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E Ink Gallery 3
- ortusdux 4y agoApparently I should have included "(Rollable)" in the title! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167290
- solarkraft 4y agoCool, but it doesn't matter yet. A lot of E-Ink announcements don't translate into unable consumer devices for years.
- fortran77 4y agoThe black-white e-readers are doing a great job at a great price point. Color would have to have a similar battery life, resolution, and only an incremental price-increase to be appealing.
- ciupicri 4y agoAre talkinkg about the tiny e-readers locked into Amazon's ecosystem?
- innocenat 4y agoThere are tons of e-reader out there, but if you aren't searching it's likely you will only know Kindle. Kobo is also very popular, but there're also PocketBook, Nook, Likebook, Onyx Boox, Bigme, etc.
- ta988 4y agoThere are many others. Kobo for example doesn't lock you to anything and you can pretty much do whatever you want with the Linux on them.
- ciupicri 4y agoKobo is 10" max which is too little for me.
- russh 4y agoLocked? Hardly. Connect the reader using a usb cable to a computer and it shows up as a drive you can drag file files on to.
- mateo1 4y agoThey're not doing that great. A4 (or letter) sized ereaders right now cost $800+, have a resolution of about 200dpi and only a few shades of gray, so they're practically monochrome. For that amount I can print thousands upon thousands of pages at 1200+ dpi on real paper which I prefer. I thought about it and bought a laser printer. When the technology matures a bit more, I'll be waiting. Less eagerly every year though, as I've been waiting for affordable large ereaders for 10+ years now. And I'm seeing a shift to tablet-like device features which I'm not fond of.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chokma 4y agoThat sounds like an interesting idea - now I want to print ebooks in my favorite font size... but that feature is locked behind DRM. Still, for webnovels it may be viable.
- IshKebab 4y agoIt matters because it means the technology exists and is therefore much more likely to come to a product at some point.
- TheRealNGenius 4y ago*usable
- retSava 4y agoSlightly edited title to emphasize that this epaper is rollable. Videos on that link.
- keikobadthebad 4y agoThe color updates are about 10x faster, and there's a 300ms black / white update mode too.
- nicoburns 4y agoIs 300ms fast? I thought Remarkable and similar products had it down to 40ms.
- keikobadthebad 4y agoYes simpler panels have even faster BW update. But the old 7-colour panels took 15s to do anything... so being able to do partial updates in a region at 300ms is a huge upgrade for them.
- dTal 4y agoThat's not true. Here's a video of a Kindle Touch from 2012 playing a movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr52ZWEZH4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr52ZWEZH4Q
- keikobadthebad 4y agoIt looks like you missed the "old 7 colour panels" part. Like this (quoting <35s update across temperature) https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-Paper-Module-F.htm https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-Paper-Module-F.htm
- dTal 4y agoYes, I did - I read 7 colors as 7 level grayscale. My apologies.
- micromacrofoot 4y agothat refresh shimmer is brutally bad, is smooth refresh completely unsolvable for e-ink?
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoI think it is purposeful in order to counteract ghosting. But indeed at the end of the day e-ink is suitable for slow changing content (mainly reading blocks of text).
- rychco 4y agoOddly enough, I kind of enjoy it.
- henriquecm8 4y agoIt's similar to glitching we see in scifi/cyberpunk
- micromacrofoot 4y agooh sure, it's kind of cool if you're only seeing it occasionally... but not something I'd enjoy for anything that updates more often than a powerpoint presentation (which is fine as a known limitation)
- ramses0 4y agoThink of it like a split-flap display. It physically must “rotate” something to the right color. I’m no e-ink expert, but there may always be some level of “shimmer”.
- robinsoh 4y ago> It physically must “rotate” something to the right color. I’m no e-ink expert, but there may always be some level of “shimmer”. You're thinking of gyricon where the balls rotate. That's different. The bulk of the industry now uses electrophoresis which is moving ink particles electrically.
- serenitylater 4y agoThese results have to be sandbagged right? Is there any reason this stuff wasn't rolled out years ago except one company sandbagging technical development so they can sell 2008 technology at 2022 prices?
- my123 4y agoProduction readiness is a very hard thing to do. Not because you can make one unit you can make a bunch of them at acceptable yields.
- chrisgp 4y agoI remember this project from a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726 Very cool idea but the screen used was $2k+, and two years later the price is the same. Seems like we're still a long way off from reasonably priced large e-ink displays -- very curious to see any progress in this space.
- robinsoh 4y ago> Seems like we're still a long way off from reasonably priced large e-ink displays -- very curious to see any progress in this space "reasonably priced"? It will always be more expensive than LCD/OLED because the volumes are completely different, like 1000x different.
- jonplackett 4y agoSurely if it’s much cheaper volumes also go up massively…
- goldcd 4y agoSurely it's both. 1) Product has to exist - and now it does tick 2) Has to be useful tick 3) Has to have possibility of being make cheaper by mass production no idea 4) Has to be put into mass production depends on 3 So we're currently stuck on 3. Not sure there's much demand for a colour e-ink tablet - but maybe could be layered with a transparent OLED. I'd cough up an extra £100 for that. Normal tablet - with reading mode. Spend a while looking at static image, OLED turns off, e-ink layer fires up. Scroll down and the OLED takes over.
- jonplackett 4y agoThat would be pretty cool. Could the e-ink just be set to white while the LCD did it’s thing and the LCD to clear while e-ink does it’s thing?
- robinsoh 4y ago> Surely if it’s much cheaper volumes also go up massively… No, that's not true. If you're making a black and white screen, and you sell it at the same price as a color screen, nobody will buy it. Volumes won't change if your product isn't better than something equivalently priced.
- politelemon 4y agoCan we expect this to show up on ereaders anytime soon?
- dominotw 4y agothere are some ereaders with color already but they are niche because there isn't a huge demand of color.
- cubefox 4y agoI think they are niche because they have a much worse reflectivity (and hence contrast) than usual monochromatic displays. The existing approaches use sub-pixels to create color via additive color mixing. This approach throws away roughly two thirds of the incoming light. E.g. a red pixel consists of red+black+black sub-pixels.
- pangaurdian 4y agoTook about 5 years for Onyx to release a color e-reader. People are buying them. They are kind of niche because the screens are greyer than monochrome screens, and the main use of an e-reader is to read b/w text. But it's first gen tech. As contrast improves, more color e-readers will be sold. Onyx is always the first to push the new tech. Eventually Amazon etc will start releasing them. Give it about 3 years.
- spaniard89277 4y agoSomwhere around 3000 AC I'll get a laptop with color eink :/
- mdp2021 4y agoGet e.g. a SC1452-GHA 7.8'' Kaleido (btw with frontlight and touchscreen) and hook it to a laptop through the development kit, or get a device mounting it and connect to it through VNC or better. Maybe the dev-kit is better than a remote desktop session, maybe not: further info about it would be needed. I have worked on 8'' (not a Kaleido) and it's very doable if you accept the real estate compromise. You can have it already and spend maybe around 200u, plus your time to set it up.
- ushakov 4y agowhat does it cost and do they sell individual pieces?
- solarkraft 4y agoThey sell development kits at https://shopkits.eink.com/ https://shopkits.eink.com/ under a funny condition: > PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED
- mschuster91 4y agoJesus, that pricing. 99$ for a single panel and 350$ for the accompanying driver board which is essentially a small MCU and a couple MOSFETs?
- throw10920 4y agoSounds like a ripe opportunity for developing an open-source driver board!
- Sugimot0 4y agosomeone tag the go to open-source driver board person, and someone else tag the frame.work people so we can slap a display on one of those too. My eyeballs are ripe and ready for this transflective goodness.
- abraxas 4y agoSo we have a 21st century scroll? Another 2 millennia before eInk launches a codex version?
- JKCalhoun 4y agoYeah, I might be stupid, but is there anyone clamoring to fold their displays? Like flexible solar panels, I suspect 1) engineering tradeoffs, 2) shorter longevity (would that just be brevity?).
- xwdv 4y agoI just want to run my vim terminal on an E-Ink screen.
- goldcd 4y agohttps://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-paperlike-253?variant=41301276721336 https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink...
- dotancohen 4y agoOnyx is planning on shipping another 25" monitor next month, that's about 15% cheaper: https://onyxboox.com/boox_mirapro https://onyxboox.com/boox_mirapro The problem is that it states "Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS operating systems" are supported. The Dasung specifically states that they support Linux, so that's probably the one that I'll order anyway despite the price.
- adisbladis 4y agohttps://github.com/leoluk/paperlike-go/ https://github.com/leoluk/paperlike-go/ also exists for the Dasung and is FOSS.
- solarkraft 4y agoThere are many ways to do this, either fiddly or a little expensive. You can - use a Dasung screen or Boox Max with your desktop (expensive, plug and play) - use a hacked-up Linux e-reader (super cheap, fiddly) - build something with WaveShare kits and an Arduino/Raspberry Pi (moderately expensive and fiddly, but allows for interesting creations) - use some app (Termux) on an Android E-Reader (Boox, moderately expensive, quite versatile). The tech is a bit inaccessible, but not as much as it may seem. Just check out: https://hackaday.com/tag/e-ink/ https://hackaday.com/tag/e-ink/
- throw10920 4y agoHere's someone doing Emacs on a ReMarkable 2 through SSH: https://twitter.com/ianthehenry/status/1481376985129500679 https://twitter.com/ianthehenry/status/1481376985129500679
- srinathkrishna 4y agoI have been very stoked with color epaper since the mirasol days and alas nothing has materialized yet out to the mainstream. Looking forward to see how this pans out.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mas-ev 4y agoI was in the same position but ended up buying the Onyx Boox Nova 3 color. They recently released the Nova Air color which has a better body and warm light functional (wish I had that on mine for night time reading.) I love it for reading technical blogs, code, tech books. I wanted an ereader I could install android apps on and preserve color syntax highlighting. Disclaimer, these devices phone home to China so most people install apps like NetGuard to curate an Allowlist of apps that can access the internet. Some people push this stuff to the extreme and code on them. I would not enjoy that and do not recommend it but it is possible.
- cubefox 4y agoE Ink (the company) keeps improving their electrophoresis display technology. Unfortunately the technology necessarily has very low refresh rates since it it is based on moving around solid particles submerged in a liquid. There were other passive e-paper display technologies like the one by Liquavista (based on moving colored oil droplets) or Mirasol by Qualcomm (mechanical micro-shutters create colored light via interference). These were capable of achieving high refresh rates, but unfortunately they have long been abandoned. I believe the monochromatic electrophoresis displays by E Ink had higher reflectivity and lower price, which is what mattered for e-readers, so all the others went out of business.
- webmobdev 4y agoI wish Qualcomm's Mirasol display had seen light - you could even watch videos on them comfortably (as per the demo). They were building a huge plant to manufacture those displays commercially and suddenly the whole thing tanked. I think Apple bought parts of it.
- cubefox 4y agoTheir last innovation was called Mirasol SMI, which let them change color within one MEMS block (instead of just switching it between color/black), so that they wouldn't need subpixels to create color. They were way ahead of E Ink in these respects. Unfortunately Qualcomm pulled the plug shortly after the SMI announcement. I'm not sure which part Apple actually bought, whether it was just labs or actual IP as well.
- orril 4y agoapple device with back light toggle would be fantastic. the pulse width modulation used on their current screens makes my vision slightly blurry even after only a few minutes of use. i didn't realize there was a chance they might own some passively lit screen technology already. you've gotten my hopes up.
- thrown12 4y agoIf you don't do a full screen refresh you can get 10Hz refresh rates on newer products. The quality is similar to the newspapers of yesteryear.
- boringg 4y agoCan't wait for E Ink to make it to the masses at a reasonable price. I am suspect that it won't get surpassed by its competitors by that it gets there and everyone will have moved on. Would be sad but a high probability outcome.
- xyst 4y agoBesides the ability to “roll” the display Maybe there is a market for novelty or in a construction trade?
- dmix 4y agoOne thing that hasn't changed over the years is E-Ink never hiring a web designer to sell their products.
- egypturnash 4y agoWoo, black and white update time is down to about 3fps now! Three very flickery frames a second. sigh I have been wanting a color e-ink Mac I can work with under direct sunlight for so long now. I will be waiting many years longer.
- daenz 4y agoHonest question, why? Do you sit in direct sunlight often? Are you looking for extreme battery life?
- egypturnash 4y agoI'm a freelance artist. I have a decent studio setup at home but I also really love taking my laptop out to a cafe or a park. When I'm under a tree in the park, there's no power (so yes, battery life helps - it's why I mostly use Mac Airs), and my screen has to fight the sunshine. Which makes battery life even worse because I've gotta run the backlight at full power. Sitting under a tree with a sunscreen attached to the computer helps some, but I would be delighted if I could sit out under the sun.
- daenz 4y agoPersonally I'm worried about battery damage to my electronic devices when they get direct sunlight. I've had a phone cook its battery in the sun (battery swelled up), and my kindle gets pretty hot as well. Is that something you're worried about?
- egypturnash 4y agoNah, not really. The only heat problems I've ever had are the design flaw with my current 2016 Macbook Pro that makes it heat up its batteries when charging. I'm also probably not gonna sit out in the direct sun for hours on end, I tend to stay in one spot working 2h at the absolute most. Gotta get up and take a break to bike around the city every so often.
- mdp2021 4y ago
- pclmulqdq 4y agoCan E Ink finally launch a product at a reasonable price point? I get that they are trying to mostly be an IP company, but at this point, when everyone is begging for their product, shouldn't they at least consider pivoting? Their competitors in China are starting to have good products now, and I can't wait for E Ink Inc to become irrelevant in the market it created.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoThere isn't a use case that I personally want, that couldn't be satisfied with transflective LCD instead of e-ink. They are dirt cheap but only a handful of chinese manufacturers are using them. On top of the e-ink IP stronghold, I think there is also a Product manager issue in consumer electronics. Everyone wants to show case Macbook-esque glossy displays whereas a large number of consumers want displays that they can use outdoors and without eye strain. Everybody complements garmins transflective displays but somehow nobody makes the leap of slapping them on phones or laptops.
- Covzire 4y agoKnow of a good 10" or larger e reader that works natively with Kindle store?
- robin_reala 4y agoWhy would you tie yourself to a storefront that flexes non-compliance with standards for commercial gain?
- guyzero 4y agoThis is great less because anyone needs a folding display but because hopefully it won't shatter if you look at it wrong (like all their other displays).
- noasaservice 4y agoThis company has held back e-ink technology via patents. They refuse to talk to small/independent vendors, and try to squash anybody ordering components from abroad. Now, why does that matter? Cause the Chinese had 'full color eink' for years. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002467730675.html?algo_exp_id=290576b7-1a33-4cda-bc7d-cf92821b4f9c-0&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000020760096269%22%7D&pdp_npi=1%40dis%7CUSD%7C%7C272.6%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%40210318d116511573141236842e84bf%7C12000020760096269%7Csea https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002467730675.html?algo_e... And there's eink phones AND tablets both. Reasonably priced. Yet we see none of that kind of innovation here... I guess we might in 5-7 years. If it's profitable.
- throw10920 4y agoGiven their previous track record of rampant IP theft (from EU + Japan in addition to US), it's rather likely that these Chinese companies "developed" this technology through IP theft, rather than greenfield development. That's also a contributing factor to their products being affordable - because they don't have any R&D costs to recoup, just those associated with espionage.
- hemreldop 4y ago
- orliesaurus 4y agoIt's wild how in 2022 there's nothing consumers can do to stop this "price gouging" - I guess it's a free market and it's a niche so they have little competition and kinda a monopoly? I don't understand the legal aspect of this stuff, but if the EU bureaucrats were able to impose USB-C standard instead of custom-charging-ports, surely they could do something about this too? Am I totally wrong? Seriously curious.... One more thought: colored rollable e-ink can have so many good uses, from being used in education to cut back on paper-books to displaying advertising and more utilitarian uses in our every-day life. gatekeeping this tech is absurd to me.
- radu_floricica 4y agoWhy do you think this is price gouging and not just expensive to make? Plenty of things cost a heap of money even after years of development - I'm pretty sure you can buy a flying car if you have a billion lying around.
- spiderice 4y ago> cut back on paper-books I read an article posted here on HN about how using an iPad to cut back on paper basically never becomes worth it (from an environmental perspective). If you already have an iPad, sure, use it for not taking and it will be better than using paper. But don't go buy an iPad specifically to save on paper, because that will make the problem worse. I wonder how much of that same principle applies to e-ink displays. They obviously use a lot less power, so maybe it would be worth it. I'm really not sure. edit: did a quick Google search. I believe this was the article: https://slate.com/technology/2011/09/paper-versus-the-ipad-is-taking-notes-on-a-tablet-computer-or-a-notepad-more-environmentally-responsible.html https://slate.com/technology/2011/09/paper-versus-the-ipad-i...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stevehawk 4y agowhat price gouging are we talking about?
- cycomanic 4y agoThere is also the technology used by the reinkstone.com. The big advantage is that they can turn color on and off, without getting the reduced contrast that eink gets. That said they just delayed their delivery to autumn I believe, so likely they have issues with production consistency or so. It's still not comparable to a proper color display, but I wouldnt mind one of these for readi g papers, where I can switch to color for graphs etc. It would also make highlighting etc much nicer.
- Jiro 4y agoI'm still waiting for someone to create a modern equivalent to the Pebble watch with a color e-ink screen that can stay on all the time. I still use my Pebble, but the battery charge only lasts about a day and a half and I'll have to replace it at some point.
- h-w 4y agoGarmin instinct 2 solar has the same black and white screen as the pebble and requires zero charging; battery lasts forever with enough sun.
- Jiro 4y agoMy Pebble is color, not B&W.
- TheRealNGenius 4y agowell, then I'm all outta ideas, you're on your own now
- orril 4y agoThe garmin Phoenix has the same color display as the color pebbles. The instinct however is solar and never needs to be charged, while simultaneously having more features than the pebble. I still wear a pebble 2 daily, but am going to upgrade when price drops on the garmin
- mas-ev 4y agoI'd pay top dollar for a pebble time with smaller bezels and thinner body. Although, the pebble time was super thin compared to today's standards. Are there any truly thin smart watches? The leaks for the new pixel watch kill all hope in my mind that I'll ever get a smart watch again since they are all thick and heavy. Even fit bits are thick compared to the pebble time.
- tornato7 4y agoThe Withings watches are pretty slim
- BbzzbB 4y agoThis is great, and I can't wait for it to commoditized, but I bet I'm way priced out. In general, I find e-ink displays relatively expensive for modestly sized ones (say 6 inch +). What's some of the best deals/value for e-ink displays for some personal projects? Broken e-readers for parts?
- roeles 4y agoKobo readers run Linux. I used kobo mini's as moving map display in my glider. The entire thing cost me about 60 euros from eBay. The root system is even an SD card, so you can just swap cards to restore the stock firmware.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoFor smaller displays than you're looking for (<4 inch), AliExpress has some pretty reasonable prices. Even for color displays. For larger ones, I think the best option is something like a recycled kindle. There was even a post on HN a few months ago from a company selling Kindle displays hooked up to breakout boards (may have even had on-onboard microcontroller, like an ESP-32?)
- Melatonic 4y agoThis would make an amazing tablet specifically for topographic mapping. I would love something that can be used for days or weeks on end without charging and also could do a GPS ping as needed (manually)
- cubefox 4y agoWhat's so innovative about E Ink Gallery is the fact that they apparently mix color similar to printed-on paper. This means they don't have to use additive subpixel color mixing, which darkens the display a lot, and which is the reason why colored e-paper isn't a thing in actual products. The problem was that E Ink Gallery was extremely slow to refresh, but with E Ink Gallery 3, the technology is now "just" slow instead of extremely slow. Though perhaps still a bit too slow to use it in actual e-reader devices.
- mdp2021 4y agoI see TheVerge has an article about it: https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23041407/e-ink-color-gallery-3-announced https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23041407/e-ink-color-gall... ...And now for the rant: the opening: > E Ink has a new version of color electronic paper, and, while it isn’t as pretty as an OLED These people must be those who use EPD at midnight and OLED at noon. (Of course it can be done, it just makes no general sense.)