Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

This is second hand info, so sorry if it's totally wrong, I'll edit this:

E-ink tech is great, but patents and other paper-limitations are slowing down developments of cheap e-ink devices devices, and e-ink will become "great again", when patents expire.

I personally see many, many usecases of e-ink all around me, but the prices are way too high for anything that is not either really small or a repurposed old existing device (eg. jailbroken kindle)

View on HN

Yeah, I'd love a mechanical keyboard where each individual keycap was its own E-ink display. This would let you change layouts on the fly and have it reflected on the keys.

Why eInk though rather than OLED? Given that keyboards usually come with a backlight these days, why make an effort to be purely reflective?

I tried a customisation of a keyboard with per-key RGB LEDs, which would light up the key if it was defined on that layer.

As neat as it sounded, I don't think it was very useful.

Once you're use to your custom keyboard layers, you don't really look down at the keyboard.

This claims to be shipping in March: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nemeio-the-customizable-g...

Those clear plastic key-caps do not look nice to type on. Also, this seems to be using a single E-ink screen underneath.

Hopefully they'd be using something slightly textured like the screens on eink note takers so it wouldn't be glass-smooth.

For the single screen, wouldn't the overall effect be mostly the same?

The killer for me is mostly the size. As a portable I guess it's fine, but not what I want to use for full workdays.

Yeah, I don’t think a single screen is problematic as long as the keycaps feel alright to type on.

“George, why did you send ‘I’m a panda’ in the main channel?” George: “I think someone hacked my keyboard when I went to the bathroom.”

Hey, if your phone let you suit the keyboard to the context, I think physical keyboards need to catch up too :)

I've been waiting for e-ink displays to become affordable since the first Raspberry Pi came out.

I'm still waiting.

What's your budget / price-point?

New devices are available for < $200.

Used or displays are in the $50--$100 range, quite possibly less.

Pricing depends on size, resolution, greyscale ranges (1--16 bits, 4 is common for many smaller isplays), and refresh rates.

The issue isn't the budget, it's the fact that e-ink display cost hasn't really gone down in 5-10 years.

I was expecting 2022 to have $10 e-ink displays I could use to replace the 2x16 and 4x16 LCD screens in my Arduino projects.

But nope, anything over 2" is tens of dollars still - as it was 10 years ago.

I'm finding 4" displays for $36 and 7" for under $70.

https://www.amazon.com/Ingcool-4-2inch-Display-Module-Resolu...

https://www.amazon.com/waveshare-7-5inch-HAT-Raspberry-Consu...

For a 4x16 LCD, the 2" displays are probably most comparable, and are in the same price-range as the equivalent LCD (about $8--$12).

https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Backlight-Display-Arduino-MEG...

2" e-ink multi-colour displays with far higher resolution ... are about $20.

https://www.amazon.com/2-13inch-HAT-Raspberry-Three-Color-In...

I'm no fan of E-ink's patent monopoly, but you're being ever so slightly disingenous / unreasonable here.

Ha! I am the same with OLED. Ever since I saw a video recorded in an OLED lab, where one of the guys had a transparent foil, looking just like those for the overhead projectors in high-school in the 80's, connected to a HDMI cable. He switched it on and a movie was playing on that foil. He bent it, rolled it and said, this could be cut to any shape and size.

I would be in DIY heaven, if one could buy such foil by the meter, for a sensible price. Just imagine, what kind of displays for DIY devices one could accomplish!

I think Dasung and Mira has e-ink 25" monitors, but they are just getting released, so not sure how good they actually are. I also wonder how they worked around the e-ink patents.

They didn't work around any patents, they buy the panels from the company holding the patents.

This is the panel you'll find in the Dasung and Mira monitors: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/25-3%cb%9d-spectra-3100-ep...

I’ve never seen this before outside of medical devices : THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND (II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED

I want to hook up a small e ink screen to a pi and use it with my mechanical keyboard as a modern typewriter of sorts but the prices on eink are so prohibitive it doesn’t seem worth it.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inkplate-6 (800x600) seems ok for £99 (~$135) although it has its own embedded processor. Or you can get the slightly lower res https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-4 (640x400) with colour for £48 (~$65)

I have an Inkplate 10. I like it, but it's not a regular monitor, it doesn't have any standard ports like HDMI. Displaying an image from the SD card takes multiple seconds.

£99 for a 800x600 monitor is exactly what I mean when I say eink is price prohibitive and not worth it.

The response time is what makes devices like this kinda annoying.

Do you say that from experience? I have both a Dasung Paperwhite monitor and a fairly hacked reMarkable 1 that I use for that purpose. Both work well for typing, as long as you type in a way that full refreshes are the exception, not the norm.

For text-based interaction, current-generation E-ink is more than suficient.

Source: Own an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi and use it in this mode frequently.

There are areas where I am more skeptical of how patents are used (see: publicly funded medical research that creates privately owned patents), but I just don't see this as a problem in this case.

This isn't an essential technology - it's a nice addition to our display options. There's every reason to believe that new tech has actual new costs associated with it and that inventions might require elevated rates to make developing new tech economical. I don't like everything about patents - but they give companies a premium for new tech and the companies reveal how to make the tech in return.

It seems to me that if we eliminated patents w/o a new system, investing in technology would simply have a lower rate of return, and so it would happen less. I actually think that's ok - but I think people who bemoan the legal exclusivity that companies say enables them to invest in research should consider how much longer they would wait for the tech they like.

The issue is the length of time. It takes a year or 2 for most companies to make these sorts of breakthroughs. Yet they are grant 20 years of ownership over the idea. It isn't as if the e-ink investment was a billion dollars and years of arduous research.

By them owning the patents to e-ink, others that might contribute and advance the technology are blocked out all together.

To me, it's reasonable to simply cut the tech patent timeframe. Rather than 20 years, what if we moved it back to 15, 10, or 5 years?

Technology isn't essential until there is a breakthrough. Eink allow ultra low power display. If you make it extremely cheap it can be worldchanging: Extremely cheap screen that draw no power when there is no change.

Here is a thread about what you mentioned.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779

Do you think you'd buy an e-ink device that was hackable to explore some of these use cases? I'm thinking a battery powered, WiFi/BT, minimal linux OS with good power management, powerful enough to run chromium embedded for rendering.

I can imagine a few people on here interested in such a device for calendar, home automation, surf updates, whatever. Or does it already exist?

Out of interest, is there actually any evidence that patents are preventing developments in this area?

Not with E-ink specifically. But look at the 3D printing development. It basically exploded once certain patents expired. Now every company I have worked for has had 3D printer in use.

No. It's just become a mantra-meme that the thought-leaders on Hacker News repeat reflexively whenever there's an article (which they haven't read, of course) with e-ink or e-paper in the title.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com