Inky Impression 5.7“ – Colour e-ink display for Raspberry Pi | Hacker News Reader

Inky Impression 5.7“ – Colour e-ink display for Raspberry Pi

core-electronics.com.au

383 pointskristianp150 comments

The killer application for these e-ink dispalys is calendar/todo list display. I'd love to have my org-mode agenda and todo-list/notes on such a low-powered, low-refresh-rate e-ink screen.

I know this question has been probably been asked many times, but I'll ask again: why are these devices not mass-produced in great numbers? Clearly there is great market demand for it, so then why would the market supply not respond to this demand? Is it because the technology has some oddities that manifest in tricky manufacturing processes? Or is it some patent encumbrance issue?

I actually repurposed an old Kindle to do just that, via kindle-dash[0]

Every 15 minutes it makes a cURL to an endpoint that gets my agenda, some news headlines, the weather, etc., and uses Puppeteer (I think) to return an image for the kindle to display.

[0] https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash

This is exactly what I need! Do you know if it works on a paperwhite? If not, no worries, I know I can find old kindles.

I've personally only tested it with a Kindle 4 NT. I haven't had any reports of people using this on other Kindle devices, but in theory it should work as long as the device is jailbroken.

This is a neat project!

Thanks for the inspiration!

I had no idea this existed but was off writing something similar as well. Glad to see a public project repurposing old hardware. I think there's a large potential userbase if PW support eventually get's added.

I am not sure "org-mode" and "great market demand" typically refer to the same product.

If you think there's great market demand, you should put up a Kickstarter for one of these things. battery + esp32 + readily-available display + some protocol to sync Emacs and your display. You can prototype it in a weekend, and cash in on the demand.

On the one hand, in this case I don't agree with the person you replied to who thinks there would be great market demand for this (at least at the price points currently possible).

On the other hand... there are plenty of things in the world which could have lots of demand for if they were sold, or if they were invented and then sold, quite often I think of something, or see someone else's idea, where I think that's the case. But even if I were the most entrepreneurial entrepreneur imaginable, I couldn't start a business around every single thing I form an opinion on it having the potential to succeed.

Acting as if someone must be willing (and knowledgable enough both about how to make the thing in question and how to market it to get kickstarter traction etc etc) otherwise their opinion that it has a potential market fit is somehow invalid, just feels... mean spirited.

> battery + esp32 + readily-available display

Here you go (out of stock though): https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-frame-5-7?variant=40...

It uses the raspberry pi pico w instead of an esp32 but close enough?

Opinions my own.

Yup, that's exactly what OP wants. You write some software to fetch the calendar / org-mode entries, and there's your prototype for the Kickstarter. Like all hardware projects, the tough part is the software and the marketing.

The software honestly feels like a day's worth of work. I don't know if TinyGo has a driver for the Pico W wifi chip, but I've used an ESP32 with nina and you basically initialize the WiFi core and then use net/http like a program running on a big computer. Very very easy. Times have never been better for Internet-connected microcontroller programmers.

Where is it clear that there is great market demand? The only time I see devices like this discussed is in the small maker community. And the technology limitation of not being a fast updating display limits it to more niche uses.

Half of all supermarkets in Finland have e-ink screens for product price tags along shelves. It saves tons of printing. In a country full of trees. Must be great value.

I think the primary savings of e-ink pricetags is in labor, not materials. Being able to just send price changes directly to the shelf without having humans go through and change them out is a big deal, so to speak.

Also less error prone and more importantly much faster.

Being able to update prices in near real time would also potentially allow for more efficiency in setting prices, meaning you can set them in real time.

With real time stock information, you could handle sudden demand spikes much more gracefully. Have you prices automatically adjusted between an minimum and maximum price based on current stock and demand. Basically get you targeted stock turnover for the best possible price. (Best coupled with a self-checkout system so the customer consents to the current price).

Not that any supermarket I know of is currently smart enough to do that but they could. With all the hoarding due to shortages I could see them smartening up one day.

> Not that any supermarket I know of is currently smart enough to do that but they could

This may or may not be illegal as fuck. Picking up an item that costs 1$ and having it cost 1.2$ by the time you get to the checkout is all sorts of wrong.

Totally illegal here. If you have a more expensive price at check-out, than marked where the product is located, it's free up to $10.

https://www.opc.gouv.qc.ca/en/consumer/good-service/goods/fo...

The Price Accuracy Policy allows customers to be compensated in case of a pricing error at the register. If the price of the article you are buying is higher at the register than what was shown on the shelf, the merchant must:

    give you the item for free if the item costs less than $10;
    sell you the item at the shelf price, minus $10, if the item costs more than $10.

So pricing could change at store close, but it'd be risky to change otherwise. And of course, it should* be a problem. You pick up a product, get to cash, and the price sneakily changes and you don't notice? Uncool.

Paper price have to be changed every week for specials even in Quebec.. it is very labour intensive and very error probe. They also often fall off. Eink price displays are meant to help that.

I used to work in a groceries store and changing price used to take so long that we had to do even while opened with shopping customers..

One comment here, there don't need to be sales!

Sales are a marketing gimmick, to pull in shoppers via loss leaders. So all that work you described, is on purpose.

That said, the store needs to take inventory, audit things regardless, monitor when to order new product. Price changes are merely a part of that.

I wonder if some clients change the price themselves to get the item for free.

There's a whole slew of ways to scam retail prices. Sometimes customers used to just peel a price tag off one product and place it on another. (Store employees used to, less than 40 years ago, put a price sticker manually on every box. Then they'd key the price into the register.) Sometimes if there's a SKU sticker rather than the preprinted UPC sticker on the package from the manufacturer people will still try this.

This is a posted price, marked by the store. They'd need to forge it, the logo, font, etc. That said, there are usually security cameras, and that would be fraud.

People shoplift too, so it is a similar type of crime.

You're assuming sub-day changes. Stock doesn't necessarily come in every day and responding to demand spikes on a day by day basis solves this for any non-24h shop.

You could also do sub-day lowering of prices, although I think day by day changes adds a lot on its own if you want to have dynamic prices in response to demand.

I think there are some self-checkout solutions where you scan the barcode while taking the product off the shelf instead of at the end. The price should, of course, not change between picking up and payment.

Basically, like online shopping works.

To be fair, this has always happened with a sticker price. I always check the receipt, and now and then there are some differences.

It makes it more difficult to argue it is the wrong price though! :)

Automatic pricing updates on shelving displays have been around for awhile, eink versions have gotten more popular because they use so much less power. That combined with low power bluetooth has made it even easier to roll them out.

I live in Kazakhstan which is country without trees. I never saw eink price tags. They're paper. I doubt it has anything with trees. Paper is too cheap.

Sure they are eInk? On Carrefour here they have had plain old LCD ones for ages now. It looks like e-ink, but on close inspection it is definitely not (e.g. mirrorish background color). Polarized glasses also help detection :)

And that is what I do agree e-Ink is overrated. People have trouble distinguishing it from reflective LCDs (remember the Pebble).

Can confirm that Japanese supermarket is also full of small 2x1 inch eInk screens for prices (multicolor even).

Here at Kohl's the price signage is e-ink.

Yeah I just saw this tidbyt display on the verge and was looking for a way to make something similar with eink. (https://tidbyt.com/).

I use an old iPad via Universal Control for exactly this purpose: calendar/to-do list. It sits under my monitor and frees up a lot of screen real estate.

Did you have to do anything to make universal control work? I guess I just assumed that since it was a new feature all of my old Apple products wouldn't work (like my 2012 Mac mini that runs a family dashboard doesn't work with UC).

It just worked for me. But I don’t have any gear older than 2015. Here are the device requirements: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212757

Looks like you need a Mac from 2015 or newer and an iPad from the same year. Depends on the model though. Similar to Sidecar, I think it depends on video encoding/decoding features introduced in Skylake chipsets, along with some newer version of Bluetooth.

There might be some hacky stuff you can do to get it to run, but I wouldn’t expect good performance or reliability.

You could always run the iPad with calendar/reminders in split screen with no Universal Control - if you have a gorilla arm.

Is there really great marketplace demand? The hacker/hobbyist community is tiny.

For what is worth my opinion, I wouldn't get one even if it was free.

The first data I look for when I read these enthusiastic reports of color e-paper screen is the refresh rate, and every single time the results are discouraging: 15 seconds for refreshing a page make the product nearly useless for almost all purposes except maybe calendars, but the inferior graphics quality and higher cost make them a lot less appealing than for example using a normal LED screen plus a PIR sensor that turns it off and sends the CPU to sleep when nobody is around to save power. I think the technology just isn't there yet, and will probably need a long time before it becomes interesting for practical uses beyond tinkering and research.

I agree, and it’s frustrating how refresh rate is often buried in the specs.

If you haven’t seen it, here [0] is a monochrome e-ink monitor that you can actually watch videos on, just about. For working with documents it looks totally viable. It seems they are only available in China though.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=iMA8masxYco (skip to 13:30 to see e-ink video playback)

Very interesting product, thanks for the link; might be a godsend for long text sessions (coders, writers, journalists, etc). Price still high for most potential users however.

The last I saw, it is indeed a complex patent and licensing issue. I don't have the source for that handy, but since you seem to be getting many answers blaming the market I figured I'd chime in.

> The last I saw, it is indeed a complex patent and licensing issue.

What do you mean by "last I saw"? You are working in the display industry?

I mean, I read a rather detailed comment on here a few years back from someone actually in the industry, lamenting the stranglehold a particular company was inflicting on innovation.

I actually found the particular comment this morning, pasted in full below from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 dated Feb 2021 :

Edit: And looking closely at that comment chain, I see you were there, questioning the patent stagnation narrative back then also. I guess you're consistent anyway.

Edit 2: Man, you have asked this question a lot. And people have given you some very detailed answers, which you never seem to respond constructively to. Care to comment on this?

...

Throaway to not get sued.

E-ink, the company, holds the patents of the pigment core tech that makes "paper-like" displays possible and strongarms the display manufacturers and the users of their displays to absolute silence. Any research project or startup that comes up with a better alternative technology gets bought out or buried by their lawyers ASAP.

E-ink don't make the display themselves, they make the e-ink film, filled with their patented pigment particles and sell it to display manufacturers who package the film in glass and a TFT layer and add a driver interface chip, all of which are proprietary AF and unless you're the size of Amazon, forget about getting any detailed datasheets about how to correctly drive their displays to get sharp images.

In my previous company we had to reverse engineer their waveforms in order to build usable products even though we were buying quite a lot of displays.

With so much control over the IP and the entire supply chain and due to the broken nature of the patent system, they're an absolute monopoly and have no incentive to lower prices or to bring any innovations to the market and are a textbook example of what happens to technology when there is zero competition.

So, when you see the high prices of e-paper gadgets, don't blame the manufacturers, as they're not price gouging, blame E-ink, as their displays make up the bulk of the BOM.

Tough, some of their tech is pretty dope. One day E-ink sent over a 32" 1440p prototype panel with 32 shades of B&W to show off. My God, was the picture gorgeous and sharp. I would have loved to have it as a PC monitor so I tried building an HDMI interface controller for it with an FPGA but failed due to a lack of time and documentation. Shame, although not a big loss as an estimated cost for that was near the five figure ballpark and the current consumption was astronomical, sometimes triggering the protection of the power supply on certain images.

> Which you never seem to respond constructively to. Care to comment on this?

It's impossible to respond -- it just makes assertions that are impossible to verify, and without throwing any sources.

The only thing I can verify myself is that waveform data from e-ink is overzealously copyrighted and protected, to the detriment of OSS projects, but this exclusively applies to e-Ink technology itself, not competitors.

I don't work in the display industry, but I do think that e-ink just sucks enough by itself that one does not need to invent any type of outlandish conspiracy about how a company would boycott itself in order to limit their market share.

Every single time I have ever seen a color e-Ink display it has been absolutely disappointing. Both Triton and Kaleido were low-contrast, gray-ish blurry messes (and Kaleido is so little an improvement over Triton it makes me wonder what exactly has improved in the last decade). ACeP is the only color technology which really stands out somewhat (this panel, by the way), but it is limited by the extremely low refresh rate and color resolution (we are talking multiple tens of seconds to refresh). And as for the core grayscale market, most people would be better served by a memory reflective LCD, since it is visually indistinguishable from e-Ink, similar or even better contrast, much faster refresh rate, and actually better in average power consumption for most applications except maybe price tags (since e-Ink sucks a lot of power when refreshing).

The fact that not only e-Ink really fails to thrive but that they do have competition which thrives (e.g. smartwatches like Garmin use transflective LCDs that are color & exactly as viewable in sunlight as e-Ink, perhaps more) should also put an stop to the idea that they somehow exert control over the low-power, daylight-viewable display market.

> It's impossible to respond -- it just makes assertions that are impossible to verify, and without throwing any sources.

I have to say this is ridiculous. You're making a claim that patents are blocking progress. When I ask which patent and for details, you're response is that I'm making assertions that can't be verified. That's exactly what I'm saying about your comment.

> You're making a claim that patents are blocking progress

I am not. You are replying to the wrong comment.

> The only thing I can verify myself is that waveform data from e-ink is overzealously copyrighted and protected,

Could you share some evidence for this and exactly what you mean by "waveform data"? Thank you.

I mean the .fw/.ihex files, you have really not seen them?

They are not redistributable, and eInk DMCAs attempts at hosting them; you have to get from your existing firmware. It's not simple to just reverse them since they vary on the temperature. I mean, there is now free code for driving most eink controllers, but not free replacements for these files, as far as I know.

> I mean the .fw/.ihex files, you have really not seen them?

Not from E Ink. .fw is from Freescale. Never seen any .ihex E Ink waveform data file. Could you point to an actual example since you seem to imply it is very common?

> They are not redistributable, and eInk DMCAs attempts at hosting them;

Could you show me an eInk DMCA?

> And people have given you some very detailed answers, which you never seem to respond constructively to.

Could you provide a link to where you see that? I disagree with that characterization.

I should also point out that still, even in this thread, again, no one has been able to tell the rest of us (who want evidence we can verify) what specific patent they're talking about. Instead the same old answer, of "all of their patents" comes out. This is the same as saying IBM patents are blocking progress in the software industry.

Of course, the throwaway post that I already said was clearly misinformed at many levels is cited as if it was gospel evidence of patent misbehavior.

> In my previous company we had to reverse engineer their waveforms in order to build usable products even though we were buying quite a lot of displays.

Yes, this is obviously true. You realize it is the equivalent of saying, I bought a Samsung LCD and then I wanted to change the LCD's internal drive voltages and drive circuit waveforms and Samsung didn't help me do that. And how is that in any way related to patents? I asked for evidence backing your claim that patents are blocking progress in the electrophoretic display industry. Would you care to answer that instead of deflecting?

I'm not convinced there is a large demand for these. While LCDs work poorly in bright sunlight, e-ink works poorly in darkness. Humans are more likely using a display in a poorly lit area than a brightly lit one.

In addition, e-ink uses less energy only if the image isn't really changing. If the image is refreshing, there is a bunch of energy being blown to overwrite the old image. That's not power friendly.

Finally, I seem to remember that there were a bunch of patents in the way.

> Finally, I seem to remember that there were a bunch of patents in the way.

Remember? Meaning you worked in the display industry?

I work in the display industry. I've never heard anything like what you describe, except on HN comments and blogs that use HN comments as citations. Look at my comment history. I think your claim is false because everytime I've challenged a claim like yours the poster has never been able to substantiate it, but I keep an open mind, if you can provide some real citations backing your claim then I'm happy to be corrected.

Looking through your comment history it seems that you have interrogated any poster who was ever mentioned patent problems, and demanded that they provide you with sources. It is not clear why they are required to do that.

https://patents.justia.com/assignee/e-ink-holdings-inc

That is quite a jumble of overlapping / inter-locking patents. The goal is to prevent competition using similar technology. It looks effective. And to answer your next question, no I'm not in the display industry, just thought it seemed interesting.

Challenging unsourced assumptions and combating misinformation is a noble goal. Is there any actual proof that companies other than e-Ink are unable to develop technology like this 7-colour display due to patents?

Not that I could find - but I didn't look for long to satisfy my curiosity. There was a case where e-Ink defended against another patent claim, but not any where they were the aggressor. The set of patents could be for defensive purposes (as in to be used in defending against other patents), or to prevent competition. I didn't find anything definite either way, but as always absence of evidence doesn't really mean much.

> as always absence of evidence doesn't really mean much.

My issue is that there's folks repeatedly saying confidently that there's a patent issue. Which I initially thought was real, and genuinely asked thinking they'd share terrible tales of misbehavior and patent evil committed by the accused company. Over time (more than a year) of this repetition trying to get answers, it seems pretty clear to me that it is not real and is just based on people who have no display industry experience or even a basic understanding of electrophoretic materials just saying 'it should be better than this by now, so the problem must be the company that produces the product'. They often have a Dunning Kruger level of confidence in making their claims. Examples:

"It is indeed a complex patent and licensing issue."

"there were a bunch of patents in the way."

" Imagine where electronic ink displays could be today if E Ink wasn't such a terrible steward of the initial technology."

Not even one of the posters cared to defend their claim when I asked for just a bit of clarification about what they were basing their claim on.

> you have interrogated any poster who was ever mentioned patent problems, and demanded that they provide you with sources. It is not clear why they are required to do that.

OP made a claim. I asked for basic evidence. If that's interrogation, then sure. Are they required to do that? Not really. But it would certainly help convincing me. As it stands, it sounds like bullshit to me. It is the equivalent of saying IBM patents are holding back the software industry. Which patent, you ask? Oh, all of them. That's the answer you're giving.

To be fair, they're not wrong - the patents on e-ink really are holding the technology back while preventing affordable access to anything but the lowest specification implementations.

The justification for long running technology and drug patents is often given but it only furthers to promote aggressive capitalism and any opportunity for reasonable reform is quashed.

> the patents on e-ink really are holding the technology back while preventing affordable access

Once again. Which patent? Which technology? All of them? I'm left convinced that you're not basing your claim on evidence, but instead just on 'feelings'.

> That is quite a jumble of overlapping / inter-locking patents. The goal is to prevent competition using similar technology. It looks effective. And to answer your next question, no I'm not in the display industry,

So you're not in the display industry, and yet you claim there's overlapping /inter-locking patents. Please tell the rest of us a bit more. What's inter-locking about them? So if I did: patents/search=ibm or search=microsoft does that also meet your claim? So let me guess, you believe IBM is blocking progress in the software industry?

You seem to be unaware of your communication style. It would work better if you took some time to work out why your comments come across as hostile and unproductive.

So tell me, how long have you been in the patent-lawyer industry?

See, that does not come across as a good faith attempt to communicate. It is similar to your posting style throughout this thread. Instead of interrogating people and demanding replies, how about you read the patents and explain if you think they are overlapping / inter-locking or not. Out of interest, which company in the display industry do you work for?

You made a claim that patents are blocking progress in the display industry. When I asked you for evidence of that, you've become hostile and turned the thread into an unproductive interaction. That's my genuine observation of this thread.

I did not. You replied to another poster who made that claim, and I challenged your response.

Your communication style was abrasive enough to make me stop and respond to you.

Here we find ourselves again, still without any answer about which patents and what the actual issue is. If you're attempting to initiate a thread about 'communication style' then I'll respectfully wait until we get some concrete answers to the original patent question. Thank you.

Indeed, a review of your post history shows that your account is only used to push that single issue. So which display company do you work for?

You're clearly mischaracterizing my post history to push your narrative instead of providing useful data for this discussion. Your communication style is abrasive enough to make me stop responding to you. Thank you.

Hey - you both broke the site guidelines quite badly in this thread - can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and try harder to use HN in the intended spirit?

From my perspective, this looks like an unfortunate misunderstanding - you both have good things to say, and somehow got caught in a snag. This is all too easy to do on the internet.

The cure is to be 10x more generous in your interpretation of the other person. People come from very different backgrounds and are therefore working with very different mental models, concepts, data, and so on. Differences in perspective too easily turn into judgments and even condemnations of the other person and that's what we're trying to avoid here, so we can keep having curious conversation with each other.

Your post history is public and people can judge for themselves if your account is pushing this single issue. I'll be popping up whenever I see you post to remind people that you don't want to say where you work in the display industry. Again, people can make their own judgements about that.

Have a nice day.

Hey - you both broke the site guidelines quite badly in this thread - can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and try harder to use HN in the intended spirit?

From my perspective, this looks like an unfortunate misunderstanding - you both have good things to say, and somehow got caught in a snag. This is all too easy to do on the internet.

Fair enough, I can see where I've violated that. Will keep it in mind going forward.

> While LCDs work poorly in bright sunlight, e-ink works poorly in darkness

I think if you took the backlight out of both of these options you'd find that the lcd doesn't perform so great in the dark either.

Actually, if you removed the backlight of the LCD, you'd find the LCD does become worse in darkness, but then performs significantly better in sunlight. Think classic Game Boy.

This fact is the basis of transflective LCDs, which can work both in sunlight as well as in darkness conditions, and have improved up to the point they compete in contrast with e-Ink panels.

"significantly better in the sunlight" is not how I'd describe any pre-backlight Gameboys, honestly (including the original). The levels of light in which you could usefully play them were a very narrow band that I would describe as "lots of ambient light but no direct light at all". Hell even most of the front lights you could mount on a Gameboy created unviewable hotspots of light around the edges.

eInk has a much much wider range of workable light levels than any lcd I've used, with or without a backlight. The recent trend away from diffusion layers on lcd glass has also made it a lot worse.

> e-ink works poorly in darkness

Exactly why I’ve bought many kindle fires over the years but not a single kindle e-ink reader

The backlight on e-ink Kindles works just fine.

Some of them can change warmth as well (at least on Kobo) which is a cute feature.

Never knew it had a backlight!

It's been standard for quite a few years now. Not a huge hit in battery life either.

they are lit from the sides with LEDs. I've heard it referred to as "front light", they aren't backlit.

I made a small gadget that displays a count down until your next appointment: https://github.com/jareklupinski/count-down

The hardest part was getting the actual calendar data from Google.

I'm not sure there's even a way to actually get my iCalendar from my iPhone :(

Can you have local only calendars on iPhone? If it's the iCloud account, I'm pretty sure it's straight up CalDAV.

You can set a Google calendar as the default calendar. I'm not sure what happens when icloud users share items with you though.

I was only able to get it to work if I made a public calendar on the iPhone. Great.

Google calendar has live export as ics file, parsable by any ... standard calendar tooling.

People aren't willing to pay to emerging technology. You can easily buy a 25 inch eink black and white screen for around two years now. Every time I've seen it posted here it's someone asking why it doesn't cost $100.

Mean while I'm very happy with the $4k I spent to get one of the first models they build.

> Mean while I'm very happy with the $4k I spent to get one of the first models they build.

Probably also a factor of how much disposable income one has.

Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still waiting for an affordable PC monitor based on e-ink technology. Dasung has been making some progress in the area but their products are quite expensive, around $1000 or more for anything with a useable size. People might disagree on the count of lack of colors, but to me e-ink technology seems very well suited for writing code. And who knows, maybe in a decade or so the refresh rates for these color e-ink might be in a usable range as well.

I have a similar interest. Just wanted to plug Modos here, they're working on Open Source Hardware E-ink laptop that, while not available for purchase just yet, looks pretty interesting to me!

What have Dasung got in that direction?

I linked it below but this display looks pretty cool to me -

https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY

32", 4k colors, ~2 second refresh. Unfortunately also $2.2k!

I just don't understand. In what other product category do we see barely any finished products and mostly just working prototypes without housing, etc. like in this video?

Sure, this technology is new and expensive, but so are foldable phones, for example.

Really not a clue.

I guess a major indicator of progress in this market will be Amazon releasing a colour kindle (if they even want to bother), as that will both indicate prices and performance has become "good enough", and be a further driver on both.

Until then, a $2200 32" screen with a 2-second refresh time is a curiosity more than a product. I think, so far, epaper/eink has hit some sort of wall with it not having quite as many use-cases as people assumed.

My ideal use case for this would be full size wall art. Similar to the Samsung TV that when off looks like art on a wall. Being able to have a new piece of art displayed daily along with as another commentator said your schedule. Wake up enjoy the new random art and see what your plans for the day are. Im sure the ability to scale this would be quite expensive. Buying many to connect and make your own custom size could work.

Netgear Meural II is precisely that but full color:

“Meural partners with some of the world's leading image collections to bring you a dynamic, ever-evolving art library of over 30,000 artworks.”

https://www.netgear.com/home/digital-art-canvas/canvasii/?si...

This looks like it's just a regular LCD screen though, so it gives off light? The description wasn't very clear on this but the technical specs say AHVA LCD.

I recently built my own e-ink picture frame because I wanted it to feel like a regular picture frame (and it has fooled people already), because it is basically just a printed photo in a nice normal frame. And it looks amazing in direct sunlight, and obviously in the dark you see it less but that's the same with any normal picture frame.

If color e-ink was ready for this use case it would be pretty cool, but I think we're still a while away from that. It might also be too expensive.

mine would take inspiration from HN post 3 years ago where a Google Manager got a hold on a poster size e-ink screen and use it to display front pages of newspaper every morning. I would expanded it to a color display and use it to show the poster of the movie being displayed in my media server, but paying 3000+ for a panel of that size makes it a VERY hard sell for me

https://alexanderklopping.medium.com/an-updated-daily-front-...

I love this thing. I made a youtube dashboard with it, to keep track of my key metrics. It was so simple and great fun to make, just some basic Python programming. See it in action here: https://youtu.be/CV0rt5RkzAI?t=201

I bought mine from Pimoroni (UK)[1] but they're out of stock now. I use it for a photo display.

Pros:

* they look nice and consume very little energy

Cons:

* long time to refresh (about 20 seconds)

* only 7 colours. For photos you'll need to do dithering

[1] https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-5-7?varia...

There are loads of variants on aliexpress - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001744549862.html

You just need to make sure you get the one that's set up for how you want to use it, i.e. the one in the linked write-up is designed as a 'hat' some come with a simple ribbon->SPI breakout, some come with no adapter/breakout at all.

I recently did a project with a similarly sized 3-color (black/white/red) screen like this one - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002842153362.html

Which was lots of fun, I used a RP2040-zero board to control it, hooked to an internal USB header on my gaming PC, and it now shows... well it shows the time and the CPU/GPU temps because when I finally got it working, I lost the will to do much more with it :)

If you want the link to the product without going through a wall of text. It’s approx $92 ($134 here in Australia) :

https://core-electronics.com.au/inky-impression-5-7-7-colour...

Also direct from Pimoroni in the UK for less than £70 although, unfortunately, currently out of stock :(

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-5-7

The Inky Developer is in stock, very similar but there's a cable between the display and the Raspberry Pi adapter board instead of the display mounting directly on the Raspberry Pi.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-dev?variant=39685444...

I want to use this to read old magazines, color manga but this doesn't seem quite there in terms of saturation and color.

I await the day when I will be able to look at an eink screen and magazine and not tell the difference.

Pocketbook make two models (15cm and 20cm) of colour e-ink books - they've been around a while, and reviews tend to be generally positive. As noted by others on this thread, latency can be rough. Doubtless other vendors have some similar spec'd devices, but I've only ever used (monochrome) ebook readers from these guys.

[0] https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-color https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-inkpad...

It's not exactly the same -- these readers (and many other color e-readers released in the last decade) use a different type of e-ink panel, likely Kaleido. Kaleido has much better color resolution & depth, and shorter refresh times than the ACeP panel from TFA. However the con is that the colors look much more washed out and the display has less contrast overall and even limited color viewing angles. This is because Triton/Kaleido panels use color filters like any other LCD instead of actually having colored pigments like ACeP. ACeP is the only color e-ink panel I have seen which truly impresses a bit -- if you can stand the obscenely long refresh rate.

You're absolutely right. For 'old magazines', as per GP, it's probably just fine. I've no idea about how manga would fare.

There's some youtube videos that give a hint of colour reproduction - and yes, both those models are Keleido - and while they're certainly nowhere near print or LED quality, for most of my purposes I reckon they'd be a more than satisfactory replacement, especially given the benefits.

15 Seconds to turn a page would be rough too.

I have this connected to my raspberry pi showing PiHole statistics using a couple of bar charts on a five minute update schedule.

I also programmed two buttons to show the stdout results of diagnostic commands when pressed.

Mostly just a fun weekend project, but now I've gotten used to seeing the visual output whenever I walk past my router, and on a couple of occasions the bar charts actually made it clear there was a problem (eg: ads blocked bar was at zero).

The display has worked flawlessly for about two years now.

Just before you get excited, it takes 30secs to refresh

Yeah, this is the huge drawback. Also AFAIK there are better screens already out there with >1000 colours, e.g. Boox Nova C https://medium.com/boox-content-hub/e-ink-kaleido-vs-new-kal...

I heard about that new tech but didn't know about them hitting the market. Are those also sold separately as just displays? Hopefully without the cost of an arm and leg

The issue is that the eink company has a monopoly in the market mainly due to them owning lots of patents. Also they seem to be only caring of the wholesale market, thus their new tech for the DIY/hacker crowd arrives always with a significant delay.

There is a single competitor DES color, but they seem to be in presale since years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckFJar6NC0o

The article says 15secs. I don't know what is right, just sayin'.

It could be right, 30 secs was my own timings. 2 updates were taking about a minute. Although on a different brand 5.7" 7 color eink display (Waveshare) but they look the same except how they are connected

I think it might be because I think two screens are using different algorithms to change images. Mine can only do a full clear, the author mentions that you need to do full clears from time to time to avoid ghosting or permanent burning. So maybe 15 secs is only for non-full clear image change

Tbf not much difference between 15 or 30 secs when it comes to usability

Ohh, interesting. From the foto [1] this appears to be the same AC057TC1 panel that the Inkplate 6COLOR [2] uses.

[1] https://core-electronics.com.au/media/catalog/product/cache/...

[2] https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-6color

These are really nice, and it’s good to see a more sensible price. I’d say the sweet spot for me is going to be around 10”, though, as I’d prefer a bigger picture frame I can have up on a wall with enough battery life to last a year or so (while changing pictures every day).

How does this kind of display actually work? I mean how does it transport the different colors to the front of the pixels while still keeping them separate? The 1-color e-ink is pretty straight-forward but those multiple colors require some new tricks.

To an attempt of reconstructing the idea through available information some months ago, ACeP works through "voltage switch tricks over different sized and charged particles in the microcups".

The so-called "waveforms" that optimize the workings of traditional E-Ink panels, in this case seem to be something like - just inventing some imaginary "recipe" - "a big shock on the cathode followed by a series of short tickles on the anode tends to place the larger sized and strongly negative charged particles above the (etc.)". The producers have also declared that there is a lot of "heuristic attempting" before defining the "waveforms" (as recipes to make a class of pigmented particles go in the right position).

I read this as "the particles differ in size and charge" then somehow through some fiddly electrical impulse magic they are separated and can be sorted to be deposited on the front somehow.

Yes. Sequences of «fiddly electrical impulse[s]». "Make it so it gives some momentum to these, then pull a bit those..." - again, attempting a sketchy description of the "waveforms".

Edit: by the way: I would not say that 1-pigment E-Ink is that «straight-forward»: tricks like the 'Regal' waveform, abatement of ghosting (etc.), were not born immediately.

That's all good and nice but it's been almost 15 years when the first Kindle appeared with a promise of affordable e-ink book readers for everyone. Fast forward and it seems the "affordable" part still applies to the tiny 6 (or maybe 7-8) inches screens, and those who need to need to read anything technical with formulas and diagrams have to pay much more. I don't want anything fancy or "remarkable", just a simple A4 screen allowing me to read technical papers without using a magnifying glass or clunky workarounds.

(Sorry for an unrelated ran, I just had to get it off my chest!)

Nice to see my preferred "local" online shop on HN.

My ideal use for a colour e-ink is reading comics or graphic novels. At 15s a refresh it's not quite convenient but this is promising.

And for a digital photo frame this could be quite nice.

I wonder what potential there is for a >3 color display.

> black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, orange

Ok that's only 5 color, but still curious. For displays we seem to be ok I guess? But wow, using something like LiFX bulbs I notice huge ranges of colors that are ultra-washed out, that the light cannot do. That said, I'm here on "orange site" and I can easily say, yup, looks orange.

I also keep hearing griping that the color dithering is all patent encumbered and/or that there's few open-source options available. Bother.

https://www.good-display.com/product/385.html

These seem to be pretty cutting edge, and as a result quite expensive, but they claim 4096 colours.

The only one I can see with any sort of price is a 31.2", 720p version that does 4k colors and 16 levels of grey, and costs $2200. And is out of stock!

https://buy-lcd.com/products/good-display-312-inch-large-e-i...

There's a video of it in action here - https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY

It looks alright with dithering even with such low amount of colors

  I also keep hearing griping that the color dithering is all patent encumbered and/or that there's few open-source options available. Bother.

Huh, is it? I am using python to dither images just fine

On a previous job they reused old tablets to schedule appointments. The devices were on ethernet but ran Android 4.x. They used http to grab the appt URL. It was neatly implemented except they were riddled with vulnerabilities, and VLANs weren't set up correctly. All of this occurred in 2019 and the organization was a non-profit. Given energy crisis, e-ink would possibly save on electricity here. Though in their case b/w or b/w/r would suffice back then.

When talking about saving electricity it's always useful to add amount of energy saved and in best case, monetary equivalent. Because yes it saves energy, but also if you drive to work without shoes it saves gas too, because your car is lighter. But inconveniences this (no shoes) creates are obvious.

I'm in my mid 40s. It's actually much easier for me to read text on displays that emit bright light than the ones that don't. :-(

Surely that depends on the amount of ambient light?

Presbyopia Perhaps?

I went though the mid stage where I needed more light. Now I just need the glasses for close stuff.

You probably need reading glasses.

I wonder if we’ll eventually feel silly about making every restaurant menu a huge set of TVs when these fit the bill far more.

Probably not. e-ink displays are much more expensive than a cheap $200-300 "smart" TV mounted to the wall. A 31" display module (not the stuff to drive it) is $2300. Maybe you can get the price down in bulk purchasing, but a 40" TV could be purchased for $200-300 right now from any big box store. So an array of 6 40" TVs displaying menus would be cheaper than one of these.

https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2˝-color-epaper-display...

Commercial displays are more like $700-$1000 in this size class, and power isn’t free, so there is presumably some crossover point in total cost of ownership.

I’ll gladly replace my menuboard 43” TVs with eInk displays if they ever reach the rough price neighborhood ($1500?) and have a single-digit-seconds repaint time

But will you feel silly for choosing, say, 2x$1000 displays versus 1x$2300 smaller display today? Probably not. Which was what I was responding to. Should the price ever drop enough, then sure, it would make sense at that point to select an e-ink display. But it's a terrible choice today, so nothing to feel silly about.

Nice that it is available in my hometown of Australia. Surely it is available in US too?

My first thought - those early 2000's digital photoframes are gonna come back!

Edit: Oh... the good old "Out of stock". Ah the 2020s.

Yeah these displays look really nice but they're always out of stock :(

I suspect that the 5.65inch ACeP 7-Color E-Paper E-Ink Display Module (600×448) sold by Waveshare[1] is essentially the same screen, just with a different controller glued to the back. I use it with an ESP32, but their wiki[2] has a guide on how to plug it to a RPi.

[1] https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/5.65inch-... [2] https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/5.65inch_e-Paper_Module_(F)_M...

Waveshare are cool, and on aliexpress “GooDisplay” seem to again sell mostly the same screens

I just ordered one from eBay. It's a newish seller, but eBay always sides with the buyer so it feels pretty safe...

Pimoroni.com has them in stock

I'd love a wireless version of one of these with mounting hardware. Stick it on the door to have weather and reminders before leaving the house in the morning.

You want to go Arduino / ESP32 for that. Pis require too much power, unless you want to have it plugged in all the time.

Was rather disappointed that this is not partial refresh- and the refresh rate in general. Might not be too useful as an interactive thing yet.

Very nice! I would like to diy this into a picture frame. Wonder where would be a good place to find/make frame and casing that fit it?

Grabbed one of these a few weeks ago to make a calendar that syncs to Google Calendar. Will be a fun project

I got one of these a few months ago. I use it to monitor my weather station. I really like it!

very cool, thanks for the video, enjoyed it, as well now being aware how easy it would be to 'project this' into something in the future should the need arise :-)

Well now we know why they didn't scale up yet.

What's wrong with paper?

I could not begin to get why you would utter that, so I took a little pause before this, and took the opportunity to crunch some numbers.

What's wrong with paper: well, it depends; for example, it is not reused - each chunk of represented info has to be stored -, and it is a stable medium with an important weight.

Texts range from a content of 1MB to 100..200KB of chars at upper quintile and lower quintile.

An A5 sheet may contain 1500 chars per side, and one square meter of paper, 80g of weight, 33.3 of them "pages", 100'000 chars per square meter. One MB of (printed) chars then weighs ~0.8kg.

A small library of 1000 volumes weighs around half a ton (possibly even much more).

Similarly for space.

I just noted: such «small library of 1000 volumes [which would] weigh around half a ton», in chars would be the capacity of a CD. Which would be, 550kg for paper vs 0.016kg for a CD - 35'000 times the weight.

Of course, other storage systems today would boost that number - though the dimension of the embedded library would be gigantic (one unity of measure above).

Very long refresh rate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com