Making ePaper easy to use for developers | Hacker News Reader

Making ePaper easy to use for developers

repaper.org

125 pointssyedkarim46 comments

So when is someone going to release a Kickstarter for a small laptop with a 10.2" [0] ePaper display so I can finally work out in the sun?

[0]: http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/products/panels

Hell, if this comment gets enough upvotes, I'll launch the KickStarter. Raspberry Pi-ePaper laptop?

We'd also need an epaper aware Window Manager

Typing on one of these screens isn't that fun. Clarity isn't so good and the refresh rate is bad. Want to select some text? It's a nightmare. Cursors are barely possible. Many of the ways we've come to expect to interact with computers are not possible even on a touchscreen e-paper display. And I'm a fan!

E-paper just doesn't seem ready for that type of application right now. It's for displaying big pieces of text - not interacting with text, not showing images, not writing on, nothing. Its primary purpose, which it is fulfilling pretty well actually, is showing a page full of words. It's not very well suited to anything else.

If the technology improves (primarily in contrast and refresh rate) I'm with you - but for now, it's not a good option.

In the meantime:

http://tinyapps.org/docs/e-ink-monitor.html

Pixel Qi's displays look very interesting, solving that problem well. Never actually seen or used one, though.

http://pixelqi.com/

One exists. But it's got the specs of a 2009 netbook and is really expensive. http://www.sunbook.us/

Or just get the screen for $249 and install yourself:

http://www.makershed.com/Pixel_Qi_display_p/mkpq01.htm

I installed one on a Lenovo Ideapad S10-2. It was OK, but not nearly as easy on the eyes as an E Ink screen.

eInk is very slow refresh, about a second...not fun for a laptop. Pixel Qi displays work better: have TFT-speed refresh with sun-light readability. Indoors its a color display. Outdoors you can turn off the backlight to conserve power.

If your computer/laptop has VGA/HDMI or composite out you can use our Pixel Qi+Controller kit http://www.adafruit.com/products/1303 for modern laptops with a 40 pin LVDS cable you can just do a swap out as long as the screen's the same dimensions.

or a phone/tablet.

Smartphone + E-paper = long battery life :D

People can actually try what it's like by hacking their Kindle: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3621

I find that it's goof enough for most stuff, if you get your vim keybinding right.

Out of curiosity and because i am too lazy to pretend i want some and request a quote from the vendor, does anybody know what is a ballpark figure for the cost of those displays?

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1346

2.7" with the dev kit for $40, so not too expensive overall. I'm requesting a quote from another company at the moment since I'm curious :)

Let us know what they say! :)

So far, $250 for the 7.4" "EVAL" kit (from pervasive displays). A heck of a lot more reasonable than the last time I looked at e-ink screens ($10,000 for a single 6" dev kit). I'm not quite sure I grasp what it includes, but it sounds fairly barebone:

>The 7.4” EVAL kit includes the 7.4” EPD panel, a timing controller, a pattern generator and interconnect cables

Based on the price of the dev kit, I would guess that the 2-inch displays are about $15per unit in volume.

Doesnt look like this supports displays larger then a couple inches. I would love to get a largish e-ink display so I could code outside (slow refresh rate is fine, just needs to support a terminal).

Anyhow, is a step in the right direction to have small hackable eink displays.

http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/

I noticed that there was a 10.2" display on the PDI website. It looks like it's not supported by the current prototyping kits, but I am hoping that will change down the road; I'd love to hack around with something that big!

On the other hand, it could be a fun challenge to try to integrate a bunch of the smaller displays into a single large one--though I imagine the novelty of coding on something like that would wear off pretty quickly ~wry grin~

I saw that, 10.2 would be a workable size I think. Then a bunch of smaller ones surrounding, for a sort of tiled wm.

> To get started with ePaper development you will need a display and the RePaper Extension board

As someone new to ePaper development, where/how do you get a compatible display?

The next sentence says:

"The EPD extension board supports driving PDI’s 1.44, 2.0, and 2.7 inch E-Paper display (EPD) modules."

"PDI's" links to: http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/products/panels

Thanks! That link color doesn't show up well on my display; didn't realize PDI was a vendor rather than an industry spec of some kind. This is what I needed.

"Get a quote", I bet you it's not easy to get one display from them. Maybe if you buy >100...

IMO RePaper should buy a batch of them and let me order it with a few simple clicks.

We're selling our displays through Adafruit. Sorry that wasn't clear. I'll rework the site's text. Appreciate the feedback.

You can buy a dev kit, which includes a display, from Adafruit. It's USD 35 and comes with a 2-inch display.

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1316

I worked with Visionect to create an interactive menu using their ePaper Development Kit[1]. The ePaper technology itself has refresh speed limitations, but great resolution & power-saving advantages. Their SDK exposes a JavaScript API for handling display refresh, which was easy to implement in Backbone.js render methods. You should try this if you want to build an MVC App[2] on an ePaper device.

[1] http://electronics.visionect.si/products-hardware/epaper-dev...

[2] http://geoffrey.si/

Wonderful, wonderful stuff. ePaper has been an interesting technology paired with a closed ecosystem for way too long.

I had seen the displays for sale on adafruit but to see the whole picture is really great.

So far it has been really hard buying E-paper displays as a hobbyist, with Sparkfun[1] being the only easy option. Crap, scrape that... it has been retired.

I once tried to get some people together and make a kit[2], but that project never went anywhere.

[1]: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10150

[2]: http://wishfulcoding.nl/epaper/

Agreed. We're looking to change that. Hope you can try our kits and let us know how to improve.

Looks pretty neat. I can't find it on their site, but will this work with Raspberry Pi? I presume so, but it's not listed under their fully supported list.

It will, but they don't provide code examples. This display is interfaced via a SPI connection, and the RPi has one SPI bus (see: http://elinux.org/RPi_SPI). I expect that a community driver will be written presently now that there are eyeballs on this project.

Awesome, thanks for the info!

We are working on a proper Linux driver but it's a few months away. For now, you can run the Sketches on Raspberry Pi. These guys did it based on our code: http://www.embeddedartists.com/products/displays/lcd_27_epap...

I've had a few things I've wanted to do with ePaper but have never found a decent development kit -- everything I found when I searched last year was along the lines of a small, thin strip. No big panels like you'd find in a Kindle.

I have always wanted a e-Ink display connected to my iPhone, perhaps now we can make one ourselves! Interested helping me out? please email me at giovanni dot donelli at gmail

or even better connect with me here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gdonelli

What I really want is epaper that can refresh fast/high-res enough to code with pen input. Any idea if this will ever happen?

They were working on some interesting stuff at Bridgestone of all places, called Aerobee, but that was two years ago.. it's not profitable when there are only a couple big buyers of the things and you don't make much margin since they're all budget devices. I think the tech will stay around in a low key way until a major breakthrough, and you'll hear about it.

Qualcom has been working on Mirasol [0], an alternative to ePaper for a long time now. I saw it 4 years ago at Mobile World Congress and it really looks nice. Full colour screens and the more light you pump in, the better it looks.

Sadly, so far they are nowhere near a commercial rollout.

[0] www.qualcomm.com/mirasol

I thought they actually gave up on that product because the production costs are to heigh.

i thought they started some small productions of products in asia, ereaders etc. I think they still work in it, but there is no upcoming product.

> If the history of the Internet has proven anything, it is that open technologies lead to unbounded innovation and unprecedented value added to the entire economy.

When has that been true for hardware? It seems to me that the most exciting hardware innovations have been proprietary models.

So Arduino does not count for anything?

Nor the Raspberry Pi?

Agreed! Either would have been a better example for this project, I think.

Raspberry Pi is not really Open hardware... but close enough.

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