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Hey folks, I've recently had the idea of building an e-ink laptop from the devices I had at home. I decided to document the process and share each step of the w
by alex-a-soto 6y ago
Hey folks, I've recently had the idea of building an e-ink laptop from the devices I had at home. I decided to document the process and share each step of the way:
Some of the posts planned for the series are: Dasung Paperlike HD-FT teardown, Thinkpad T480 teardown, Creating the prototype, Installing and configuring NixOS, M-x e-ink-laptop-mode
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out.
- webmobdev 6y agoSeems like a very interesting project - please keep us updated!
- torgoguys 6y agoWhat a coincidence! I just (2 days ago) started planning a somewhat similar project. I'm converting a different model thinkpad, adding an e-ink display. I will be watching this project with great interest for tips, inspiration! Thank you for writing it up.
- alex-a-soto 6y agoThank you! And I agree, what a coincidence! What Thinkpad and panel are you thinking of using? I look forward to your project as well. Best of luck!
- smusamashah 6y agoCan you have RSS on your blog to follow the next posts?
- alex-a-soto 6y agohttps://politepol.com/fd/YzxwhAIhCZer https://politepol.com/fd/YzxwhAIhCZer
- twiclo 6y agoI would also appreciate an RSS feed
- alex-a-soto 6y agohttps://politepol.com/fd/YzxwhAIhCZer https://politepol.com/fd/YzxwhAIhCZer
- torgoguys 6y agoI just replied in a Twitter DM with the details. (A DM instead of here for reasons explained in the DM, but basically if it was a week later in time I could post about it here).
- jakecopp 6y agoI've been thinking about such a project for a long time (maybe incorporating a raspi & Dactyl mechanical keyboard instead) but never got around to building something (bought an M1 instead haha). Congrats on the build and write up, it looks awesome and I'll be following your posts!
- alex-a-soto 6y agoThank you! The Raspberry Pi and a Dactyl mechanical keyboard sound like a lovely combination. If you ever decide to go ahead and build it, let me know!
- zepto 6y agoGreat project - I’ve also thought about this kind of thing. Have you experimented with the Dasung Display much? I tried one and found it too noisy at displaying text. Admittedly it was just connected to a Mac, but it deterred me from keeping hold of it. Also - does ‘M-x e-ink-laptop-mode’ refer to a real thing, or is that a placeholder for something you are going to write?
- alex-a-soto 6y agoThank you! Yes! I own a Dasung Paperlike Pro and Dasung Paperlike HD-FT. The Paperlike Pro required a driver to change modes/make adjustments. The Dasung Paperlike HD-FT is excellent; you don't have to install any drivers. I've used the monitors for a few years now, and some adjustments need to be made and vary on the operating system used, the fonts/text being one of the settings to change. The M-x e-ink-laptop-mode, was about emacs. I spend most of my time in emacs, and I intend to write an "eink-laptop-mode" that adjusts color, text, makes it more suitable for writing, etc.
- zepto 6y ago> I've used the monitors for a few years now, and some adjustments need to be made and vary on the operating system used, the fonts/text being one of the settings to change. I found the Mac desktop didn’t work particularly well. I was considering trying a text only setup - e.g. Linux with i3, but never got around to it. > The M-x e-ink-laptop-mode, was about emacs. I spend most of my time in emacs, and I intend to write an "eink-laptop-mode" that adjusts color, text, makes it more suitable for writing, etc. That’s what I guessed. I agree e-ink needs software adaptation to get the best out of it.
- alex-a-soto 6y agoI've used the monitors with Manjaro, NixOS, primarily using i3wm, and it has worked well for me. I agree; part of the software problem is the high price tag on the hardware creating a smaller community as a result.
- iamcreasy 6y agoCool project. What's the refresh rate of the screen? Can you scroll down a webpage without a lot of latency?
- TylerE 6y agoIt's going to be bad. Like 500ms probably. Scrolling is pretty much worse case. The more of the display you repaint the longer it's going to take. There's also a trade off...getting faster refresh means worse resolution and contrast.
- hutzlibu 6y agoSo for lots of UI interactivity like scrolling etc. it might make sense to automatically adjust the resolution and contrast to optimize for speed (so you know roughly where you scrolled at) and then do a proper refresh once it is idle again. But I suppose this is out of the current scope of the project ...
- alex-a-soto 6y agoThanks, according to arandr, the screen refresh rate is 75hz; when adjusting the modes(M1, M2, M3 etc) it's entirely usable. I've used it for watching videos, meetings and doing my day-to-day activities with it.
- miles 6y agoCan you please add an RSS feed for your blog? Would like to subscribe for updates.
- dbtc 6y agoWhat program do you use for rss subscriptions?
- miles 6y agoNewsBlur[1] for syncing, Reeder[2] for reading and backing up to local OPML file (can also be done via NewsBlur's web app: Preferences > General > "Backup your sites" > "Download OPML"). [1] https://newsblur.com/ https://newsblur.com/ [2] https://reederapp.com/ https://reederapp.com/
- pbronez 6y agoI use Feedbin, which can’t find an RSS on https://alexsoto.dev/index.html https://alexsoto.dev/index.html either
- alex-a-soto 6y agoThank you for the reminder! Will do!
- alex-a-soto 6y agohttps://politepol.com/fd/YzxwhAIhCZer https://politepol.com/fd/YzxwhAIhCZer
- 1MachineElf 6y agoAwesome project. I wonder what custom .nix files would be involved with this setup.
- reasonabl_human 6y agoGood stuff! I did a screen conversion on a thinkpad t430s which I still have (not Eink, just a better LCD). Do you know of any 16:9 eink displays that take eDP as input? Or anything that would fit in a 14” chassis? Just beginning to get into the eink world so some direction would be super helpful. Would definitely be up for swapping one into my thinkpad.
- alex-a-soto 6y agoAwesome! I did something similar with my Thinkpad X230. I don't yet know of any 16:9 eink displays that take eDP as an input. I'll do some digging/research and let you know.
- acd 6y agoNice project! How is the expirance of reading books online on the device? How long does the battery in the T480 last?
- alex-a-soto 6y agoThe reading experience is excellent! It depends a lot on the software that you are using and how it's customized. I mostly use emacs on the day-to-day. Battery life in the range of 10-13 hours, depending on the task.
- mvanbaak 6y agoWhy nixos? Context: https://hands-on.cloud/why-you-should-never-ever-use-nixos/ https://hands-on.cloud/why-you-should-never-ever-use-nixos/
- foolmeonce 6y agoThis is about porting a distribution to hardware. Nixos is really great at bootstrapping/rebuilding a system against your own clone of nixpkgs. The complaints of the article ends with any Linux distribution and docker. I'm not sure which distributions would use docker in their own porting process. Most distributions have a huge distinction between users and maintainers and probably no one who is a target of that article is aware of the pains of maintaining a Linux distribution when they agree traditional distributions are fun.