19 ms·

I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

335 points by greenhathacker 5y ago

appel 5y ago
That was quite a rollercoaster.
unexpected 5y ago
This is anxiety-inducing and a good promo for the pinenote!
- myself248 5y ago
  The Pinenote can't arrive fast enough! I'm sitting on a ReMarkable 2 that I hate because I didn't realize how serious they were about crippling the usefulness of a really beautiful stack of hardware. It's really, Really, REALLY dead-set against letting you do anything useful like use wikipedia or stackoverflow on your ultra-long-battery-life beautiful-display device that you might, I dunno, want to use to look at reference material. Also Bluetooth is hardware-disabled, so no keyboard. What the hell, people. After seeing all the hacks and stuff I figured that might be possible, didn't learn otherwise until after placing the order. Whoops.
  - Eeems 5y ago
    Wikipedia is kind of solved[0]. As for stackoverflow, you might be able to use netsurf[1] already, I'm not sure how JS dependent it is. 0. https://github.com/dps/remarkable-wikipedia https://github.com/dps/remarkable-wikipedia 1. https://github.com/alex0809/netsurf-reMarkable https://github.com/alex0809/netsurf-reMarkable
    - myself248 5y ago
      Whoah, thank you! I had not run across netsurf in all my looking.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bradwood 5y ago
    Nice -- shill us the Pinenote then! I'm in the market for an e-ink reader and have been considering the RM2, but the Pinenote looks pretty tasty too..
Andrex 5y ago
Not trying to shill too hard, but it's rare I fall in love with a device the way I've fallen in love with my Remarkable 2. I can't say it was 100% worth the price (half was paid as a gift), but everything about it is refreshingly elegant and simple. Great to know recovering from a brick is possible too.
- CPLX 5y ago
  I got one as well, almost mad at myself when I did because I was 90% sure I would use it for a week and then never again. But I said what the hell. And I'm so glad I did, it's a great device that definitely fills a niche in my workflow. I mostly use it for brainstorming sessions. I like it a lot. I wish it synced more seamlessly but perhaps that'll happen at some point.
  - davidandgoliath 5y ago
    Me too! I thought it'd be a paperweight, but I immensely enjoy it. It's esp. nice if you throw a custom calendar on it (via reCalendar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be)
    - ryanianian 5y ago
      Killer app that I didn't know I needed: its built-in screen-share feature lets you easily and reliably share the tablet's screen with a desktop app over wifi. This has been super useful for whiteboarding/diagramming over Zoom. (Older versions of the software had a very buggy implementation that has since been fixed.)
      - fouc 5y ago
        You can screenshare the rm2's screen while diagramming on it? Interesting! Any useful links for that?
  - bradstewart 5y ago
    I used to have nothing but trouble with the syncing features. But it all seems fixed as of the last update--both in terms of notebook/PDF syncing and the new ScreenShare, which replaced the incredibly buggy previous incarnation of live sharing.
deepdmistry 5y ago
I am open mouthed
cortesoft 5y ago
Isn't `bricked then recovered` a contradiction in terms?
- aidenn0 5y ago
  given that the term "unbricking" exists, I would say no?
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    If you can fix it, it wasn't bricked it was just not working.
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      If you have to de-solder the flash, reprogram the flash and re-solder it back in, is that bricked? If yes to above, then what about using an in-circuit programmer? If yes to above then what about having to move a jumper to get a ROM monitor? If yes to above then what about having to enter some magic button combination at boot? The line is fuzzy, no?
      - cortesoft 5y ago
        Yeah, I think you are right. I am convinced. I would probably draw the line at physical work, meaning if it requires physically opening the device and changing/fixing/bypassing wiring it can count as bricked.
        jiveturkey 5y ago
        Well, I mean, that is a reasonable line. But it's still moving the goalposts. I'll stick with bricked meaning bricked. I lost that personal battle for 'hacker' and 'begs the question' but dammit I am sticking to it for 'brick'!!
        cortesoft 5y ago
chews 5y ago
now now, it's a kinda obvious screwup, but with big footguns like this there should be an easier way to re-flash the thing though... it really should have a shadow-copy of a partition that can restore it to factory. It wouldn't be to hard to implement. it's just lovely to seen an open device... this made me want to buy one.
morpheuskafka 5y ago
I work part-time for my university's help desk and I was both impressed and disappointed the first time I came across one of these--one the one hand, its highly customizable and supports SSH access. On the other hand, there is shockingly no way to get the MAC address without connecting via SSH, even though this is popular among academics who often need to get onto MAC filtered networks. In hindsight, we probably could have connected it to the guest network, gotten its IP and then had the networking group look up its MAC on their logs. What we wound up doing is telling the user to go home and check their own router for the MAC, which is obviously less than ideal service.
- jackson1442 5y ago
  You can connect it via USB and ssh locally. Obviously showing it in the interface would be better but that would work. It also fully supports 802.1X, which surprised me.
  - tadbit 5y ago
    Yeah... screw that. reMarkable's crappy UI shouldn't necessitate a bunch of extra work on the grandparent's part. They're completely justified in telling end users to go home to get the MAC.
- chefandy 5y ago
  Yeah, that's bananas. Even the cheapest of cheap IOT devices expose that, even if it's just on a sticker.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  I was under the impression that having the MAC address on the device's label was some kind of regulatory requirement for Wifi - I have never seen a wireless device without it.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I think that's for APs, given pretty much no smartphone has its MAC printed on it.
idorosen 5y ago
My only regret about this device is that it seems to lack full disk encryption on the device or any meaningful privacy (encryption) for documents stored in reMarkable Cloud...which is all of them if you want to use features like Screen Share (f.k.a. LiveView). ReMarkable should not be able to access contents of docs backed up from my device without my password or recovery key, but AFAICT, there is no such protection whatsoever against internal threats. Other than that, I love my RM2, just can’t use it for as much as I’d like because of the above.
- hvocode 5y ago
  I’m in the same boat. Due to security restrictions of my employer I can’t use cloud services to store work related stuff. I was really bummed when I discovered that a lot of the interesting features of my RM2 require their cloud service. I’ve dug through the GitHub repos of RM2 hacks and open source tools that are available, but it still feels like I’m missing out.
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    Can you not just use it as is? I have not connected to a WiFi yet and you can sync to your own cloud. I guess you do need a way to get the docs on the device. Their sync process is weird.
    - greenhathacker 5y ago
      I've never connected mine to WiFi, but that's because it does all I need through ssh.
      - jcun4128 5y ago
        Are you able to ssh and move files by something like sftp or no? ssh by wire? Was curious what the file format is of each note.
        greenhathacker 5y ago
throwaway_22wq 5y ago
I bricked the reMarkable 2 within a day or two of receiving the device. And since then it's been laying in the cupboard. I'm grateful for the recovery write up by ddvk, but I'd really wish Remarkable would make it a bit easier. I understand it's not their problem, but looking through the physical recovery flow is sadly utterly confusing if one isn't already a seasoned geek. They really should provide the SSH password printed and an easier way to reset the device. I'd love to give it a try soon. Unfortunately couldn't source the required parts from any European online shop. Can anyone help here or is AliExpress the only viable option?
- greenhathacker 5y ago
  I used Adafruit for the USB micro breakout, and also a USB-C breakout. Their USB-C breakout had SBU-2 but I couldn't get it working (this was before I thought to flip the cable!). I bought the larger breakout seen in that post from Amazon[1]. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W3DYKX7 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W3DYKX7
ChuckMcM 5y ago
This just points out one of the more amazing things about the reMarkable 2 is just how hackable it is. I have never had to do this level of surgery on mine but I do enjoy the community support for interesting scripts and such.
selykg 5y ago
So, I guess I'll give my (sadly) negative experience with these things. First, I sort of ordered it on a whim. I liked the idea and thought it'd be cool to use for work while not having to use my personal iPad even more. This is their decision, but they ship with DHL, which is absolutely godawful in literally every experience I've had with them. I learned after ordering that the device doesn't allow searching within your handwritten notes, a feature I use regularly in GoodNotes on my iPad. So, I looked at how to return the device before I even got it. Their support said to just tell DHL to return to shipper. I called DHL they said "sure, we'll do that" for the next two days I kept getting text messages from DHL saying they hadn't managed to ship it back yet, they'd update me the next day. Then the device shows up at my doorstep and DHL skipped requiring a signature and just dropped it on the porch. Great. So I email support back and get the process to fully return from them started. They send me to a "returns" website that doesn't see my order. Great. Email them back and ask for how to workaround this. The next email they send me a second returns site.. they have two apparently. Then this time their instructions are about returning for a replacement device. Email back after that and clarify, I am not returning for another device, I am returning and getting a refund. They said oh sure, our mistake. Their returns site (2nd site) was about as unclear as can be. In fact their instructions in their email were, yet again, for returning for a replacement device, the site said to print 3 copies of one sheet, another one copy of the label to attach to the box. I did so, finally got DHL scheduled to pick it up. DHL says "nope, we need a different sheet of paper" which was not provided to me until I went searching for it in the returns site. At this point DHL is gone with the box. I write some feedback to Remarkable about their incredibly terrible instructions and they just keep apologizing but referencing my replacement device despite repeating 5 times at this point that I'm returning for a refund. DHL has had the package for over 10 days now and it's not moving. My luck, Remarkable is going to get the stupid thing at some point and then ship me a replacement device instead of refunding me and I'll have to do this stupid insanity all over again. The device itself seems fine, I opened and used it while I was waiting for Remarkable to figure their shit out on my return as each email takes over a day to receive a response. So I have about a week of waiting to return this thing just in waiting for them to send me appropriate return instructions. Another 10 days of screwing around with DHL and no movement of the product. I would really recommend NOT getting one of these devices unless you are 100% sure you're going to keep it. If you have any inkling of an idea that you may utilize the return process, just don't, it's not worth it. This has been the single WORST customer support experience I've ever had at this point. Their support people simply regurgitate snippets, and sadly they can't even use the correct snippets, and for that they take over 24 hours to get back to you with those incorrect instructions. Run, just run away.
jcun4128 5y ago
I got one for drawing sketches/designing stuff, I love the drawing feel on it due to the textured surface. Light and lasts a long time, I have a Surface Go 2 as well. R2 with eraser pen and folio was not cheap though.
0xakhil 5y ago
Can I use this as an ssh terminal to login to my development machine? I wonder if the display latency would make it non-starter for this usecase.
- benjiweber 5y ago
  Kobos make good eink tablets for hacking. Run an easily editable linux. e.g. https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-ssh.html https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-ssh.html
nahtnam 5y ago
Is this really worth $400 + $50-$100 for a pen? Why not just get an iPad instead?
- judge2020 5y ago
  The sentiment seems to be that it's pretty bad value but many like how hackable it is, with scripts and SSH access and such.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure the iPad does not have an eInk screen?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- stonogo 5y ago
  Because I don't want one? This device does what I want. The iPad doesn't. It's pretty straightforward.
- codezero 5y ago
  Many people would be fine with that solution, it's definitely more robust in a lot of ways. A few reasons I like my remarkable (I have an original and a 2, and got my wife one): 1. forced isolation - no notifications come into this device when I'm using it out of the box. It's a nice intentionally crippled feature for focus. 2. The feel. It's like writing on paper, or very near to it. The texture of the tablet and the pencil together is really ... remarkable. It's not at all the same as writing on an iPad or iPad Pro. 3. I doubt in a quantitative comparison the remarkable would beat the iPad in latency, but it still feels damn good. Surprisingly good compared to other touch screen/pencil tablets. Gripes: - some edge effects when writing, loses some precision - the touch buttons on the original were more ergonomic for navigation, the swipe gestures in the 2 seem to work 50-60% on the first try. - replacing the nubs on the pencil is annoying, but I barely made it through my first included package with the remarkable 1, so not a real problem. - software is rudimentary. A lot of quality of life features do not exist and maybe should. The writing app, which should kind of be the only thing given attention is pretty far behind, and has only made small improvements (at least visibly to me, this is not to diminish what I am sure is a lot of behind the scenes work to make everything fast). I probably wouldn't jump to buy a third one, unless it had physical navigation buttons, but the progression from 1 to 2 was pretty amazing. The thing was already thin, but the 2 is so thin I'm amazed it can house a USB-C port.
ericcholis 5y ago
I had a very similar problem, although the root cause was a drained battery. After finally charging it, the device was stuck in a boot loop. I wasn't able to create a proper connection via the pogo; but the community was amazingly helpful (and appropriately critical of my poor soldering skills). Since the device hadn't synchronized to the cloud in some time, I had to send it out for data recovery. The cost was worth it for me. Happily, the data was fully recoverable and I was able to simply get a drive image and work with it locally using a mix of traditional OS tools as well as tools provided by the Remarkable community.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
Oh boy do I have opinions with this one. This seems like a lot of work to avoid using a perfectly good package manager on the device. They could have used rsync without installing rsync on the device. The target device doesn't need to have rsync for rsync to be used. They could have installed the package manager and left it. It doesn't run anything in the background on my device. It's easy enough to verify you don't have a systemd service or timer running it. (cron isn't installed, iirc) They could have compiled rsync with all of the libraries bundled with it. (Maybe this is beyond their expertise?) Their solution is using Docker to use the package manager and then overwriting system files on the device in the worse possible way, without understanding what they are doing. At that point, they verified in Docker. Should be safe to run it on the tablet then, yes? What attack vector are they worried about? :/ Toltec is actively worked on, odds are someone would notice someone else fucking with repository. The cherry on top was completely not understanding how the remarkable works. There are two partitions for a reason. The inactive one is used for software updates. When the reMarkable downloads an update, it downloads it to the inactive partition. When you "install" the update, it flips which of the two partitions is active. If the update fails to boot, it flips back to the known good state. All they had to do was switch the active partition, the next update would overwrite the broken partition. https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery/issues/6 https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery/issues/6 This looks like a bad case of tunnel vision, combined with a lack of understanding. I'm glad they managed to figure out how to fix it.
- Eeems 5y ago
  I know I reacted hard to this statement: > Going further down the rabbit hole, the toltec GitHub page mentions that it works on top of the Entware distribution, and recommends what is basically “wget | bash”. I’m not a fan of this. Could I install my own rsync? We made sure that the toltec install process includes a hash of the install script to prove that it isn't modified by a man-in-the-middle. Toltec itself requires the use of SSL to connect after the fact, which lowers the risk after it's been installed. We are also exploring the implications of adding package signing[0]. 0. https://github.com/toltec-dev/build/issues/14 https://github.com/toltec-dev/build/issues/14
  - 5y ago
nafizh 5y ago
I love my remarkable 2. The only thing that's missing for me is a backlight, it's unusable in terms of reading and writing if the room is dark. I would instantly upgrade to a RM3 with a backlight.
- bradstewart 5y ago
  I use a good old fashioned clip-on book light with mine. Works great.
loloquwowndueo 5y ago
Back in the day “bricked” meant it was actually and permanently about as useful as a brick - no chance of recovery. These days it just seems to mean “can’t boot and can’t be fixed/reflashed easily”. Having to plug a resistor into the device to put it in any sort of recovery mode does walk a very fine line between “not really bricked” and “dude you squeezed water out of a stone, you are a demigod”.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  One might call it "soft-bricked".
  - ansible 5y ago
    "soft-bricked" is a common term in some of the Android forums I have frequented in the past. The Remarkable 2 is very nice, I would like to try one out, though I don't have any immediate use for something like that, except maybe as an e-reader. I still use paper notebooks, but I rarely need to actually do something with the contents afterwards, other than refer to them occasionally. Maybe if I was more organized...
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  HN has seen many discussions over the proper meaning of bricked. [0][1][2][3] I think it's because it's an ambiguous metaphor. Does it mean currently only as useful to you as a brick, or does it mean as objectively valuable as a brick. Personally I prefer the original stronger definition, where recoverable issues do not count as bricked, but so it goes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379772 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381892 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731376 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845778
guenthert 5y ago
"The USB-C breakout board with the pull down resistor connected on the bread board" Actually, it isn't. The resistor is in row 16 of the bread board, the cable to the connector is in row 15. I'm sure, you just wanted to test whether we're paying attention.
- greenhathacker 5y ago
  Nice catch :) pushed an update.
  - bonniejawker 5y ago
    Your blog has a fantastic design btw. The world could use more designs like it. What theme did you use?
sabidib 5y ago
I ran into a similar problem as the author: trying to easily extract highlights without having to go through ssh. I ended up building a cmdline tool to solve the problem and have been using it for a while: https://github.com/sabidib/remarking https://github.com/sabidib/remarking
naikrovek 5y ago
is it bricked if it can be recovered? bricking, the way I learned the term, means unrecoverable via any software means and almost any (or actually any) hardware means.
- comeonseriously 5y ago
  Right. Same here. But, like waterproof vs water resistant, people don't seem to use the term correctly anymore.
anthk 5y ago
That's easy comparing to reflash a pocketchip and setting up a pinning kernel because if you upgrade the NAND will bork out as MLC+ubifs it's a recipe for a disaster. On similar ARM devices, I own a wm8850 netbook (armv7l) and I coudn't reflash it with a custom Uberoid "ROM" but oddly enough I could boot a custom kernel and config with a Slackware 14 rootfs. Some port from PostmarketOS exists (Tokio techbook), albeit is not for the same model, but setting up a similar u-boot woudln't be too difficult. My major issue is that that device is now semi-bricked and I think I could restore it with PXE, as it doesn't show anything on any reflashing trial.
vvladymyrov 5y ago
BTW There are rumors about reMarkable requiring paid subscription for some features available for free now. https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/remarkable-is-working-on-a-paid-subscription-system https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/remarkable-i... I love my rM2, but there are decent alternative eink note taking devices on a market nowadays. Maybe I’d buy subsidized rM3 for $200 with backlight, and also nice for it to be waterproof with subscription, but keep asking money from existing owners of rM2 who paid hefty price of $500-600 for device is too much.
NotChina 5y ago
Passing a phone can be painful.
NotChina 5y ago
Passing a phone can be quite painful!
georgewsinger 5y ago
Can the reMarkable 2 be used as an extra display for a Linux Desktop machine?

appel 5y ago

That was quite a rollercoaster.

unexpected 5y ago

This is anxiety-inducing and a good promo for the pinenote!

myself248 5y ago
The Pinenote can't arrive fast enough! I'm sitting on a ReMarkable 2 that I hate because I didn't realize how serious they were about crippling the usefulness of a really beautiful stack of hardware. It's really, Really, REALLY dead-set against letting you do anything useful like use wikipedia or stackoverflow on your ultra-long-battery-life beautiful-display device that you might, I dunno, want to use to look at reference material. Also Bluetooth is hardware-disabled, so no keyboard. What the hell, people. After seeing all the hacks and stuff I figured that might be possible, didn't learn otherwise until after placing the order. Whoops.
- Eeems 5y ago
  Wikipedia is kind of solved[0]. As for stackoverflow, you might be able to use netsurf[1] already, I'm not sure how JS dependent it is. 0. https://github.com/dps/remarkable-wikipedia https://github.com/dps/remarkable-wikipedia 1. https://github.com/alex0809/netsurf-reMarkable https://github.com/alex0809/netsurf-reMarkable
  - myself248 5y ago
    Whoah, thank you! I had not run across netsurf in all my looking.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bradwood 5y ago
  Nice -- shill us the Pinenote then! I'm in the market for an e-ink reader and have been considering the RM2, but the Pinenote looks pretty tasty too..

Andrex 5y ago

Not trying to shill too hard, but it's rare I fall in love with a device the way I've fallen in love with my Remarkable 2. I can't say it was 100% worth the price (half was paid as a gift), but everything about it is refreshingly elegant and simple. Great to know recovering from a brick is possible too.

CPLX 5y ago
I got one as well, almost mad at myself when I did because I was 90% sure I would use it for a week and then never again. But I said what the hell. And I'm so glad I did, it's a great device that definitely fills a niche in my workflow. I mostly use it for brainstorming sessions. I like it a lot. I wish it synced more seamlessly but perhaps that'll happen at some point.
- davidandgoliath 5y ago
  Me too! I thought it'd be a paperweight, but I immensely enjoy it. It's esp. nice if you throw a custom calendar on it (via reCalendar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be)
  - ryanianian 5y ago
    Killer app that I didn't know I needed: its built-in screen-share feature lets you easily and reliably share the tablet's screen with a desktop app over wifi. This has been super useful for whiteboarding/diagramming over Zoom. (Older versions of the software had a very buggy implementation that has since been fixed.)
    - fouc 5y ago
      You can screenshare the rm2's screen while diagramming on it? Interesting! Any useful links for that?
- bradstewart 5y ago
  I used to have nothing but trouble with the syncing features. But it all seems fixed as of the last update--both in terms of notebook/PDF syncing and the new ScreenShare, which replaced the incredibly buggy previous incarnation of live sharing.

deepdmistry 5y ago

I am open mouthed

cortesoft 5y ago

Isn't `bricked then recovered` a contradiction in terms?

aidenn0 5y ago
given that the term "unbricking" exists, I would say no?
- cortesoft 5y ago
  If you can fix it, it wasn't bricked it was just not working.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    If you have to de-solder the flash, reprogram the flash and re-solder it back in, is that bricked? If yes to above, then what about using an in-circuit programmer? If yes to above then what about having to move a jumper to get a ROM monitor? If yes to above then what about having to enter some magic button combination at boot? The line is fuzzy, no?
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      Yeah, I think you are right. I am convinced. I would probably draw the line at physical work, meaning if it requires physically opening the device and changing/fixing/bypassing wiring it can count as bricked.
      - jiveturkey 5y ago
        Well, I mean, that is a reasonable line. But it's still moving the goalposts. I'll stick with bricked meaning bricked. I lost that personal battle for 'hacker' and 'begs the question' but dammit I am sticking to it for 'brick'!!
        cortesoft 5y ago

chews 5y ago

now now, it's a kinda obvious screwup, but with big footguns like this there should be an easier way to re-flash the thing though... it really should have a shadow-copy of a partition that can restore it to factory. It wouldn't be to hard to implement. it's just lovely to seen an open device... this made me want to buy one.

morpheuskafka 5y ago

I work part-time for my university's help desk and I was both impressed and disappointed the first time I came across one of these--one the one hand, its highly customizable and supports SSH access. On the other hand, there is shockingly no way to get the MAC address without connecting via SSH, even though this is popular among academics who often need to get onto MAC filtered networks. In hindsight, we probably could have connected it to the guest network, gotten its IP and then had the networking group look up its MAC on their logs. What we wound up doing is telling the user to go home and check their own router for the MAC, which is obviously less than ideal service.

jackson1442 5y ago
You can connect it via USB and ssh locally. Obviously showing it in the interface would be better but that would work. It also fully supports 802.1X, which surprised me.
- tadbit 5y ago
  Yeah... screw that. reMarkable's crappy UI shouldn't necessitate a bunch of extra work on the grandparent's part. They're completely justified in telling end users to go home to get the MAC.
chefandy 5y ago
Yeah, that's bananas. Even the cheapest of cheap IOT devices expose that, even if it's just on a sticker.
formerly_proven 5y ago
I was under the impression that having the MAC address on the device's label was some kind of regulatory requirement for Wifi - I have never seen a wireless device without it.
- judge2020 5y ago
  I think that's for APs, given pretty much no smartphone has its MAC printed on it.

idorosen 5y ago

My only regret about this device is that it seems to lack full disk encryption on the device or any meaningful privacy (encryption) for documents stored in reMarkable Cloud...which is all of them if you want to use features like Screen Share (f.k.a. LiveView). ReMarkable should not be able to access contents of docs backed up from my device without my password or recovery key, but AFAICT, there is no such protection whatsoever against internal threats. Other than that, I love my RM2, just can’t use it for as much as I’d like because of the above.

hvocode 5y ago
I’m in the same boat. Due to security restrictions of my employer I can’t use cloud services to store work related stuff. I was really bummed when I discovered that a lot of the interesting features of my RM2 require their cloud service. I’ve dug through the GitHub repos of RM2 hacks and open source tools that are available, but it still feels like I’m missing out.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  Can you not just use it as is? I have not connected to a WiFi yet and you can sync to your own cloud. I guess you do need a way to get the docs on the device. Their sync process is weird.
  - greenhathacker 5y ago
    I've never connected mine to WiFi, but that's because it does all I need through ssh.
    - jcun4128 5y ago
      Are you able to ssh and move files by something like sftp or no? ssh by wire? Was curious what the file format is of each note.
      - greenhathacker 5y ago

throwaway_22wq 5y ago

I bricked the reMarkable 2 within a day or two of receiving the device. And since then it's been laying in the cupboard. I'm grateful for the recovery write up by ddvk, but I'd really wish Remarkable would make it a bit easier. I understand it's not their problem, but looking through the physical recovery flow is sadly utterly confusing if one isn't already a seasoned geek. They really should provide the SSH password printed and an easier way to reset the device. I'd love to give it a try soon. Unfortunately couldn't source the required parts from any European online shop. Can anyone help here or is AliExpress the only viable option?

greenhathacker 5y ago
I used Adafruit for the USB micro breakout, and also a USB-C breakout. Their USB-C breakout had SBU-2 but I couldn't get it working (this was before I thought to flip the cable!). I bought the larger breakout seen in that post from Amazon[1]. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W3DYKX7 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W3DYKX7

ChuckMcM 5y ago

This just points out one of the more amazing things about the reMarkable 2 is just how hackable it is. I have never had to do this level of surgery on mine but I do enjoy the community support for interesting scripts and such.

selykg 5y ago

So, I guess I'll give my (sadly) negative experience with these things. First, I sort of ordered it on a whim. I liked the idea and thought it'd be cool to use for work while not having to use my personal iPad even more. This is their decision, but they ship with DHL, which is absolutely godawful in literally every experience I've had with them. I learned after ordering that the device doesn't allow searching within your handwritten notes, a feature I use regularly in GoodNotes on my iPad. So, I looked at how to return the device before I even got it. Their support said to just tell DHL to return to shipper. I called DHL they said "sure, we'll do that" for the next two days I kept getting text messages from DHL saying they hadn't managed to ship it back yet, they'd update me the next day. Then the device shows up at my doorstep and DHL skipped requiring a signature and just dropped it on the porch. Great. So I email support back and get the process to fully return from them started. They send me to a "returns" website that doesn't see my order. Great. Email them back and ask for how to workaround this. The next email they send me a second returns site.. they have two apparently. Then this time their instructions are about returning for a replacement device. Email back after that and clarify, I am not returning for another device, I am returning and getting a refund. They said oh sure, our mistake. Their returns site (2nd site) was about as unclear as can be. In fact their instructions in their email were, yet again, for returning for a replacement device, the site said to print 3 copies of one sheet, another one copy of the label to attach to the box. I did so, finally got DHL scheduled to pick it up. DHL says "nope, we need a different sheet of paper" which was not provided to me until I went searching for it in the returns site. At this point DHL is gone with the box. I write some feedback to Remarkable about their incredibly terrible instructions and they just keep apologizing but referencing my replacement device despite repeating 5 times at this point that I'm returning for a refund. DHL has had the package for over 10 days now and it's not moving. My luck, Remarkable is going to get the stupid thing at some point and then ship me a replacement device instead of refunding me and I'll have to do this stupid insanity all over again. The device itself seems fine, I opened and used it while I was waiting for Remarkable to figure their shit out on my return as each email takes over a day to receive a response. So I have about a week of waiting to return this thing just in waiting for them to send me appropriate return instructions. Another 10 days of screwing around with DHL and no movement of the product. I would really recommend NOT getting one of these devices unless you are 100% sure you're going to keep it. If you have any inkling of an idea that you may utilize the return process, just don't, it's not worth it. This has been the single WORST customer support experience I've ever had at this point. Their support people simply regurgitate snippets, and sadly they can't even use the correct snippets, and for that they take over 24 hours to get back to you with those incorrect instructions. Run, just run away.

jcun4128 5y ago

I got one for drawing sketches/designing stuff, I love the drawing feel on it due to the textured surface. Light and lasts a long time, I have a Surface Go 2 as well. R2 with eraser pen and folio was not cheap though.

0xakhil 5y ago

Can I use this as an ssh terminal to login to my development machine? I wonder if the display latency would make it non-starter for this usecase.

benjiweber 5y ago
Kobos make good eink tablets for hacking. Run an easily editable linux. e.g. https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-ssh.html https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-ssh.html

nahtnam 5y ago

Is this really worth $400 + $50-$100 for a pen? Why not just get an iPad instead?

judge2020 5y ago
The sentiment seems to be that it's pretty bad value but many like how hackable it is, with scripts and SSH access and such.
Semaphor 5y ago
I’m pretty sure the iPad does not have an eInk screen?
- deleted 5y ago
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stonogo 5y ago
Because I don't want one? This device does what I want. The iPad doesn't. It's pretty straightforward.
codezero 5y ago
Many people would be fine with that solution, it's definitely more robust in a lot of ways. A few reasons I like my remarkable (I have an original and a 2, and got my wife one): 1. forced isolation - no notifications come into this device when I'm using it out of the box. It's a nice intentionally crippled feature for focus. 2. The feel. It's like writing on paper, or very near to it. The texture of the tablet and the pencil together is really ... remarkable. It's not at all the same as writing on an iPad or iPad Pro. 3. I doubt in a quantitative comparison the remarkable would beat the iPad in latency, but it still feels damn good. Surprisingly good compared to other touch screen/pencil tablets. Gripes: - some edge effects when writing, loses some precision - the touch buttons on the original were more ergonomic for navigation, the swipe gestures in the 2 seem to work 50-60% on the first try. - replacing the nubs on the pencil is annoying, but I barely made it through my first included package with the remarkable 1, so not a real problem. - software is rudimentary. A lot of quality of life features do not exist and maybe should. The writing app, which should kind of be the only thing given attention is pretty far behind, and has only made small improvements (at least visibly to me, this is not to diminish what I am sure is a lot of behind the scenes work to make everything fast). I probably wouldn't jump to buy a third one, unless it had physical navigation buttons, but the progression from 1 to 2 was pretty amazing. The thing was already thin, but the 2 is so thin I'm amazed it can house a USB-C port.

ericcholis 5y ago

I had a very similar problem, although the root cause was a drained battery. After finally charging it, the device was stuck in a boot loop. I wasn't able to create a proper connection via the pogo; but the community was amazingly helpful (and appropriately critical of my poor soldering skills). Since the device hadn't synchronized to the cloud in some time, I had to send it out for data recovery. The cost was worth it for me. Happily, the data was fully recoverable and I was able to simply get a drive image and work with it locally using a mix of traditional OS tools as well as tools provided by the Remarkable community.

kayodelycaon 5y ago

Oh boy do I have opinions with this one. This seems like a lot of work to avoid using a perfectly good package manager on the device. They could have used rsync without installing rsync on the device. The target device doesn't need to have rsync for rsync to be used. They could have installed the package manager and left it. It doesn't run anything in the background on my device. It's easy enough to verify you don't have a systemd service or timer running it. (cron isn't installed, iirc) They could have compiled rsync with all of the libraries bundled with it. (Maybe this is beyond their expertise?) Their solution is using Docker to use the package manager and then overwriting system files on the device in the worse possible way, without understanding what they are doing. At that point, they verified in Docker. Should be safe to run it on the tablet then, yes? What attack vector are they worried about? :/ Toltec is actively worked on, odds are someone would notice someone else fucking with repository. The cherry on top was completely not understanding how the remarkable works. There are two partitions for a reason. The inactive one is used for software updates. When the reMarkable downloads an update, it downloads it to the inactive partition. When you "install" the update, it flips which of the two partitions is active. If the update fails to boot, it flips back to the known good state. All they had to do was switch the active partition, the next update would overwrite the broken partition. https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery/issues/6 https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery/issues/6 This looks like a bad case of tunnel vision, combined with a lack of understanding. I'm glad they managed to figure out how to fix it.

Eeems 5y ago
I know I reacted hard to this statement: > Going further down the rabbit hole, the toltec GitHub page mentions that it works on top of the Entware distribution, and recommends what is basically “wget | bash”. I’m not a fan of this. Could I install my own rsync? We made sure that the toltec install process includes a hash of the install script to prove that it isn't modified by a man-in-the-middle. Toltec itself requires the use of SSL to connect after the fact, which lowers the risk after it's been installed. We are also exploring the implications of adding package signing[0]. 0. https://github.com/toltec-dev/build/issues/14 https://github.com/toltec-dev/build/issues/14
- 5y ago

nafizh 5y ago

I love my remarkable 2. The only thing that's missing for me is a backlight, it's unusable in terms of reading and writing if the room is dark. I would instantly upgrade to a RM3 with a backlight.

bradstewart 5y ago
I use a good old fashioned clip-on book light with mine. Works great.

loloquwowndueo 5y ago

Back in the day “bricked” meant it was actually and permanently about as useful as a brick - no chance of recovery. These days it just seems to mean “can’t boot and can’t be fixed/reflashed easily”. Having to plug a resistor into the device to put it in any sort of recovery mode does walk a very fine line between “not really bricked” and “dude you squeezed water out of a stone, you are a demigod”.

MrGilbert 5y ago
One might call it "soft-bricked".
- ansible 5y ago
  "soft-bricked" is a common term in some of the Android forums I have frequented in the past. The Remarkable 2 is very nice, I would like to try one out, though I don't have any immediate use for something like that, except maybe as an e-reader. I still use paper notebooks, but I rarely need to actually do something with the contents afterwards, other than refer to them occasionally. Maybe if I was more organized...
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
HN has seen many discussions over the proper meaning of bricked. [0][1][2][3] I think it's because it's an ambiguous metaphor. Does it mean currently only as useful to you as a brick, or does it mean as objectively valuable as a brick. Personally I prefer the original stronger definition, where recoverable issues do not count as bricked, but so it goes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379772 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381892 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731376 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845778

guenthert 5y ago

"The USB-C breakout board with the pull down resistor connected on the bread board" Actually, it isn't. The resistor is in row 16 of the bread board, the cable to the connector is in row 15. I'm sure, you just wanted to test whether we're paying attention.

greenhathacker 5y ago
Nice catch :) pushed an update.
- bonniejawker 5y ago
  Your blog has a fantastic design btw. The world could use more designs like it. What theme did you use?

sabidib 5y ago

I ran into a similar problem as the author: trying to easily extract highlights without having to go through ssh. I ended up building a cmdline tool to solve the problem and have been using it for a while: https://github.com/sabidib/remarking https://github.com/sabidib/remarking

naikrovek 5y ago

is it bricked if it can be recovered? bricking, the way I learned the term, means unrecoverable via any software means and almost any (or actually any) hardware means.

comeonseriously 5y ago
Right. Same here. But, like waterproof vs water resistant, people don't seem to use the term correctly anymore.

anthk 5y ago

That's easy comparing to reflash a pocketchip and setting up a pinning kernel because if you upgrade the NAND will bork out as MLC+ubifs it's a recipe for a disaster. On similar ARM devices, I own a wm8850 netbook (armv7l) and I coudn't reflash it with a custom Uberoid "ROM" but oddly enough I could boot a custom kernel and config with a Slackware 14 rootfs. Some port from PostmarketOS exists (Tokio techbook), albeit is not for the same model, but setting up a similar u-boot woudln't be too difficult. My major issue is that that device is now semi-bricked and I think I could restore it with PXE, as it doesn't show anything on any reflashing trial.

vvladymyrov 5y ago

BTW There are rumors about reMarkable requiring paid subscription for some features available for free now. https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/remarkable-is-working-on-a-paid-subscription-system https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/remarkable-i... I love my rM2, but there are decent alternative eink note taking devices on a market nowadays. Maybe I’d buy subsidized rM3 for $200 with backlight, and also nice for it to be waterproof with subscription, but keep asking money from existing owners of rM2 who paid hefty price of $500-600 for device is too much.

NotChina 5y ago

Passing a phone can be painful.

NotChina 5y ago

Passing a phone can be quite painful!

georgewsinger 5y ago

Can the reMarkable 2 be used as an extra display for a Linux Desktop machine?