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E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
- Roritharr 8y agoE Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...
- reustle 8y agoWould/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?
- jfim 8y agoImporters would likely get their shipments seized. It's not illegal for manufacturers to export their goods out of China, but US customs doesn't look too highly on importing goods that contravene on registered US IP. Small time shipments are unlikely to be looked at (eg. if someone buys a single electronic ink display off of AliExpress), but someone actually importing many displays for resale would likely eventually get caught.
- dev_dull 8y agoHonestly how would you even know if the e-ink displays infringe on IP? I can’t imagine them doing anything.
- colordrops 8y agoEnough market/distribution and either the patent owner or a patent troll will find out.
- extrapickles 8y agoA patent gives you a monopoly which makes things easy. You occasionally search the market for products that contain your tech (in this case eink), then look in your records to see if they bought/licensed from you.
- billfruit 8y agoBut is it that infringement can be proven only by a court? So can US customs do any thing in such cases, even if we assume they have the competency to judge if a particular import violates IP.
- toast0 8y agoThey file a case, and ask for a preliminary injunction. And once that's granted (which is likely), they take that order to customs, and customs will start looking for those devices in shipments from your supplier or to you.
- luka-birsa 8y agoNobody in their right mind would invest 100M in a production line that is likely to be shut down.
- contingencies 8y agoUsually you don't have to buy the line, you order sub-assemblies from different suppliers and do final assembly.
- userbinator 8y agoI think there are already some which do --- we just don't hear about them much because they tend to be fairly anonymous (for good reason). I remember reading about "fake" Kindle replacement displays showing up on eBay a while ago, not as good as the real thing in terms of image quality etc. but certainly usable, so someone is clearly making them...
- captainmuon 8y agoIt's a common misconception that there is no IP law in China. Patents do exist, and you do have to respect them (at least if it is a chinese patent or you intend to sell into the patent's country). Of course, as with many things there, enforcement is spotty, so you might get away with it for a while. But the days are over where you could completely fly under the radar with a grey market production. It's hard to completely hide your big ass illegal factory in Shenzhen, especially when you have to register every little thing with the state. As in every other country, your competitors or patent owners can just get a lawyer, look up your address, and sue you. Granted, I do understand that from the perspective of a western entrepreneur trying to do business in China it seems to be a lawless space, especially if you've been burnt by fake products from Alibaba etc..
- fooker 8y agoConsidering that you can buy 5$-20$ E ink panels on Alixpress today, I would guess those manufacturers do ignore western patents.
- luka-birsa 8y agoWe shall see if you are correct very soon (for display tech anyway). Key (initial) patents have already stared expiring and will continue to do so quite quickly (1-5 years). Check : - https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp - https://patents.google.com/patent/US6422687B1/en?assignee=E+Ink+Corp https://patents.google.com/patent/US6422687B1/en?assignee=E+...
- captainmuon 8y agoI don't understand how that is even possible. Patent owners want their cut, but in the end they want the product to be made, too, because that's the only way they get money. So they will take as high a cut they can negotiate, reducing the margins of the end manufacturer to a marginal price. But that is the case with every "supplier". At work I looked into integrating e-ink into a product, and the problem seems not patent fees, but availability. Granted, that could be due to patents itself, but the answers I got why it's hard to procure e-ink display were sadly "the end customers don't want it" and "e-ink is dead".
- nikanj 8y agoA VC will not invest in a firm, if someone else has the ability to extract all future profits via patent licensing
- wpietri 8y agoIt's possible because people have different theories of what will benefit themselves. In a functioning marketplace, different suppliers will explore different options. With a monopoly, which is what patents are, you're stuck with whatever notion the patent-owner has. One perfectly reasonable theory of self-interest is to keep prices very high. Yes, they could drop the price and possibly make more. But they could end up making less, and they'll certainly have to do a lot more negotiation work. As an analogy, look at Apple. They have less than 20% of the smartphone market, but make 80% of the profit. [1] They were way ahead of everybody and could have captured a much larger share of both the phone and tablet markets. They're using a different theory of self-interest than the other players. [1] https://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-rakes-in-bulk-of-smartphone-profits-but-small-slice-of-unit-sales/ https://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-rakes-...
- ddingus 8y agoI think that theory boils down to margins. The people making zillions of phones make a fraction of the margin Apple does on it's cool phones.
- orbital-decay 8y agoFunny how the name of the company (E Ink) became almost synonymous with the actual tech (EPD, or electronic paper if you want to generalize).
- myfonj 8y agoThis is quite common pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
- slavik81 8y agoYou can't keep things secret by patenting them. These are trade secrets, which last indefinitely. However, trade secrets are granted fewer protections.
- tajen 8y agoand the historic basis of patents is “Strong protection for 20 years, but you gotta share your invention”.
- userbinator 8y agoIs it really "closely guarded", or "worst guarded"? Anyone with a logic analyser and a few hours can probably figure it out easily enough... and some have even gone beyond what the official controllers can do: https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calendar/log/72153-can-you-get-32-level-grayscale-out-of-an-e-ink-display https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calendar/... (previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284 ) More research from others: http://essentialscrap.com/eink/ http://essentialscrap.com/eink/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894613 https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/interfacing-epd-(e-ink)-display-from-kindle-anyone-tried/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/interfacing-e...
- IshKebab 8y agoPresumably they mean waveform design is a closely guarded secret. At least that's what the quote at the end implies.
- sofon 8y agoThe waveforms will all likely be disclosed in their patents too: https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp Certainly a number of drive waveforms and the basic concepts are presented. There are likely implementation subtleties or specific configurations that are not explicitly disclosed. You can probably figure out a lot about both the implementation, and motivation by digging through the patents.
- guitarbill 8y agoBen Krasnow (Applied Science on YouTube) did some research into driving e-Ink displays, and he made some similar observations: > All of the lookup table information has been removed from this datasheet, because the industry thrives on secrecy or something Highly recommended, as usual for him it's a great video/write-up: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw * http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fast-partial-refresh-on-42-e-paper.html http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fast-partial-refresh-...
- therein 8y agoYeah, his series is really great and it made me realize the FW flashed on these CARTA panels are actually nothing but the raw waveforms themselves. One thing that I want to note is that while their documentation might be closely guarded secret, the actual waveforms are actually available out in the open. For instance here are the raw waveforms for one of the latest Carta generation e-paper panel: https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable/blob/master/reference-material/epdc_ES103CS1.fw?raw=true https://github.com/canselcik/libremarkable/blob/master/refer... ~ hexdump -C epdc_ES103CS1.fw | head -10 00000000 34 88 c4 7c 01 2d 01 00 dd 09 00 00 07 06 a4 00 |4..|.-..........| 00000010 03 58 21 1d 3c ca 01 85 02 00 00 00 40 00 00 fe |.X!.<.......@...| 00000020 47 00 00 01 00 04 0d 00 ff fc 00 00 00 00 00 54 |G..............T| 00000030 00 03 06 09 0c 0f 12 15 18 1b 1e 21 26 2b 30 28 |...........!&+0(| 00000040 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 3e 05 00 00 00 00 00 e8 |........>.......| 00000050 cb 06 00 00 00 00 00 c8 8d 0a 00 00 00 00 00 a8 |................| 00000060 4f 0e 00 00 00 00 00 98 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 a0 |O...............| 00000070 65 00 00 00 00 00 00 a8 bc 00 00 00 00 00 00 b0 |e...............| 00000080 0b 01 00 00 00 00 00 b8 5a 01 00 00 00 00 00 c0 |........Z.......| 00000090 aa 01 00 00 00 00 00 c8 31 02 00 00 00 00 00 d0 |........1.......|
- FullyFunctional 8y agoThis is really frustrating as if you already have an FPGA (and appropriate regulators), the controller is just redundant overhead (in every metric conceivable). I'm glad to see at least the beginning of reverse engineering as some of the panels (typically kindle replacement panels) are quite affordable and even the $450 13.3" panel isn't unreasonably expensive. (An FPGA-powered PocketCHIP-like device with e-Ink would be a lot of fun).
- ehead 8y agoIn my experience, memory LCD has been a better technology to work with: https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd-technology https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd-technology No crazy +/- 40V lines, no external driver circuitry, and extremely low power. Not as low power as E Ink, but since you don’t need to drive wacky voltages, your power budget math will come out the same or better.
- robin_reala 8y agoI’ve never seen one in real life. How are the display characteristics compared to eInk?
- ehead 8y agoIf you’ve ever seen an OG Pebble, you’ve seen that display. It looks like a better resolution gameboy display. Very little space between pixels. Some models are different, though, and basically turn into a mirror when their pixels are turned on, rather than become matte black. Adafruit sells a dev board for 25 bucks. Perfect for low power wearables, much better than E Ink.
- Avamander 8y agoI disagree that memory LCD is better than e-ink. Although, mLCD can do colors and better refresh rates but the colors are washed out, in sunlight grayscale e-ink is much much more readable in my opinion. mLCD also consumes more power in certain cases which isn't ideal.
- ByThyGrace 8y agoIs this tech relatively new? Is it merchandised as "memory LCD"? I would like to know when searching for e-reader displays in the future.
- dbuder 8y agoIt is not new and rarely mentioned in advertising or product information. The memory LCD I've seen are too small for a normal e-reader but if you are doing a large production run you can have something custom made.
- chaoxu 8y agoRecently, I brought a Dasung paperlike HD to use as a monitor. (crazy expensive, prob should've spend money elsewhere...) I thought some things were impossible with eink, but it proved me wrong. (video in a reasonable fps) It has a few different ways of display. For example: Floyd–Steinberg dithering: essentially only black and white with dithering, and the speed pretty good. A16: uses 16 shades of grey, but the speed is horrible for moving images. So I wonder if a mix of the two can do much better (e.g. moving objects using floyd-steinberg until it stops moving) Before doing that, I need to know the exact limit of eink. Are some operations slow because the microcontroller or because it is the limit of the display module itself? This article shows such a question is not that easy to answer using the openly available information. Also, I'm interested if there are algorithmic problems to be solved in this space. (I do research in theoretical computer science). If you are in NYC and knowledgeable I'm very interested to chat (I know little, but I have the monitor you can play with).
- tigershark 8y agoWhy would you use an e-ink display for videos? The main advantage is the low power consumption because it needs power only to refresh, using it for a video it will negate that advantage and draw much more power than a traditional display with an awful image quality...
- chaoxu 8y ago1. Currently, I use it for writing code and reading papers. However, I still want the monitor to be a good enough drop-in monitor for things I need to occasionally do. For example, I need to switch to a browser window to check what was that error I'm getting. 2. Visual snow syndrome: Many had their first experience of visual snow after staring into the screen for too long. People who believe in that is the cause of visual snow would want a screen that does not emit light.
- cedex12 8y agoHow well does it fare for those tasks (code and papers)? I'd very much like to have such a screen but the price tags of what I've seen so far is probihitive…
- chx 8y agoSome info https://hackaday.io/list/35814-e-paper https://hackaday.io/list/35814-e-paper here and especially from the links provided, everyone is working from http://essentialscrap.com/eink/waveforms.html http://essentialscrap.com/eink/waveforms.html and http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay And https://hackaday.io/project/21168-fpga-eink-controller https://hackaday.io/project/21168-fpga-eink-controller has an FPGA doing waveforms by extracting them from existing firmware. So while it might be a closely guarded secret, just replicating it is possible.
- olebrown 8y agoWhere would one anonymously publish an E-ink data sheet with waveforms if they had one?
- Vekz 8y agoHere is a teardown of a 13.3 high perf E-ink monitor I did a few months ago: https://kevzettler.com/2018/02/11/dasung-paperlike-pro-teardown https://kevzettler.com/2018/02/11/dasung-paperlike-pro-teard... The post identifies some on market E-ink display components and discusses the design of a proprietary display driver.
- chaoxu 8y agoDid you eventually switch the panel to ES133UT2? Dasung released a new version called paperlike HD (also called paperlike 3). In that version, it does not look like having a glass panel.
- Vekz 8y agoI have acquired an ES133UT2 (and data-sheet with what appears to be waveforms) but have not replaced it because I damaged the cover of the Dasung during disassembly which means the display module would not be held securely to the screen.
- rwmj 8y ago"On closer inspection all the chip components have had their labels chemically peeled off to prevernt reverse engineering." Wow, I've never seen that. Is it a common thing? It also puts me off buying one of these (assuming the $900 price tag hadn't put me off already).
- userbinator 8y agoI've seen it a lot in Chinese electronics, and it only deters the least effort of reverse-engineers. Erased markings are usually a sign of off-the-shelf parts; they didn't go to the effort of printing their own branding on them.
- dbuder 8y agoCommon enough, the other approach is to have the the manufacturer print a label of your choosing on your batch. no one likes it and anyone serious is going to decap it and figure it out anyway.
- acd 8y agoIs Waveforms what is in Epsons eink controller chips? https://phys.org/news/2011-05-dpi-epson-e-ink-epaper-resolution.html https://phys.org/news/2011-05-dpi-epson-e-ink-epaper-resolut... Japan display has made 600 dpi controllers. http://www.j-display.com/english/news/2017/20170522.html http://www.j-display.com/english/news/2017/20170522.html Further been thinking of building an Eink based smartphone, the eink display would have low power. Some kind of low power small system board running Linux and a 4g modem. Not sure what system board to pick. Batteries should be LifePo4 Lithium iron for battery safety. What kind of high resolution touch based eink displays are out there which are easy to drive from a small Linux system board?
- dugborkt 8y agoFor extra fun for all the people trying to reverse it, the exact waveform data changes per batch of displays. The overall strategy will remain the same though. If you want to see a more complete list of waveform names you could probably go look at the gpl releases of popular readers...
- DiabloD3 8y agoUnfortunately, what the article described sounds a lot like a thermometer coded delta-sigma DAC or other similar design. How these are constructed and used are well known, and they're probably lying about "closely guarded" to make sure people don't realize it is just a clever usage of an off the shelf part, and none of the magic is in-house.
- etaioinshrdlu 8y agoSeems like a good use case for PID loops -- drive the pixel really hard for a brief moment to bring it to the target value faster than might otherwise be possible. Seems limited only by the voltages that just end up frying parts.
- tlb 8y agoFor a PID loop, you'd need to be able to measure the position and velocity of the black dots. Velocity seems very hard. You could conceivably measure the position with a camera looking at the image, but will people want an ebook reader with a camera sticking out in front?
- etaioinshrdlu 8y agoGood point. Maybe not a PID loop at all, but rather an well tuned open-loop controller that compensates for the natural time response of the e-ink pixel.
- coldtea 8y agoIs E Ink anything more than a marketed technology with no real purpose? One can calibrate the brightness, white balance (e.g. Apple's True Tone), resolution, etc of a regular LCD or OLED display so that the same amount of photons hit your eye (and are more tightly controlled when you move the display around) as with an E Ink display, and get better resolution color, and saturation to boot. Besides the idea that it was easier on the eyes was never backed by any substantial scientific studies, it was just "but it's like paper, so it should be" plus some manufacturer sponsored crap. Well, there's the extended battery life I guess...
- krylon 8y agoI have a Kindle reader with an E Ink display. It is much more pleasant to look at in daylight, especially when ambient light is very bright. Battery life is also much, much better. My tablet lasts two to three days at most, under light load, with power saving turned up to eleven. The Kindle can easily last one to two weeks. (It all depends on usage patterns, of course, but for my case those are the numbers I come up with.) I do agree, though, that it is hard for me to think of a use case other than an ebook reader. For that particular case it is perfect, though.
- toast0 8y agoScreen persistance with zero power can be a pretty big deal. It's always nice (ish) when my Kindle has the 'your battery is dead' screen on when I go to use it, so I know what's going on even before I try to turn it on. Other than that, it's hard to compare because nobody makes large monochrome lcd displays. Monochrome is actually a feature for the intended use: newspapers and books use a pretty limited amount of color, so you get improved pixel density and geometry without having to split pixels into colors. OLED won't work for dark text on a light background, and tends to be rather expensive -- I can't imagine a Kindle sized device with an oled display for less than $200, so that limits it to the high end models.
- romed 8y agoEizo still makes monocrome LCD monitors. They are for medical diagnostic purposes. https://www.eizo.com/products/radiforce/gx550/ https://www.eizo.com/products/radiforce/gx550/
- nbevans 8y agoUsually when a piece of tech is protected purely by obscurity in this way, the tech isn't really tech. It is more likely something that a decent programmer/hacker could figure out in a day or two. That's why they are scared to share any info - because even just a single sentence could be enough of a hint to a competitor in how it works.
- pietroglyph 8y agoThe article doesn't mention this anywhere, but the "waveform" is usually a 4D lookup table with target and previous grayscale value, temperature, and frame number.
- jokoon 8y agoI wonder if eink would be really useful to make a low powered smartphone. As long as you use software which doesn't burn a lot of power, like email and other stuff which is designed to run with fewer cycles. At that point I would really care for software with a minimum amount of non fancy feature that doubles or triple battery life. If you make extensive use of text, and don't use high resolution image or set low limits, there are surely ways to make a more durable device. Cheap androids are awesome, but I have no idea why they're becoming slow as they age, and I'm sure software is always to blame. I really crave minimalist designs when it comes to hardware and software.
- gh02t 8y agoThe display is only part of the story. You could save some battery life with an e-paper display sure, but you still have the CPU and radio grinding away at the battery. The ultra power saving mode on my Samsung phone is a good example, it throttles the CPU, sleeps the radio aggressively, restricts the phone to only running a few basic apps, and turns off most of the OLED display. I can increase battery lifetime by almost a factor of 5 with that on. An e-paper display would save a bit more, sure, but the type of display isn't the only limitation to a low-power smart phone. You need to design the whole thing to work together to save power; changing one component isn't gonna be enough.
- nanomonkey 8y agoAnyone interested in running linux on their Kindle should check out http://fread.ink http://fread.ink Juul spent a good amount of time working out how to read the stored waveform configurations (different for each unit) and getting them to run at a reasonable speed.
- thomas 8y agoI'm looking for an e-ink monitor (along the lines of https://cloudconfusing.com/2018/09/18/e-ink-monitors-ready-for-prime-time/ https://cloudconfusing.com/2018/09/18/e-ink-monitors-ready-f... ). Would this work for that?