's easy enough to verify you don't have a systemd service or timer running it. (cron isn't installed, iirc)

They could have compiled rsync with all of the libraries bundled with it. (Maybe this is beyond their expertise?)

Their solution is using Docker to use the package manager and then overwriting system files on the device in the worse possible way, without understanding what they are doing. At that point, they verified in Docker. Should be safe to run it on the tablet then, yes?

What attack vector are they worried about? :/ Toltec is actively worked on, odds are someone would notice someone else fucking with repository.

The cherry on top was completely not understanding how the remarkable works. There are two partitions for a reason. The inactive one is used for software updates. When the reMarkable downloads an update, it downloads it to the inactive partition. When you "install" the update, it flips which of the two partitions is active. If the update fails to boot, it flips back to the known good state. All they had to do was switch the active partition, the next update would overwrite the broken partition. https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery/issues/6

This looks like a bad case of tunnel vision, combined with a lack of understanding. I'm glad they managed to figure out how to fix it.

I know I reacted hard to this statement:

> Going further down the rabbit hole, the toltec GitHub page mentions that it works on top of the Entware distribution, and recommends what is basically “wget | bash”. I’m not a fan of this. Could I install my own rsync?

We made sure that the toltec install process includes a hash of the install script to prove that it isn't modified by a man-in-the-middle. Toltec itself requires the use of SSL to connect after the fact, which lowers the risk after it's been installed. We are also exploring the implications of adding package signing[0].

0. https://github.com/toltec-dev/build/issues/14

I made the mistake in that post of not mentioning that I didn't want to be required to connect the rm2 to wifi, and installing a package manager would mean I would need to do that to install software. If anything it would be something I would temporarily install, use it to install rsync, then figure out how to uninstall it, and in my mind that's functionally equivalent to what I was doing with docker. Pushing to / instead of /opt was my mistake :)

I apologize, I could have better expressed why I took the path I did. I'll edit the post later today.

Ah! Now that approach makes a lot more sense. Any particular reason to avoid putting it on a WiFi network for a few minutes?

That makes a lot more sense. you can always just install initially and then use opkg to install local packages you scp across in the future as well: `opkg install path/to/package.ipk`

another option would be to just grab the files from the package itself and extract them to the device, and then manually run the install script steps as required. They are basically just gz tarballs.

For anybody wanting more context on the ipk format: https://github.com/toltec-dev/toltec/blob/stable/docs/opkg.m...

> We made sure that the toltec install process includes a hash of the install script to prove that it isn't modified by a man-in-the-middle.

A bit late for that, no?

Maybe I misunderstood but the modified version could do it's thing and then download the official script to fool that check.

Or pretty much anything else imaginable.

I guess you haven't looked at our install instructions[0]. The hash check is done before running the script. You can't run the script if it doesn't match unless you choose to just run it manually and ignore the check.

0. https://toltec-dev.org/

I have not. Just responding to the information that was available in this thread.

But that is better!

The bash script is fairly easy to download and verify before running it. It’s only 200 lines with a few functions and if statements.

Yes, but the whole antipattern of wget | bash is that you don't encourage that sort of scrutiny.

"They could have used rsync without installing rsync on the device. The target device doesn't need to have rsync for rsync to be used."

This is not true.

It very much is true. I do it all the time. If the target device is running ssh, you can use rsync on the source.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-copy...

Edit: Looks like I was wrong.

Doesn't that run rsync --server on the server via ssh?

yup.

No, it is not true. You're misunderstanding how this works.

The document you link is using ssh as a transport protocol as opposed to the rsync protocol. The rsync binary must be installed on both systems for this to work.

When you run something like:

rsync file user@rhost:/dest/path

The local rsync binary invokes ssh, and then executes the rsync binary on the remote system and from there the two instances of rsync effectuate the transfer.

If you do not have rsync available in your path on the remote system you will not be able to copy files over ssh. This is documented in the manpage.

Try it.

Exactly. You absolutely must have the rsync binary installed locally. The rsync "server" should only actually be run if you know you need it (that is, only if you are providing rsync services to other people).

As others have pointed out, that doesn't quite work. But the way that I use rsync with my remarkable is to use sshfs to mount the remarkable's filesystem, and then run rsync between the local and mounted filesystems. Works for me without having to install rsync on the remarkable.

Unfortunately you will not get any speed boost in that case, in fact it will be slower having to fetch all the remote side data for small file changes.

Fair enough. It does work for my simple use case: rsync student coursework to the remarkable, mark coursework on the remarkable, rsync back. There aren't many small file changes and USB is fast enough. The real bottleneck is the marking but I'm not sure if I want a package manager to help me with that!

Does remarkable use a fork of ChromiumOS? ChromiumOS uses the BOOT-A and BOOT-B partitions for upgrades and it reverts to the previously used boot partition if the OS fails to successfully boot[0].

[0] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...

No, it uses Yocto/OpenEmbedded.

Thank you for the fast response and, also, for putting this onto my radar. For anyone else who is curious, Yocto/OpenEmbedded is used to create custom linux distributions for embedded devices:

https://www.yoctoproject.org/members/openembedded/

https://www.yoctoproject.org/software-overview/

using two partitions in this way on embedded devices has been a trope for a very long time. service/warranty calls are expensive!

usually there are three. system a and system b which are updated and flipped and some sort of emergency recovery that either has a factory image or a very light rom that phones home for a new image.

It sounds like Blue/Green deployments.

For the curious... An overview of the Blue/Green deployment model:

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/devops/what-is-blue-green-d...

sorta. but i think that blue/green deployments are typically monitored by some central control that will halt and reverse a whole fleet deployment, where typically embedded devices run that state machine locally. (after flashing the unused partition, if it fails to boot, fail back to the old one and disable the update).

This just points out one of the more amazing things about the reMarkable 2 is just how hackable it is. I have never had to do this level of surgery on mine but I do enjoy the community support for interesting scripts and such.

My only regret about this device is that it seems to lack full disk encryption on the device or any meaningful privacy (encryption) for documents stored in reMarkable Cloud...which is all of them if you want to use features like Screen Share (f.k.a. LiveView). ReMarkable should not be able to access contents of docs backed up from my device without my password or recovery key, but AFAICT, there is no such protection whatsoever against internal threats.

Other than that, I love my RM2, just can’t use it for as much as I’d like because of the above.

I’m in the same boat. Due to security restrictions of my employer I can’t use cloud services to store work related stuff. I was really bummed when I discovered that a lot of the interesting features of my RM2 require their cloud service. I’ve dug through the GitHub repos of RM2 hacks and open source tools that are available, but it still feels like I’m missing out.

Can you not just use it as is? I have not connected to a WiFi yet and you can sync to your own cloud.

I guess you do need a way to get the docs on the device. Their sync process is weird.

I've never connected mine to WiFi, but that's because it does all I need through ssh.

Are you able to ssh and move files by something like sftp or no? ssh by wire? Was curious what the file format is of each note.

Yep! When you plug it in to your machine through a USB-C cable, it attaches as an ethernet device and answers to `ssh root@10.11.99.1`. You can also activate an http UI that you can then use to upload files with `curl --form "file=@\"$1\"" "http://10.11.99.1/upload"`.

If you're curious about the file format, have a look at https://remarkablewiki.com/tech/filesystem#user_data_directo...

thanks a lot for the info

gocryptfs is available in toltec[0]. So you could in theory add full device encryption behind a password on startup. I know there has been some work on creating a UI for this kind of setup, but I don't know if anyone has actually released one yet.

0. https://toltec-dev.org/stable/

The UI stuff is here: https://blog.redteam-pentesting.de/2021/remarkable-encryptio...

That's one of the UI solutions You can also find the source here: https://github.com/RedTeamPentesting/remarkable-encryption.

There is also https://github.com/plan5/remarvin

I have a rM2 that I've never connected to their reMarkable Cloud and I'm pretty happy with it; you can get the screen-sharing via other software. (Bunch of options here: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable#screen-shar... )

Isn't `bricked then recovered` a contradiction in terms?

given that the term "unbricking" exists, I would say no?

If you can fix it, it wasn't bricked it was just not working.

If you have to de-solder the flash, reprogram the flash and re-solder it back in, is that bricked?

If yes to above, then what about using an in-circuit programmer?

If yes to above then what about having to move a jumper to get a ROM monitor?

If yes to above then what about having to enter some magic button combination at boot?

The line is fuzzy, no?

Yeah, I think you are right. I am convinced. I would probably draw the line at physical work, meaning if it requires physically opening the device and changing/fixing/bypassing wiring it can count as bricked.

Well, I mean, that is a reasonable line. But it's still moving the goalposts. I'll stick with bricked meaning bricked.

I lost that personal battle for 'hacker' and 'begs the question' but dammit I am sticking to it for 'brick'!!

> I'll stick with bricked meaning bricked.

Well that is what I am sticking with, too!

Bricked meaning bricked meaning what? Where are the original goalposts?

Because nothing is unfixable. If bricked means unfixable, even with expert attention and unlimited replacements, then bricking is a meaningless term that only applies if you, like, atomize the device.

Otherwise...

There's the point where you have to replace a part entirely, but you might be able to steal that part from elsewhere in the device.

There's the point where you need entirely new parts.

There's the point where fixing costs more than the device is worth.

There's the point point where fixing costs more than the device was brand new.

Is one of the above a good threshold?

Would you pick something else?

Do you disagree about things being unfixable?

What if the flash data is corrupt, and the only way to restore it is to use an internal company program which I do not have access to?

To me, the device is bricked. It does not turn on and I can not fix it. But to the OEM it simply requires a factory reset. IMO bricked to me means that the device does not boot and there isn't a button combo factory reset option available. To the vast majority of people, this is completely broken beyond repair to them.

This. "Bricked" is a word that signifies that the speaker doesn't know how to make the device go. It's not exactly meaningless, but I certainly take it differently coming from a grognard as opposed to a Pakled.

Mixing up Wargaming and Star Trek terminology there?

If there ever were an audience that would get both references, it's surely this one.

The term “undying” also exists, just saying.

Generally I'd say yes, but when recovery includes a breadboard and soldering I think 'bricked then recovered' is acceptable!

Fair enough. I have changed my mind on unbricking being a thing.

I'd agree -- philosophically I'm not sure it's possible to truly brick hardware unless you've physically disturbed the hardware's integrity, via physical trauma.

Things that were once thought bricked might in the future become unbricked if the right knowledge is acquired. "Bricked" is more a state of "thought to be impossible to fix" than something permanent.

That makes sense, especially since there is an epistemological issue with being able to say something is 'bricked'... there would be no way to distinguish between "I don't know how to fix it" and "No one knows how to fix it"

A decade ago I managed to brick my brother's Nokia 5300 (custom firmware - PPM mods) and thankfully recovered it by "dead phone USB flashing" - the last resort method in Phoenix, Nokia internal software for service people. It's super finicky and works on n-th attempts, but has a non-zero change of success.

> works on n-th attempts, but has a high change of success

60% of the time it works every time.

Just get lucky with the timing :) Like a QTE but without the prompt, that was the main problem. But as programming was done in parts (firmware, PPM (like Win32 resources), content (FAT32 image of storage) it depended on which part was corrupted.

Edit: some people had success on 50th attempt[1], talk about perseverance ;)

[1] http://nokiahacking.pl/naprawianie-niewlaczajacego-sie-telef...

Bricked is a [current] state (wherein there's no official recovery workflow available, and the device is as usable as a brick).

To give an example, certain dead devices can be saved after being baked in the oven to re-seat components that have worked loose. According to the "No True Bricking" argument that constantly comes up, those devices were never really bricked because they were later fixable, even though you're literally performing a re-manufacturing step.

In fact what exactly would a "True Bricking" look like? Even in cases where a major component dies, if you desolder it, and re-solder a new one is that a "True Bricking?"

See I have zero patience for the "No True Bricking" stuff since it is a logical Swiss cheese.

You obviously have some patience for it because you spent the time to make some pretty good arguments as to why you can unbrick something. I think you have me convinced.

The requirement for electronics knowledge and skills is a clear dividing line for me.

I've recovered and hacked devices for friends using software. Especially phones which have recovery functions I can use but I've also hacked some older game consoles. I can't do anything if electronics skills are required though. At that point it becomes specialized repair work.

I suppose nothing's really bricked if you're smart enough. Just desolder a chip, reprogram it and resolder it back in? I don't know how. I tried to learn what I could but it turned out hardware is a lot harder than software.

I absolutely think the term gets overused and I think the term “soft-bricked” is even more peculiar.

But given the extent of the required work to recover the device here (actual hardware work, non-trivial and not for a layperson) then I think it’s appropriate.

Not a hill I’m going to die on but it does kind of bother me when someone describes their device as bricked and all they need to do is plug it in and run some kind of simple restore utility or otherwise.

I think "bricked" as a term originated from flashing the firmware on mobile phones. If the firmware ended up in a non-recoverable state, the phone became as useful as a brick. It was theoretically possible to take physical intervention to pull the firmware chip out and flash it with an fpga programmer tool, but most people wouldn't have the equipment for that.

I think we've been using this term long before mobile phones...

This feels a bit like the word "bug"; I'd be quite interested to know if it can be traced to its actual first use.

People associate it with phones because as I remember they were always being described as the size (and weight) of a brick, and that's when they were working.

Back in the day “bricked” meant it was actually and permanently about as useful as a brick - no chance of recovery. These days it just seems to mean “can’t boot and can’t be fixed/reflashed easily”.

Having to plug a resistor into the device to put it in any sort of recovery mode does walk a very fine line between “not really bricked” and “dude you squeezed water out of a stone, you are a demigod”.

One might call it "soft-bricked".

"soft-bricked" is a common term in some of the Android forums I have frequented in the past.

The Remarkable 2 is very nice, I would like to try one out, though I don't have any immediate use for something like that, except maybe as an e-reader.

I still use paper notebooks, but I rarely need to actually do something with the contents afterwards, other than refer to them occasionally. Maybe if I was more organized...

HN has seen many discussions over the proper meaning of bricked. [0][1][2][3]

I think it's because it's an ambiguous metaphor. Does it mean currently only as useful to you as a brick, or does it mean as objectively valuable as a brick. Personally I prefer the original stronger definition, where recoverable issues do not count as bricked, but so it goes.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379772

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381892

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731376

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845778

BTW There are rumors about reMarkable requiring paid subscription for some features available for free now. https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/remarkable-i...

I love my rM2, but there are decent alternative eink note taking devices on a market nowadays.

Maybe I’d buy subsidized rM3 for $200 with backlight, and also nice for it to be waterproof with subscription, but keep asking money from existing owners of rM2 who paid hefty price of $500-600 for device is too much.

I had a very similar problem, although the root cause was a drained battery. After finally charging it, the device was stuck in a boot loop.

I wasn't able to create a proper connection via the pogo; but the community was amazingly helpful (and appropriately critical of my poor soldering skills).

Since the device hadn't synchronized to the cloud in some time, I had to send it out for data recovery. The cost was worth it for me. Happily, the data was fully recoverable and I was able to simply get a drive image and work with it locally using a mix of traditional OS tools as well as tools provided by the Remarkable community.

I love my remarkable 2. The only thing that's missing for me is a backlight, it's unusable in terms of reading and writing if the room is dark. I would instantly upgrade to a RM3 with a backlight.

I use a good old fashioned clip-on book light with mine. Works great.

"The USB-C breakout board with the pull down resistor connected on the bread board"

Actually, it isn't. The resistor is in row 16 of the bread board, the cable to the connector is in row 15. I'm sure, you just wanted to test whether we're paying attention.

Nice catch :) pushed an update.

Your blog has a fantastic design btw. The world could use more designs like it. What theme did you use?

now now, it's a kinda obvious screwup, but with big footguns like this there should be an easier way to re-flash the thing though... it really should have a shadow-copy of a partition that can restore it to factory. It wouldn't be to hard to implement.

it's just lovely to seen an open device... this made me want to buy one.

I ran into a similar problem as the author: trying to easily extract highlights without having to go through ssh.

I ended up building a cmdline tool to solve the problem and have been using it for a while: https://github.com/sabidib/remarking

That's easy comparing to reflash a pocketchip and setting up a pinning kernel because if you upgrade the NAND will bork out as MLC+ubifs it's a recipe for a disaster. On similar ARM devices, I own a wm8850 netbook (armv7l) and I coudn't reflash it with a custom Uberoid "ROM" but oddly enough I could boot a custom kernel and config with a Slackware 14 rootfs. Some port from PostmarketOS exists (Tokio techbook), albeit is not for the same model, but setting up a similar u-boot woudln't be too difficult. My major issue is that that device is now semi-bricked and I think I could restore it with PXE, as it doesn't show anything on any reflashing trial.

I got one for drawing sketches/designing stuff, I love the drawing feel on it due to the textured surface. Light and lasts a long time, I have a Surface Go 2 as well.

R2 with eraser pen and folio was not cheap though.

I bricked the reMarkable 2 within a day or two of receiving the device. And since then it's been laying in the cupboard. I'm grateful for the recovery write up by ddvk, but I'd really wish Remarkable would make it a bit easier. I understand it's not their problem, but looking through the physical recovery flow is sadly utterly confusing if one isn't already a seasoned geek. They really should provide the SSH password printed and an easier way to reset the device.

I'd love to give it a try soon. Unfortunately couldn't source the required parts from any European online shop. Can anyone help here or is AliExpress the only viable option?

I used Adafruit for the USB micro breakout, and also a USB-C breakout. Their USB-C breakout had SBU-2 but I couldn't get it working (this was before I thought to flip the cable!). I bought the larger breakout seen in that post from Amazon[1].

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W3DYKX7

Can I use this as an ssh terminal to login to my development machine? I wonder if the display latency would make it non-starter for this usecase.

Kobos make good eink tablets for hacking. Run an easily editable linux. e.g. https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-ssh.html

That was quite a rollercoaster.

Can the reMarkable 2 be used as an extra display for a Linux Desktop machine?

is it bricked if it can be recovered? bricking, the way I learned the term, means unrecoverable via any software means and almost any (or actually any) hardware means.

Right. Same here. But, like waterproof vs water resistant, people don't seem to use the term correctly anymore.

So, I guess I'll give my (sadly) negative experience with these things.

First, I sort of ordered it on a whim. I liked the idea and thought it'd be cool to use for work while not having to use my personal iPad even more.

This is their decision, but they ship with DHL, which is absolutely godawful in literally every experience I've had with them. I learned after ordering that the device doesn't allow searching within your handwritten notes, a feature I use regularly in GoodNotes on my iPad.

So, I looked at how to return the device before I even got it. Their support said to just tell DHL to return to shipper. I called DHL they said "sure, we'll do that" for the next two days I kept getting text messages from DHL saying they hadn't managed to ship it back yet, they'd update me the next day.

Then the device shows up at my doorstep and DHL skipped requiring a signature and just dropped it on the porch. Great.

So I email support back and get the process to fully return from them started.

They send me to a "returns" website that doesn't see my order. Great. Email them back and ask for how to workaround this.

The next email they send me a second returns site.. they have two apparently. Then this time their instructions are about returning for a replacement device. Email back after that and clarify, I am not returning for another device, I am returning and getting a refund. They said oh sure, our mistake.

Their returns site (2nd site) was about as unclear as can be. In fact their instructions in their email were, yet again, for returning for a replacement device, the site said to print 3 copies of one sheet, another one copy of the label to attach to the box. I did so, finally got DHL scheduled to pick it up.

DHL says "nope, we need a different sheet of paper" which was not provided to me until I went searching for it in the returns site. At this point DHL is gone with the box.

I write some feedback to Remarkable about their incredibly terrible instructions and they just keep apologizing but referencing my replacement device despite repeating 5 times at this point that I'm returning for a refund.

DHL has had the package for over 10 days now and it's not moving. My luck, Remarkable is going to get the stupid thing at some point and then ship me a replacement device instead of refunding me and I'll have to do this stupid insanity all over again.

The device itself seems fine, I opened and used it while I was waiting for Remarkable to figure their shit out on my return as each email takes over a day to receive a response. So I have about a week of waiting to return this thing just in waiting for them to send me appropriate return instructions. Another 10 days of screwing around with DHL and no movement of the product.

I would really recommend NOT getting one of these devices unless you are 100% sure you're going to keep it. If you have any inkling of an idea that you may utilize the return process, just don't, it's not worth it.

This has been the single WORST customer support experience I've ever had at this point. Their support people simply regurgitate snippets, and sadly they can't even use the correct snippets, and for that they take over 24 hours to get back to you with those incorrect instructions.

Run, just run away.

> the device doesn't allow searching within your handwritten notes, a feature I use regularly in GoodNotes on my iPad.

I wonder if people are downvoting because they missed the reason why you wanted to return it. Anyways it seems like useful info to know how hard it is to return it. You could always try to sell it on craiglist or ebay.

I don't mind the downvotes, I assumed I'd get them because I was saying something unpopular in a thread of people who seem to be super excited about it.

It was really more a PSA and I'm happy to take the karma hit if it helps some people at the end of the day.

Sadly, the device is in the hands of DHL at this point, and hasn't moved from one of their locations in over 10 days now. Giving it until Friday before I reach out to Remarkable again and ask for them to make this right with a full refund. I doubt they'll give it, they seem like a bunch of people that are fine with someone saying bad things about them in threads like this, potentially costing them tons of money, just to not lose out on one single return. Refunding me would get me to just go away as I never want to hear from them or do business with them again. But refunding me will get me off their back.

I am open mouthed

This is anxiety-inducing and a good promo for the pinenote!

The Pinenote can't arrive fast enough! I'm sitting on a ReMarkable 2 that I hate because I didn't realize how serious they were about crippling the usefulness of a really beautiful stack of hardware.

It's really, Really, REALLY dead-set against letting you do anything useful like use wikipedia or stackoverflow on your ultra-long-battery-life beautiful-display device that you might, I dunno, want to use to look at reference material.

Also Bluetooth is hardware-disabled, so no keyboard. What the hell, people. After seeing all the hacks and stuff I figured that might be possible, didn't learn otherwise until after placing the order. Whoops.

Wikipedia is kind of solved[0]. As for stackoverflow, you might be able to use netsurf[1] already, I'm not sure how JS dependent it is.

0. https://github.com/dps/remarkable-wikipedia

1. https://github.com/alex0809/netsurf-reMarkable

Whoah, thank you! I had not run across netsurf in all my looking.

Nice -- shill us the Pinenote then!

I'm in the market for an e-ink reader and have been considering the RM2, but the Pinenote looks pretty tasty too..

Is this really worth $400 + $50-$100 for a pen? Why not just get an iPad instead?

The sentiment seems to be that it's pretty bad value but many like how hackable it is, with scripts and SSH access and such.

I’m pretty sure the iPad does not have an eInk screen?

Because I don't want one? This device does what I want. The iPad doesn't. It's pretty straightforward.

Many people would be fine with that solution, it's definitely more robust in a lot of ways.

A few reasons I like my remarkable (I have an original and a 2, and got my wife one):

1. forced isolation - no notifications come into this device when I'm using it out of the box. It's a nice intentionally crippled feature for focus.

2. The feel. It's like writing on paper, or very near to it. The texture of the tablet and the pencil together is really ... remarkable. It's not at all the same as writing on an iPad or iPad Pro.

3. I doubt in a quantitative comparison the remarkable would beat the iPad in latency, but it still feels damn good. Surprisingly good compared to other touch screen/pencil tablets.

Gripes:

- some edge effects when writing, loses some precision

- the touch buttons on the original were more ergonomic for navigation, the swipe gestures in the 2 seem to work 50-60% on the first try.

- replacing the nubs on the pencil is annoying, but I barely made it through my first included package with the remarkable 1, so not a real problem.

- software is rudimentary. A lot of quality of life features do not exist and maybe should. The writing app, which should kind of be the only thing given attention is pretty far behind, and has only made small improvements (at least visibly to me, this is not to diminish what I am sure is a lot of behind the scenes work to make everything fast).

I probably wouldn't jump to buy a third one, unless it had physical navigation buttons, but the progression from 1 to 2 was pretty amazing. The thing was already thin, but the 2 is so thin I'm amazed it can house a USB-C port.

Dropping touch buttons does sound like a major regression to me.

The flip side of that is the thing is beautiful without them. I almost get it just from an aesthetic point of view, but they didn't hit the mark with their touch navigation to justify it.

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