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signs: https://eink.com/signage.html https://eink.com/signage.html price tags: https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-l

signs: https://eink.com/signage.html https://eink.com/signage.html price tags: https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html more: https://eink.com/application.html https://eink.com/application.html Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do?

deepspace 7y ago
> Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do? Never said that I do, and, yes they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets. My point was that they could and should have done so 10 or more years ago.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  They were. My first employer partnered with eInk back in like 2012 to bring a line of ESLs to market. The reason you're not seeing more of it is because in the US the companies prefer to purchase a "turnkey solution" whereas in Europe companies are more apt to develop custom software to integrate the ESL with their systems. And the major ESL supplier in the US, Pricer, uses on-premises servers and IR to update labels which is an expensive proposition. So you're limited in how you can pilot the technology. I actually think there's a lot of room at the low end of the market to sell an on-premises ARM- or NUC-based server which interfaces with the tags over a radio link and provides aggregate data back to a cloud-based system for control and pricing updates. That would get you the millions of convenience stores who have to pay 3rd-party contractors to do their shelf labels. This would be especially brilliant if you combined a software fee with equipment leases so that your solution is an operating expense instead of an upfront capital cost.
- BinaryIdiot 7y ago
  > they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets Your statement implies this is a recent development but many large retailers, like Best Buy and Kohls, have had these for well over 5 years, maybe even 10 I just don't remember precisely.
  - lightedman 7y ago
    More than 10, as I recall seeing e-ink labels in Circuit City in 1999.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  Making them full color was a tremendous technical challenge if you look at how they work, for which I have to give them enormous kudos. And they're also pretty challenging to manufacturer... I suspect the pricing reflects the complexity to be honest. I dunno, makes sense to me that you'd first address something where color and large sizes isn't very important, start making some revenue, do R&D on manufacturing larger formats and color and frame rate, and gradually introduce new products as they can be developed. It's not like they've been keeping other color e-ink devices off the market with patents -- they didn't exist until today AFAIK. Other things billed as "color e-ink" substitutes that I've seen consume power in standby (and I keep checking from time to time with fingers crossed). I remember hearing stories about how much trouble they had getting from prototype (circa 1996) which I saw in lab to a model ready for production in 2007. 10+ years of process development to get to where it was in the first kindle. And to be honest I'm not sure another company could just pick up the technology and start producing them in bigger quantities, these things are barely related to other displays at all and I imagine the production lines are super different. Plus patents from 1997 are expired now anyway, so if someone else could do it they are allowed to. Knowing a fair bit about how their displays work, it's one of the few cases in electronic hardware I can think of that really seems to deserve a patent given how much creativity and time it took to start manufacturing, and how much money they had to spend to get it to the stage where it worked reliably at all. We could very easily be in a world where these displays didn't exist at all, plus or minus a few people making different choices about how to spend their money and time.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Haven't they been on sale in Asia for a few years now as billboards ? While LCDs still consume power just to display a picture, it can go very low : see how watches can run for a decade on a single tiny battery ! (I'm not even sure that e-ink would necessarily be an improvement there, considering that you'll want a watch to refresh a part of the screen at least once a minute...)
    - 2rsf 7y ago
      The backlight is what probably consumes most of the power, AFAIK color displays wouldn't properly work otherwise
ethbro 7y ago
How many of those have you seen in the real world? Maybe they're more popular elsewhere, but outside of warehouse store price labels I haven't seen the technology. Certainly not in large format.
- jfim 7y ago
  A ton? Carrefour (I believe they're the second largest retailer, after Walmart) has had electronic shelf labels for well over a decade. I haven't seen them in the US, but they're not exactly uncommon in Europe and Asia.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    Here in the US, Kohl's (https://www.kohls.com/ https://www.kohls.com/) uses the e-ink price tags in their retail stores. They are a terrible application of the technology. They're not bright enough to be legible from a distance, and even up-close their legibility is not great. They just look washed-out and dingy. One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably.
    - avianlyric 7y ago
      > One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably. There I was thinking the main purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. Product packaging is meant to grab your eye. Price tags are mostly functional (although some shops also use them to advertise offers).
      - nostrademons 7y ago
        The buyer for price labels is the retailer. The retailer's purpose for a price tag is to grab your eye and get you to buy more. If the price tag dissuades you from buying the product, that is a net negative from the retailer's perspective, and they are the ones that make the purchasing decisions on price tags. Don't assume alignment of incentives. From the customer's perspective, the purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. The customer isn't making the purchasing decisions for the price tags.
robbyking 7y ago
The price tags would be neat if they allowed you to swipe for additional information.
- ksec 7y ago
  I was hoping Beacon to do that, but instead in China they now uses QR Code For it. Which is slightly worst in UX but I guess is much more cost effective.

deepspace 7y ago

> Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do? Never said that I do, and, yes they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets. My point was that they could and should have done so 10 or more years ago.

jschwartzi 7y ago
They were. My first employer partnered with eInk back in like 2012 to bring a line of ESLs to market. The reason you're not seeing more of it is because in the US the companies prefer to purchase a "turnkey solution" whereas in Europe companies are more apt to develop custom software to integrate the ESL with their systems. And the major ESL supplier in the US, Pricer, uses on-premises servers and IR to update labels which is an expensive proposition. So you're limited in how you can pilot the technology. I actually think there's a lot of room at the low end of the market to sell an on-premises ARM- or NUC-based server which interfaces with the tags over a radio link and provides aggregate data back to a cloud-based system for control and pricing updates. That would get you the millions of convenience stores who have to pay 3rd-party contractors to do their shelf labels. This would be especially brilliant if you combined a software fee with equipment leases so that your solution is an operating expense instead of an upfront capital cost.
BinaryIdiot 7y ago
> they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets Your statement implies this is a recent development but many large retailers, like Best Buy and Kohls, have had these for well over 5 years, maybe even 10 I just don't remember precisely.
- lightedman 7y ago
  More than 10, as I recall seeing e-ink labels in Circuit City in 1999.
neltnerb 7y ago
Making them full color was a tremendous technical challenge if you look at how they work, for which I have to give them enormous kudos. And they're also pretty challenging to manufacturer... I suspect the pricing reflects the complexity to be honest. I dunno, makes sense to me that you'd first address something where color and large sizes isn't very important, start making some revenue, do R&D on manufacturing larger formats and color and frame rate, and gradually introduce new products as they can be developed. It's not like they've been keeping other color e-ink devices off the market with patents -- they didn't exist until today AFAIK. Other things billed as "color e-ink" substitutes that I've seen consume power in standby (and I keep checking from time to time with fingers crossed). I remember hearing stories about how much trouble they had getting from prototype (circa 1996) which I saw in lab to a model ready for production in 2007. 10+ years of process development to get to where it was in the first kindle. And to be honest I'm not sure another company could just pick up the technology and start producing them in bigger quantities, these things are barely related to other displays at all and I imagine the production lines are super different. Plus patents from 1997 are expired now anyway, so if someone else could do it they are allowed to. Knowing a fair bit about how their displays work, it's one of the few cases in electronic hardware I can think of that really seems to deserve a patent given how much creativity and time it took to start manufacturing, and how much money they had to spend to get it to the stage where it worked reliably at all. We could very easily be in a world where these displays didn't exist at all, plus or minus a few people making different choices about how to spend their money and time.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Haven't they been on sale in Asia for a few years now as billboards ? While LCDs still consume power just to display a picture, it can go very low : see how watches can run for a decade on a single tiny battery ! (I'm not even sure that e-ink would necessarily be an improvement there, considering that you'll want a watch to refresh a part of the screen at least once a minute...)
  - 2rsf 7y ago
    The backlight is what probably consumes most of the power, AFAIK color displays wouldn't properly work otherwise

ethbro 7y ago

How many of those have you seen in the real world? Maybe they're more popular elsewhere, but outside of warehouse store price labels I haven't seen the technology. Certainly not in large format.

jfim 7y ago
A ton? Carrefour (I believe they're the second largest retailer, after Walmart) has had electronic shelf labels for well over a decade. I haven't seen them in the US, but they're not exactly uncommon in Europe and Asia.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Here in the US, Kohl's (https://www.kohls.com/ https://www.kohls.com/) uses the e-ink price tags in their retail stores. They are a terrible application of the technology. They're not bright enough to be legible from a distance, and even up-close their legibility is not great. They just look washed-out and dingy. One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably.
  - avianlyric 7y ago
    > One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably. There I was thinking the main purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. Product packaging is meant to grab your eye. Price tags are mostly functional (although some shops also use them to advertise offers).
    - nostrademons 7y ago
      The buyer for price labels is the retailer. The retailer's purpose for a price tag is to grab your eye and get you to buy more. If the price tag dissuades you from buying the product, that is a net negative from the retailer's perspective, and they are the ones that make the purchasing decisions on price tags. Don't assume alignment of incentives. From the customer's perspective, the purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. The customer isn't making the purchasing decisions for the price tags.

robbyking 7y ago

The price tags would be neat if they allowed you to swipe for additional information.

ksec 7y ago
I was hoping Beacon to do that, but instead in China they now uses QR Code For it. Which is slightly worst in UX but I guess is much more cost effective.