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Show HN: A VNC viewer for eInk devices capable of 30 FPS when writing text
- ozzydave 4y agoI've been using my Remarkable 2 as a terminal for Vim via SSH. Works a treat - like having a super capable typewriter: https://imgur.com/a/hyLjg14 https://imgur.com/a/hyLjg14
- worldmerge 4y agoHow are you SSHing out on the Remarkable? I would be interested in picking one up for this use case.
- ozzydave 4y agoDo you mean "how am I SSHing to the remarkable"? That's pretty straightforward - follow https://remarkablewiki.com/tech/ssh https://remarkablewiki.com/tech/ssh. I'm just doing it from my laptop. You don't have to SSH though, you can plug a keyboard in as well but that's a little more involved.
- worldmerge 4y agoOh I thought you were SSHing to your laptop / server from the Remarkable.
- ozzydave 4y agoYeah, you could if you plug a keyboard into the remarkable as it’s just running Linux. The plug position is a bit awkward though.
- Sakos 4y agoOne of these days I'm gonna make something this cool I can show HN.
- user3939382 4y agoI'm trying to get xdebug working on AWS ECS... do you think that will qualify?
- keepquestioning 4y agoThis shouldn’t be the goal Try to solve the world climate and energy problems first
- ape4 4y agoShow HN: I solved the world climate and energy problems
- radarsat1 4y agoExactly what I've been wanting to do, use it as a display for emacs with a bluetooth keyboard. Don't mind if it has to pass through my laptop. Does anyone know how to do something similar with the reMarkable 2?
- m4lvin 4y agoI did this once, with a shared terminal via screen or tmux (and thus not VNC). You can install https://github.com/Eeems-Org/oxide https://github.com/Eeems-Org/oxide and a terminal application via the toltec repoitories and then ssh (or mosh) from remarkable to the device that has the keyboard.
- jfim 4y agoThere's https://github.com/matteodelabre/vnsee https://github.com/matteodelabre/vnsee if you want to use VNC as a client on your remarkable. I've used it in the past to run Chromium on a server and display it on the reMarkable: https://photos.app.goo.gl/TnNE1tdzvrwphJ8N6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/TnNE1tdzvrwphJ8N6
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- makobado 4y ago
- otras 4y agoWow, this is great! I've been hoping for eInk with good refresh for years, and seeing it in action in your demo is very cool. > The screen can refresh up to 30 times per second, this will degrade the eInk display rapidly. Do not use with fast changing content like videos. Have you noticed the degraded display in your Kobo? I imagine it's not uniform across all pixels, since editing would mostly be localized to your cursor area (though scrolling and other actions would be wider). I'd also be interested in hearing what the timeline looked like for the quality drop, since it sounds like it's a function of the total number refreshes for each pixel.
- _8rlb 4y agoThank you :) I haven't noticed any degradation, but I put the warning up just in case. There is research suggesting that the ink "drops" stick together or break up after so many refreshes. You can quickly skim this page for more info (the title should be findable on libgen): sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030399217315487
- ernesth 4y agoI thought 11 years ago that e-ink with good refresh was achieved, seeing bookeen's prototype display videos and full screen scrolling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxwceUvxlCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxwceUvxlCo But all e-ink devices I have seen since were slow and would form time to time show remanence.
- cassepipe 4y agoWhat are the current market options for e-ink /displays/devices that you could program on/ that you know of and (don't?) recommend ?
- dmos62 4y agoHere's my notes on the subject: - hisense q5 tablet - hdmi input - https://www.cect-shop.com/en/hisense-q5.html - 400 eur - android as usb display: - https://superdisplay.app/ - waveshare - https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1.htm?___SID=U&dir=desc&mode=list&order=price - pure hdmi, usb powered - 400-600eur - papertty - python library - streams terminal or vnc to raspberry pi connected SPI waveshare monitor
- wanghq 4y agoI got a Boox note air 2. It's an e-ink device/android tablet/e-reader/note-taking. You can install any app on this device. I find it's acceptable to code with web-ides like replit.com. But my main usage is reading and note taking.
- celie56 4y agoI personally use a Remarkable 1 with yaft (1) as a terminal. I connect via ssh to a tmux session for editing and the response is fast enough. 1. https://github.com/timower/rM2-stuff/tree/master/apps/yaft https://github.com/timower/rM2-stuff/tree/master/apps/yaft
- _8rlb 4y agoFor people who cannot visit the website (hug of death), a copy is hosted here: https://github.com/everydayanchovies/eink-vnc https://github.com/everydayanchovies/eink-vnc
- redahahaha 4y ago
- redahahaha 4y ago
- GekkePrutser 4y agoNice. I wish I could put this on my Kindle
- jvik 4y agoWhat is your use case?
- GekkePrutser 4y agoI don't know.. But I have several old kindles laying around :) Would be a nice console or something. In fact I'd love a laptop with eInk which I could use outdoors in the sun.
- pca006132 4y agoImpressive! Just wondering, can this work with ssh? Using VNC for text based application sounds a bit overkill.
- dheera 4y agoI'd love to see someone crack the partial fast update modes of the Boox tablets. They run Android apps, but only the included, closed-source apps like the note-taking app and browser get fast screen updates at high quality. If you try to install a third-party note-taking app the experience is crap.
- TrinaryWorksToo 4y agoCan you not use ADB to download the APK off the app and reverse engineer anything anomalous?
- muhehe 4y agoMaybe the apps are completely normal, but whitelisted somewhere in the system for different behaviour. Like some phone manufacturers cheat at benchmarks...
- dheera 4y agoI don't think that's it. The issue is how to tell the screen to do a fast partial refresh at the expense of not refreshing anything else, which is what you want for handwriting. The app would need a way to tell the system what to partially refresh, i.e. some sort of nonstandard Android API. The Boox tablets are touted for their ability to run third-party Android apps, so I highly doubt they would deliberately cripple them.
- Jolter 4y agoCheck out what Zubersoft has done with their sheet music app, in a special edition for e-ink. https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum/archive/index.php?thread-5285.html https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum/archive/index.php?t... The kicker is this: “- Freeform annotations with the stylus utilize special rendering on Boox devices allowing the drawings to show up in real time. This makes it much easier to write and draw.” I use this app on a Boox Max Lumi and the effect is very pronounced. It really doesn’t have any noticeable delay, just like the “native” Boox apps. So, I think someone did indeed crack the code for fast updating.
- Sparkle-san 4y agoImagine where electronic ink displays could be today if E Ink wasn't such a terrible steward of the initial technology.
- dredmorbius 4y agoI'd say you might get your wish in about five years, after present patents expire. There will doubtless be new developments, but present devices are absolutely sufficient for e-book reading and most web surfing / tablet tasks, even at monochrome and modest 0.5 -- 16 Hz refresh or so. Higher-quality display is slower to refresh, though almost all instances are well under sub-second. Colour displays are slower as I understand.
- tpmx 4y agoWe really should shorten patent lifespans to like 10 years. And like 5 (or 0) years for pure software patents. Things are moving faster these days, with the interwebs and all.
- Retric 4y agoIt's less of a problem with how long patients last, instead it’s the ease and scope of patents granted.
- tpmx 4y agoThe former parameter (how long the patents last) is dramatically easier to define in law than the scope.
- dredmorbius 4y agoAlso a matter of how many patents are accumulated by a single entity. In days of yore (and possibly still today), IBM would reach into its bag of thousands of patents, extract a handful, and allege infringement. The target might well successfully prove otherwise. IBM would reach into its bag of thousands of patents, and extract another handful. The first defence had already cost the target several millions in litigation, not recoverable even on a finding of non-infringement. This was explained to me in person by an individual with a long history of fighting such fights, back in the 1990s.
- alpb 4y agoIs the notable delay between keyboard sounds and video rendering due to the SSH/software?
- IshKebab 4y agoLater he writes a comment saying is due to network latency. Seems a bit dubious if you ask me though.
- dredmorbius 4y agoSeems legit to me. Using an Onyx BOOX with Termux, terminal lag is not perceptible. The lagged updates look like packet jitter to me.
- the8472 4y agoCould be the classic nagle / delayed ack interaction. Or shoddy wifi.
- _8rlb 4y agoI measured and split the latency between the main tasks of a single frame draw. The main culprit was network delay as I am transmitting raw pixels (one u8 per pixel) compressed with zlib. That's a hit of ~140ms for half a screen. Next in line is the screen refresh (unmeasured, perceived). Then the optional post processing (~20ms for half a screen), and housekeeping, like keeping track of dirty regions (about as long). Lastly writing to the framebuffer (less than 20ms, I don't remember exactly how long). I took great care to optimise the process, and my next step was to transmit multiple pixels as a single u8 int, the physical display cannot render 255 distinct shades of gray.
- _8rlb 4y agoP.S. parent was right in doubting the claim, as a parallel connection from a client on a regular desktop refreshes at 30 HZ regardless of the size of the update. The explanation is that I take end-to-end network measurements (from request of update to a full buffer of pixel bytes). That delay might be due to the slow processor on device, or an inefficiency in the networking code in my application.
- dredmorbius 4y agoAn interesting test case would be the aalib demo, bb: https://sarata.com/manpages/bb.1.html https://sarata.com/manpages/bb.1.html Here videoed off an emissive display: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=WubDqdV2r9k https://yewtu.be/watch?v=WubDqdV2r9k And what seems to be a direct screen capture: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=JFFJYJ6QkME https://yewtu.be/watch?v=JFFJYJ6QkME I'm also curious as to what display damage high-speed refresh causes, and what reasonable guidelines at avoiding this might be. I have an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, whose display is excellent, and do very occasionally watch video. (More often I'll simply play the audio via mpv in Termux.)
- _8rlb 4y agoThe pixels are classical mechanical, as opposed to LEDs (electrical) or other solid state devices. The particles in a pixel could deform/burst or clamp together over time, as they move around. Both scenarios lead to decreased contrast. The less they move the longer the screen will last. I've no experience with the manufacture of those displays but I reason with physics.
- dredmorbius 4y agoMore fluid than mechanical. Note that even electrical displays can suffer burn-in, with CRT, LCD, and LED screens all exhibiting this. (I'm unsure about plasma displays, as I don't understand that technology.)
- _8rlb 4y agoYes! But intuition tells me that suspended particles moving past each other make a more fragile system than solid state devices. Also take into account the difference in refreshes between reading a book (0.05 HZ) and writing (30 HZ). That is, using the display as a general purpose monitor necessitates 600 times as many partial refreshes. I approximate full screen refreshes occur 6000 times more often. If degradation goes linearly with usage then the lifespan of the display would decrease significantly if used as a monitor. It would be good if someone in the industry could comment on this.
- FullyFunctional 4y agoThis is great, looks totally usable. I've pursued that eInk life style for about a decade now :) My best setup is with a Dasung Paperlike, but in practice the ergonomics keeps me from using it often (too many things to carry outside and setup). What I hope to see one day is a Linux friendly laptop with an eInk display (frontlit for extra bonus [1]). I wouldn't use it as a replacement, but for quickly grabbing when spending a few hours outside. Maybe Framework or MNT Reform could do it? [1] the Dasung has multiple settings for the backlight and it's an absolute necessity for using it indoors. EDIT: backlit -> frontlit, silly me. ADD: PineNote is also promising as it support BLE and thus could be used with remote keyboard/mouse.
- Jolter 4y agoMaybe you’re aware but the Boox Max Lumi has an HDMI In port, so you can use it as a secondary monitor for that laptop. https://shop.boox.com/products/maxlumi https://shop.boox.com/products/maxlumi
- FullyFunctional 4y agoMy Dasung Paperlike is a monitor also. In practice it's not a great solution for me compared to laptop (self-contained, batteries included). An external monitor (incl. the Boox) is quite impractical to lug around and set up.
- gbraad 4y agoThe boox refresh rate is not adequate for anything besides regional (text) updates. I have used the max, max2 and the mira and they have all been pisspoor for anything besides wordprocessing. VNC and RDP have mostly been better as these protocols understand regional changes more than the Toshiba HDMI converter chip they use.
- Jolter 4y agoThat is very interesting! Thanks for that info.
- 4y ago
- phonethrowaway 4y agoI'm so excited for this: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bigme/bigme-worlds-first-color-e-ink-tablet-w-dual-camer https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bigme/bigme-worlds-firs... Basic color support for syntax highlighting is what I've been waiting for...
- nh2 4y agoIt looks interesting, is there some information that describes whether this runs an upstream Linux kernel without version-locked binary blobs? It says it runs Android, and thus the above makes the difference on whether I one rely on 2 years of updates or 20 years of updates.
- jack_riminton 4y agoNice work. I'd really miss colours though, e.g. code linting and bracket colouring
- _8rlb 4y agoThere is a lot of room to play with there, I code monochrome on colour displays too. Try experimenting with font weight, italics, and combinations. I find that less distracting.
- oblak 4y agoOh, this is great. I love my Kobo Libra 2 mostly due to its form factor and weight and have been thinking of using it for something more. Hard to believe the thing can do full scan text refresh 30 at fps, though. Probably not updating everything at once? Also, I did not know eink degradation due to normal use - as opposed to sitting on your beloved device :( - was a thing, even at high fps.
- _8rlb 4y agoThe degradation is speculation on my part. I haven't ever experienced it. Yes, the 30 fps rate is for small updates. A full screen update (scrolling) is commonly less than ~200 ms, and there are still ways to bring that number down. I agree, the Libra 2 is great :) Try koreader, it's noticeably faster than the stock reader application.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- upwardbound 4y ago[dead]
- mschuster91 4y ago> If you're really dedicated, you could even apply for a job at the relevant government agency and look up the records yourself once you work in that job. That is going to get you fired at the least and serious criminal charges at the worst, pretty almost everywhere. Do not ever, I repeat ever, abuse any kind of database access you have for personal stuff unless approved by whomever you are reporting to and allowed by law.
- upwardbound 4y agoI agree. It's a question of how much finding his sister means to him. We don't know his story, and maybe he'd be willing to spend some time in jail and lose his career if it meant the chance to find her.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- roperzh 4y agoI wanted to give it a try since I have a Kobo laying around but seems like TightVNC is Windows-only.
- bhaney 4y agoA comment in the video says that the framerate is being held back primarily by network latency. Would something like mosh, which immediately updates local state based on how it thinks your input will change the state (and then applies any necessary corrections once the network round trip happens) help here? I guess it would only apply to text-based sessions, but it sounds like there's already a recommendation against using it for video content.
- yoru-sulfur 4y agoI noticed some similarities in the source code to https://github.com/baskerville/plato/ https://github.com/baskerville/plato/ Is there some common source for Kobo-compatable rust code that you both drew from, or was plato the original source? EDIT: Nevermind, should have looked closer, you already called out that you drew from plato > The code responsible for rendering to the eInk display is written by baskerville and taken from https://github.com/baskerville/plato https://github.com/baskerville/plato
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- _8rlb 4y agoYes, with his permission.
- locusofself 4y agoI appreciate the effort and novelty that goes into things like this, but I would never, ever use such a thing. Sure I have a kindle that I read on, but I'll keep my 27" 5k screen for coding thanks.
- borzunov 4y agoA while ago, I made a similar tool for Pocketbook eInk readers specifically: https://github.com/borzunov/remoteink https://github.com/borzunov/remoteink
- CZiNTrPT 4y agoDoes somebody know, is there similar thing for recent kindle paperwhite? I tried to google, but too many false positives... I basically want to start a ssh client on kindle to use as a display for my laptop/steamdeck (via tmux ofc)