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Comment by mrheosuper | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I have a question, hope it's not too sensitive, how do you guy protect your secret waveform ? One with enough tool and determination can just measure voltage at pixel and reverse the whole thing, the chinese can do that in less than a week i bet.

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Few years ago I did an educational project to extract waveforms from logic capture - it was doable [1]. But this approach may have limits on newer faster FPGA based controllers.

[1]: https://github.com/prashnts/betty-epd/blob/master/notebooks/...

I always wondered about this as well. Linux regularly gains reverse engineered drivers and it seems like the same would apply. I guess this is probably how the hobbyist projects that drive the panels faster came about? I assume it's the same as the NDAs surrounding SoCs where the entire exercise seemingly only exists to spite the general public while serving no practical purpose. (Well I suppose pandering to nontechnical management's insecurities is a sort of practical purpose but anyway.)

But I was too lazy and/or uninterested to attempt low level tinkering with e-paper myself and these days you can finally purchase some reasonably(ish) fast panels off the shelf.

1 approach i can think of is having the waveform flashed in factory. On supported controller, you can reflash the stock Waveform with yours.

But still, that does not prevent one from measuring the voltage directly at pixel.

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