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Comment by abdullahkhalids | Hacker News Reader

If I can get a laptop with a e-ink display (or build one using a raspberry pi) this is my dream setup for when I am writing.

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I tried that. I bought a kindle, got root access, added lots of software (a x-server that outputs directly to the framebuffer device that interfaces the display). I only ever had keyboard access from a remote computer from that i was SSHing into it. I planned to add a keyboard, but i never did.

It was not usable. I tried a tiling windows manager, but It does not work.

The latency is huge. Too much for me to write. Forget scrolling. The display is inaccurate, there are plenty of artifacts. You will be able to see what was on the screen 5 minutes ago. Feels like a burned in screen. The kindle display is tiny. I mean, really tiny. That could be fixed. And it the kindle does not have a particular long battery life if you use it as a laptop.

I believe you need to refresh / redraw the entire screen occasionally. You may notice that the Kindle will draw the entire screen black and then white sometimes, like while turning pages, while other times it will simply erase what was drawn. I gather the screen redraw is to reset the display and minimize those artifacts. (Unless - does the hardware do this for you? I've never tinkered with one and have no special knowledge about Kindles)

Perhaps you could build a tiny program that pops up a black box that covered the entire display occasionally (but it would be frustrating if it appeared at unneeded times). Otherwise I think you'd need to hack on the window manager. Alternatively, perhaps this would all work out better as an app running with the Kindle development kit. I would hope running in the KDK will take advantage of the built in redraw logic. Maybe one could build an SSH client for the Kindle so as to run the programs remotely while displaying with e-ink. (I'm not trying to get you to spend more time on this - your comment just got me thinking :-)

But anyway it's true that e-ink isn't a great fit for dynamically updating displays. Drawing letters one by one while you type them is doable but not its core competency. Switching window focus will be tough since you likely need to redraw the screen.

e-Ink is one of the worlds most underutilized technologies. I wonder why that is?

Because it's not very nice to use. It feels unfinished and wonky. I do enjoy using my (high-end and fairly recent, Kobo Aura HD) reader, but fast path page turns degrade the rendition quality of type so quickly that I've set it to do a full refresh every two turns, and so get to put up with how slow and violent they are. It's the sort of tech that would send a cartoon Steve Jobs into a raging fit.

e-Ink feels like a prototype we're putting up with because it has some intrinsic conceptual advantages, but it never feels like it's fully there yet. It's probably the most utilized such technology I can think of (though perhaps I've just gotten more used to other tech's flaws). I'm happy we're willing to do that, really, but e-Ink is unsatisfying and needs to be better.

Yeah, eink is a great idea, but it feels like it's been just languishing in the "zone of OK" for quite a while, while 99% of industry research dollars are focused on fast-update vivid color light-emitting displays.

Unfortunately the latter are arguably more widely applicable, and vivid color displays are reallly easy to sell to consumers, while the charms of something like eink are more subtle up front (even if very apparent in the long term). Eink-type displays, that emphasize long-period eye comfort and texture over vivacity and color, are probably a smaller niche.

Niches don't really get the money... and subtlety doesn't sell.

Oh well.

How about this -- a billboard sized e-ink display. That would let advertisers swap out billboard ads based on time slot (prime time would be rush hours, maybe advertising Crains Business magazine in the morning, and beer in the afternoon rush hour). Or, someone could purchase a flash add that displays for 10 minutes on all billboards in the city. Things like that would be a perfect fit for e-ink.

Indeed.

There are also (at least around here) vast quantities of poster-sized dynamic advertising displays in pedestrian walking areas that are used "statically" (only update maybe ever minute or so). Right now they use giant lcd monitors for this (hung on the wall like a poster), but they've got to be sucking up a lot of power...

Eink with improved contrast and color support would be very useful...

I think the colour and motion is more effective at making people notice. And putting these things up is still expensive so the extra hardware costs do not matter so much. And I don't know where to buy giant e-ink displays, and how much they are.

That is actually part of the problem -- until the patents run out for e-ink, we won't see these advanced applications.

A billboard sized e-ink display is just a flip-disc display.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-disc_display

The magic of e-ink is in making the pixels small enough to provide a useable resolution on small screens.

Being electromechanical though, flip-disk displays apparently have significant maintenance costs, as display elements fail quite frequently. Eink would probably be much better on that front, which would be very beneficial for applications in hard-to-service locations ... like billboards...

One of the earliest applications of eink (before eink "paper" was a thing) was actually in advertising signs with huge feature sizes (10s of cm), so big pixels are not something new to eink.

E-ink technology is controlled by only 2 companies in the world. Unless some chinese company manage to clone it, it will be too expensive to use in personal projects. Always wanted an e-ink phone casing....

Like this? http://www.popslate.com

I'd love to have a large 24" E-ink monitor of the Kindle Paperwhite type. I would have payed good money if such a think would have existed.

Not sure it's a very good idea. When I'm typing, I want text not to lag. Using e-ink to edit text feels like ssh through a satellite link.

From what I've read, though, most of the lag/slowness issues with eink are due to bottlenecks in the supporting electronics, which have relatively narrow channels to the display, and not a lot of processing power. Apparently the focus of most current eink tech is (understandably, given the established markets) power saving and cost, with update speed losing out.

I saw a video a few years ago, where someone had bypassed all that, and was running an eink display at video frame rates. It seemed to work fine.

[...google search...] Ah, here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc

There are other similar videos, by other companies, too.

So for a device where more power consumption is acceptable (compared to a power-sipping e-reader), fast-update eink displays may well be possible, and even practical... but it's not so clear anybody is putting much investment in such a thing...

I have waited impatiently since the 1990s for a functioning E-ink reader with fast enough page turns to browse documentation.

And the reason it isn't here is not technical problems -- it is because some shaved chimpanzee of an MBA thought high quality E-readers without colour (or a battery good "just" for a few days) was too small a market?!

I have vertigo.

I reviewed snogglethorpe's link and then searched a bit. Apparently the same company that made that demo also makes an ebook reader. I don't know if it is cool or not. I don't know their stance on Free Software and Open Hardware. But... They do have a 'video' tag on their blog. http://blog.bookeen.com/tag/video/ Cheers!

They seem to have released an 8" 1024X768 reader "Cybook Ocean" earlier this year, about 180 euros.

I can't find any info on how quick the page turns are? No A4 size?

(The reader MaysonL mentions doesn't seem to be on sale yet? I don't see review from 2014, at least?)

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