13 ms·

Inky Impression 5.7“ – Colour e-ink display for Raspberry Pi

383 points by kristianp 4y ago

threatripper 4y ago
How does this kind of display actually work? I mean how does it transport the different colors to the front of the pixels while still keeping them separate? The 1-color e-ink is pretty straight-forward but those multiple colors require some new tricks.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  To an attempt of reconstructing the idea through available information some months ago, ACeP works through "voltage switch tricks over different sized and charged particles in the microcups". The so-called "waveforms" that optimize the workings of traditional E-Ink panels, in this case seem to be something like - just inventing some imaginary "recipe" - "a big shock on the cathode followed by a series of short tickles on the anode tends to place the larger sized and strongly negative charged particles above the (etc.)". The producers have also declared that there is a lot of "heuristic attempting" before defining the "waveforms" (as recipes to make a class of pigmented particles go in the right position).
  - threatripper 4y ago
    I read this as "the particles differ in size and charge" then somehow through some fiddly electrical impulse magic they are separated and can be sorted to be deposited on the front somehow.
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      Yes. Sequences of «fiddly electrical impulse[s]». "Make it so it gives some momentum to these, then pull a bit those..." - again, attempting a sketchy description of the "waveforms". Edit: by the way: I would not say that 1-pigment E-Ink is that «straight-forward»: tricks like the 'Regal' waveform, abatement of ghosting (etc.), were not born immediately.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Yeah these displays look really nice but they're always out of stock :(
- jamez 4y ago
  I suspect that the 5.65inch ACeP 7-Color E-Paper E-Ink Display Module (600×448) sold by Waveshare[1] is essentially the same screen, just with a different controller glued to the back. I use it with an ESP32, but their wiki[2] has a guide on how to plug it to a RPi. [1] https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/5.65inch-e-paper-module-f.htm https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/5.65inch-... [2] https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/5.65inch_e-Paper_Module_(F)_Manual#Users_Guides_of_Raspberry_Pi https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/5.65inch_e-Paper_Module_(F)_M...
  - Nursie 4y ago
    Waveshare are cool, and on aliexpress “GooDisplay” seem to again sell mostly the same screens
- 650REDHAIR 4y ago
  I just ordered one from eBay. It's a newish seller, but eBay always sides with the buyer so it feels pretty safe...
- FearlessNebula 4y ago
  Pimoroni.com has them in stock
treelovinhippie 4y ago
diego_moita 4y ago
I bought mine from Pimoroni (UK)[1] but they're out of stock now. I use it for a photo display. Pros: * they look nice and consume very little energy Cons: * long time to refresh (about 20 seconds) * only 7 colours. For photos you'll need to do dithering [1] https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-5-7?variant=32298701324371 https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-5-7?varia...
- Nursie 4y ago
  There are loads of variants on aliexpress - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001744549862.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001744549862.html You just need to make sure you get the one that's set up for how you want to use it, i.e. the one in the linked write-up is designed as a 'hat' some come with a simple ribbon->SPI breakout, some come with no adapter/breakout at all. I recently did a project with a similarly sized 3-color (black/white/red) screen like this one - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002842153362.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002842153362.html Which was lots of fun, I used a RP2040-zero board to control it, hooked to an internal USB header on my gaming PC, and it now shows... well it shows the time and the CPU/GPU temps because when I finally got it working, I lost the will to do much more with it :)
pen2l 4y ago
The killer application for these e-ink dispalys is calendar/todo list display. I'd love to have my org-mode agenda and todo-list/notes on such a low-powered, low-refresh-rate e-ink screen. I know this question has been probably been asked many times, but I'll ask again: why are these devices not mass-produced in great numbers? Clearly there is great market demand for it, so then why would the market supply not respond to this demand? Is it because the technology has some oddities that manifest in tricky manufacturing processes? Or is it some patent encumbrance issue?
- julianlam 4y ago
  I actually repurposed an old Kindle to do just that, via kindle-dash[0] Every 15 minutes it makes a cURL to an endpoint that gets my agenda, some news headlines, the weather, etc., and uses Puppeteer (I think) to return an image for the kindle to display. [0] https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash
  - 650REDHAIR 4y ago
    This is a neat project! Thanks for the inspiration!
  - godelski 4y ago
    This is exactly what I need! Do you know if it works on a paperwhite? If not, no worries, I know I can find old kindles.
    - PascalW 4y ago
      I've personally only tested it with a Kindle 4 NT. I haven't had any reports of people using this on other Kindle devices, but in theory it should work as long as the device is jailbroken.
  - yownie 4y ago
    I had no idea this existed but was off writing something similar as well. Glad to see a public project repurposing old hardware. I think there's a large potential userbase if PW support eventually get's added.
itwrangler 4y ago
very cool, thanks for the video, enjoyed it, as well now being aware how easy it would be to 'project this' into something in the future should the need arise :-)
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Well now we know why they didn't scale up yet.
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_carbyau_ 4y ago
Nice to see my preferred "local" online shop on HN. My ideal use for a colour e-ink is reading comics or graphic novels. At 15s a refresh it's not quite convenient but this is promising. And for a digital photo frame this could be quite nice.
Waterluvian 4y ago
I wonder if we’ll eventually feel silly about making every restaurant menu a huge set of TVs when these fit the bill far more.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  Probably not. e-ink displays are much more expensive than a cheap $200-300 "smart" TV mounted to the wall. A 31" display module (not the stuff to drive it) is $2300. Maybe you can get the price down in bulk purchasing, but a 40" TV could be purchased for $200-300 right now from any big box store. So an array of 6 40" TVs displaying menus would be cheaper than one of these. https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2˝-color-epaper-display-sb1452-qaa/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2˝-color-epaper-display...
  - jwdavidson 4y ago
    Commercial displays are more like $700-$1000 in this size class, and power isn’t free, so there is presumably some crossover point in total cost of ownership. I’ll gladly replace my menuboard 43” TVs with eInk displays if they ever reach the rough price neighborhood ($1500?) and have a single-digit-seconds repaint time
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      But will you feel silly for choosing, say, 2x$1000 displays versus 1x$2300 smaller display today? Probably not. Which was what I was responding to. Should the price ever drop enough, then sure, it would make sense at that point to select an e-ink display. But it's a terrible choice today, so nothing to feel silly about.
Daltzn 4y ago
My ideal use case for this would be full size wall art. Similar to the Samsung TV that when off looks like art on a wall. Being able to have a new piece of art displayed daily along with as another commentator said your schedule. Wake up enjoy the new random art and see what your plans for the day are. Im sure the ability to scale this would be quite expensive. Buying many to connect and make your own custom size could work.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Netgear Meural II is precisely that but full color: “Meural partners with some of the world's leading image collections to bring you a dynamic, ever-evolving art library of over 30,000 artworks.” https://www.netgear.com/home/digital-art-canvas/canvasii/?size=19x29 https://www.netgear.com/home/digital-art-canvas/canvasii/?si...
  - lycos 4y ago
    This looks like it's just a regular LCD screen though, so it gives off light? The description wasn't very clear on this but the technical specs say AHVA LCD. I recently built my own e-ink picture frame because I wanted it to feel like a regular picture frame (and it has fooled people already), because it is basically just a printed photo in a nice normal frame. And it looks amazing in direct sunlight, and obviously in the dark you see it less but that's the same with any normal picture frame. If color e-ink was ready for this use case it would be pretty cool, but I think we're still a while away from that. It might also be too expensive.
- fgdfg354321 4y ago
  mine would take inspiration from HN post 3 years ago where a Google Manager got a hold on a poster size e-ink screen and use it to display front pages of newspaper every morning. I would expanded it to a color display and use it to show the poster of the movie being displayed in my media server, but paying 3000+ for a panel of that size makes it a VERY hard sell for me
  - bartkappenburg 4y ago
rektide 4y ago
I wonder what potential there is for a >3 color display. > black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, orange Ok that's only 5 color, but still curious. For displays we seem to be ok I guess? But wow, using something like LiFX bulbs I notice huge ranges of colors that are ultra-washed out, that the light cannot do. That said, I'm here on "orange site" and I can easily say, yup, looks orange. I also keep hearing griping that the color dithering is all patent encumbered and/or that there's few open-source options available. Bother.
- Nursie 4y ago
  https://www.good-display.com/product/385.html https://www.good-display.com/product/385.html These seem to be pretty cutting edge, and as a result quite expensive, but they claim 4096 colours. The only one I can see with any sort of price is a 31.2", 720p version that does 4k colors and 16 levels of grey, and costs $2200. And is out of stock! https://buy-lcd.com/products/good-display-312-inch-large-e-ink-display-parallel-7-color-e-ink-panel-with-16-gray-level-gdep312tt2-c https://buy-lcd.com/products/good-display-312-inch-large-e-i... There's a video of it in action here - https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY
- shultays 4y ago
  It looks alright with dithering even with such low amount of colors I also keep hearing griping that the color dithering is all patent encumbered and/or that there's few open-source options available. Bother. Huh, is it? I am using python to dither images just fine
pcurve 4y ago
I'm in my mid 40s. It's actually much easier for me to read text on displays that emit bright light than the ones that don't. :-(
- runeks 4y ago
  Surely that depends on the amount of ambient light?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Presbyopia Perhaps? I went though the mid stage where I needed more light. Now I just need the glasses for close stuff.
- pja 4y ago
  You probably need reading glasses.
roschdal 4y ago
What's wrong with paper?
- amelius 4y ago
  Very long refresh rate.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  I could not begin to get why you would utter that, so I took a little pause before this, and took the opportunity to crunch some numbers. What's wrong with paper: well, it depends; for example, it is not reused - each chunk of represented info has to be stored -, and it is a stable medium with an important weight. Texts range from a content of 1MB to 100..200KB of chars at upper quintile and lower quintile. An A5 sheet may contain 1500 chars per side, and one square meter of paper, 80g of weight, 33.3 of them "pages", 100'000 chars per square meter. One MB of (printed) chars then weighs ~0.8kg. A small library of 1000 volumes weighs around half a ton (possibly even much more). Similarly for space.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    I just noted: such «small library of 1000 volumes [which would] weigh around half a ton», in chars would be the capacity of a CD. Which would be, 550kg for paper vs 0.016kg for a CD - 35'000 times the weight. Of course, other storage systems today would boost that number - though the dimension of the embedded library would be gigantic (one unity of measure above).
vmurthy 4y ago
If you want the link to the product without going through a wall of text. It’s approx $92 ($134 here in Australia) : https://core-electronics.com.au/inky-impression-5-7-7-colour-epaper-eink-hat.html https://core-electronics.com.au/inky-impression-5-7-7-colour...
- yomkippur 4y ago
  I want to use this to read old magazines, color manga but this doesn't seem quite there in terms of saturation and color. I await the day when I will be able to look at an eink screen and magazine and not tell the difference.
  - kristianp 4y ago
    15 Seconds to turn a page would be rough too.
  - Jedd 4y ago
    Pocketbook make two models (15cm and 20cm) of colour e-ink books - they've been around a while, and reviews tend to be generally positive. As noted by others on this thread, latency can be rough. Doubtless other vendors have some similar spec'd devices, but I've only ever used (monochrome) ebook readers from these guys. [0] https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-color https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-color https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-inkpad-color https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-inkpad...
    - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
      It's not exactly the same -- these readers (and many other color e-readers released in the last decade) use a different type of e-ink panel, likely Kaleido. Kaleido has much better color resolution & depth, and shorter refresh times than the ACeP panel from TFA. However the con is that the colors look much more washed out and the display has less contrast overall and even limited color viewing angles. This is because Triton/Kaleido panels use color filters like any other LCD instead of actually having colored pigments like ACeP. ACeP is the only color e-ink panel I have seen which truly impresses a bit -- if you can stand the obscenely long refresh rate.
lnyng 4y ago
Very nice! I would like to diy this into a picture frame. Wonder where would be a good place to find/make frame and casing that fit it?
quickthrower2 4y ago
Nice that it is available in my hometown of Australia. Surely it is available in US too? My first thought - those early 2000's digital photoframes are gonna come back! Edit: Oh... the good old "Out of stock". Ah the 2020s.
Fnoord 4y ago
On a previous job they reused old tablets to schedule appointments. The devices were on ethernet but ran Android 4.x. They used http to grab the appt URL. It was neatly implemented except they were riddled with vulnerabilities, and VLANs weren't set up correctly. All of this occurred in 2019 and the organization was a non-profit. Given energy crisis, e-ink would possibly save on electricity here. Though in their case b/w or b/w/r would suffice back then.
- vincnetas 4y ago
  When talking about saving electricity it's always useful to add amount of energy saved and in best case, monetary equivalent. Because yes it saves energy, but also if you drive to work without shoes it saves gas too, because your car is lighter. But inconveniences this (no shoes) creates are obvious.
mwidell 4y ago
I love this thing. I made a youtube dashboard with it, to keep track of my key metrics. It was so simple and great fun to make, just some basic Python programming. See it in action here: https://youtu.be/CV0rt5RkzAI?t=201 https://youtu.be/CV0rt5RkzAI?t=201
shultays 4y ago
Just before you get excited, it takes 30secs to refresh
- sydd 4y ago
  Yeah, this is the huge drawback. Also AFAIK there are better screens already out there with >1000 colours, e.g. Boox Nova C https://medium.com/boox-content-hub/e-ink-kaleido-vs-new-kaleido-plus-vs-acep-color-e-ink-comparison-647ed241cb3a https://medium.com/boox-content-hub/e-ink-kaleido-vs-new-kal...
  - shultays 4y ago
    I heard about that new tech but didn't know about them hitting the market. Are those also sold separately as just displays? Hopefully without the cost of an arm and leg
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - sydd 4y ago
      The issue is that the eink company has a monopoly in the market mainly due to them owning lots of patents. Also they seem to be only caring of the wholesale market, thus their new tech for the DIY/hacker crowd arrives always with a significant delay. There is a single competitor DES color, but they seem to be in presale since years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckFJar6NC0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckFJar6NC0o
- ElijahLynn 4y ago
  The article says 15secs. I don't know what is right, just sayin'.
  - shultays 4y ago
    It could be right, 30 secs was my own timings. 2 updates were taking about a minute. Although on a different brand 5.7" 7 color eink display (Waveshare) but they look the same except how they are connected I think it might be because I think two screens are using different algorithms to change images. Mine can only do a full clear, the author mentions that you need to do full clears from time to time to avoid ghosting or permanent burning. So maybe 15 secs is only for non-full clear image change Tbf not much difference between 15 or 30 secs when it comes to usability
ploek 4y ago
Ohh, interesting. From the foto [1] this appears to be the same AC057TC1 panel that the Inkplate 6COLOR [2] uses. [1] https://core-electronics.com.au/media/catalog/product/cache/7401e47060df06e68c8414eefd27ce6e/p/i/pim534-3.jpg https://core-electronics.com.au/media/catalog/product/cache/... [2] https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-6color https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-6color
osense 4y ago
Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still waiting for an affordable PC monitor based on e-ink technology. Dasung has been making some progress in the area but their products are quite expensive, around $1000 or more for anything with a useable size. People might disagree on the count of lack of colors, but to me e-ink technology seems very well suited for writing code. And who knows, maybe in a decade or so the refresh rates for these color e-ink might be in a usable range as well.
- Nursie 4y ago
  What have Dasung got in that direction? I linked it below but this display looks pretty cool to me - https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY 32", 4k colors, ~2 second refresh. Unfortunately also $2.2k!
  - pindab0ter 4y ago
    I just don't understand. In what other product category do we see barely any finished products and mostly just working prototypes without housing, etc. like in this video? Sure, this technology is new and expensive, but so are foldable phones, for example.
    - Nursie 4y ago
      Really not a clue. I guess a major indicator of progress in this market will be Amazon releasing a colour kindle (if they even want to bother), as that will both indicate prices and performance has become "good enough", and be a further driver on both. Until then, a $2200 32" screen with a 2-second refresh time is a curiosity more than a product. I think, so far, epaper/eink has hit some sort of wall with it not having quite as many use-cases as people assumed.
- amarant 4y ago
  I have a similar interest. Just wanted to plug Modos here, they're working on Open Source Hardware E-ink laptop that, while not available for purchase just yet, looks pretty interesting to me!
dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
That's all good and nice but it's been almost 15 years when the first Kindle appeared with a promise of affordable e-ink book readers for everyone. Fast forward and it seems the "affordable" part still applies to the tiny 6 (or maybe 7-8) inches screens, and those who need to need to read anything technical with formulas and diagrams have to pay much more. I don't want anything fancy or "remarkable", just a simple A4 screen allowing me to read technical papers without using a magnifying glass or clunky workarounds. (Sorry for an unrelated ran, I just had to get it off my chest!)
rcarmo 4y ago
These are really nice, and it’s good to see a more sensible price. I’d say the sweet spot for me is going to be around 10”, though, as I’d prefer a bigger picture frame I can have up on a wall with enough battery life to last a year or so (while changing pictures every day).
samwhiteUK 4y ago
Grabbed one of these a few weeks ago to make a calendar that syncs to Google Calendar. Will be a fun project
hnewsum 4y ago
Was rather disappointed that this is not partial refresh- and the refresh rate in general. Might not be too useful as an interactive thing yet.
tejohnso 4y ago
I have this connected to my raspberry pi showing PiHole statistics using a couple of bar charts on a five minute update schedule. I also programmed two buttons to show the stdout results of diagnostic commands when pressed. Mostly just a fun weekend project, but now I've gotten used to seeing the visual output whenever I walk past my router, and on a couple of occasions the bar charts actually made it clear there was a problem (eg: ads blocked bar was at zero). The display has worked flawlessly for about two years now.
paultopia 4y ago
I'd love a wireless version of one of these with mounting hardware. Stick it on the door to have weather and reminders before leaving the house in the morning.
- schwartzworld 4y ago
  You want to go Arduino / ESP32 for that. Pis require too much power, unless you want to have it plugged in all the time.
xd1936 4y ago
I got one of these a few months ago. I use it to monitor my weather station. I really like it!

383 points by kristianp 4y ago

How does this kind of display actually work? I mean how does it transport the different colors to the front of the pixels while still keeping them separate? The 1-color e-ink is pretty straight-forward but those multiple colors require some new tricks.

mdp2021 4y ago
To an attempt of reconstructing the idea through available information some months ago, ACeP works through "voltage switch tricks over different sized and charged particles in the microcups". The so-called "waveforms" that optimize the workings of traditional E-Ink panels, in this case seem to be something like - just inventing some imaginary "recipe" - "a big shock on the cathode followed by a series of short tickles on the anode tends to place the larger sized and strongly negative charged particles above the (etc.)". The producers have also declared that there is a lot of "heuristic attempting" before defining the "waveforms" (as recipes to make a class of pigmented particles go in the right position).
- threatripper 4y ago
  I read this as "the particles differ in size and charge" then somehow through some fiddly electrical impulse magic they are separated and can be sorted to be deposited on the front somehow.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Yes. Sequences of «fiddly electrical impulse[s]». "Make it so it gives some momentum to these, then pull a bit those..." - again, attempting a sketchy description of the "waveforms". Edit: by the way: I would not say that 1-pigment E-Ink is that «straight-forward»: tricks like the 'Regal' waveform, abatement of ghosting (etc.), were not born immediately.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Yeah these displays look really nice but they're always out of stock :(

jamez 4y ago
I suspect that the 5.65inch ACeP 7-Color E-Paper E-Ink Display Module (600×448) sold by Waveshare[1] is essentially the same screen, just with a different controller glued to the back. I use it with an ESP32, but their wiki[2] has a guide on how to plug it to a RPi. [1] https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/5.65inch-e-paper-module-f.htm https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/5.65inch-... [2] https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/5.65inch_e-Paper_Module_(F)_Manual#Users_Guides_of_Raspberry_Pi https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/5.65inch_e-Paper_Module_(F)_M...
- Nursie 4y ago
  Waveshare are cool, and on aliexpress “GooDisplay” seem to again sell mostly the same screens
650REDHAIR 4y ago
I just ordered one from eBay. It's a newish seller, but eBay always sides with the buyer so it feels pretty safe...
FearlessNebula 4y ago
Pimoroni.com has them in stock

treelovinhippie 4y ago

diego_moita 4y ago

I bought mine from Pimoroni (UK)[1] but they're out of stock now. I use it for a photo display. Pros: * they look nice and consume very little energy Cons: * long time to refresh (about 20 seconds) * only 7 colours. For photos you'll need to do dithering [1] https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-5-7?variant=32298701324371 https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-5-7?varia...

Nursie 4y ago
There are loads of variants on aliexpress - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001744549862.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001744549862.html You just need to make sure you get the one that's set up for how you want to use it, i.e. the one in the linked write-up is designed as a 'hat' some come with a simple ribbon->SPI breakout, some come with no adapter/breakout at all. I recently did a project with a similarly sized 3-color (black/white/red) screen like this one - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002842153362.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002842153362.html Which was lots of fun, I used a RP2040-zero board to control it, hooked to an internal USB header on my gaming PC, and it now shows... well it shows the time and the CPU/GPU temps because when I finally got it working, I lost the will to do much more with it :)

pen2l 4y ago

The killer application for these e-ink dispalys is calendar/todo list display. I'd love to have my org-mode agenda and todo-list/notes on such a low-powered, low-refresh-rate e-ink screen. I know this question has been probably been asked many times, but I'll ask again: why are these devices not mass-produced in great numbers? Clearly there is great market demand for it, so then why would the market supply not respond to this demand? Is it because the technology has some oddities that manifest in tricky manufacturing processes? Or is it some patent encumbrance issue?

julianlam 4y ago
I actually repurposed an old Kindle to do just that, via kindle-dash[0] Every 15 minutes it makes a cURL to an endpoint that gets my agenda, some news headlines, the weather, etc., and uses Puppeteer (I think) to return an image for the kindle to display. [0] https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash
- 650REDHAIR 4y ago
  This is a neat project! Thanks for the inspiration!
- godelski 4y ago
  This is exactly what I need! Do you know if it works on a paperwhite? If not, no worries, I know I can find old kindles.
  - PascalW 4y ago
    I've personally only tested it with a Kindle 4 NT. I haven't had any reports of people using this on other Kindle devices, but in theory it should work as long as the device is jailbroken.
- yownie 4y ago
  I had no idea this existed but was off writing something similar as well. Glad to see a public project repurposing old hardware. I think there's a large potential userbase if PW support eventually get's added.

itwrangler 4y ago

very cool, thanks for the video, enjoyed it, as well now being aware how easy it would be to 'project this' into something in the future should the need arise :-)

hypertele-Xii 4y ago

Well now we know why they didn't scale up yet.

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_carbyau_ 4y ago

Nice to see my preferred "local" online shop on HN. My ideal use for a colour e-ink is reading comics or graphic novels. At 15s a refresh it's not quite convenient but this is promising. And for a digital photo frame this could be quite nice.

Waterluvian 4y ago

I wonder if we’ll eventually feel silly about making every restaurant menu a huge set of TVs when these fit the bill far more.

Jtsummers 4y ago
Probably not. e-ink displays are much more expensive than a cheap $200-300 "smart" TV mounted to the wall. A 31" display module (not the stuff to drive it) is $2300. Maybe you can get the price down in bulk purchasing, but a 40" TV could be purchased for $200-300 right now from any big box store. So an array of 6 40" TVs displaying menus would be cheaper than one of these. https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2˝-color-epaper-display-sb1452-qaa/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2˝-color-epaper-display...
- jwdavidson 4y ago
  Commercial displays are more like $700-$1000 in this size class, and power isn’t free, so there is presumably some crossover point in total cost of ownership. I’ll gladly replace my menuboard 43” TVs with eInk displays if they ever reach the rough price neighborhood ($1500?) and have a single-digit-seconds repaint time
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    But will you feel silly for choosing, say, 2x$1000 displays versus 1x$2300 smaller display today? Probably not. Which was what I was responding to. Should the price ever drop enough, then sure, it would make sense at that point to select an e-ink display. But it's a terrible choice today, so nothing to feel silly about.

Daltzn 4y ago

My ideal use case for this would be full size wall art. Similar to the Samsung TV that when off looks like art on a wall. Being able to have a new piece of art displayed daily along with as another commentator said your schedule. Wake up enjoy the new random art and see what your plans for the day are. Im sure the ability to scale this would be quite expensive. Buying many to connect and make your own custom size could work.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Netgear Meural II is precisely that but full color: “Meural partners with some of the world's leading image collections to bring you a dynamic, ever-evolving art library of over 30,000 artworks.” https://www.netgear.com/home/digital-art-canvas/canvasii/?size=19x29 https://www.netgear.com/home/digital-art-canvas/canvasii/?si...
- lycos 4y ago
  This looks like it's just a regular LCD screen though, so it gives off light? The description wasn't very clear on this but the technical specs say AHVA LCD. I recently built my own e-ink picture frame because I wanted it to feel like a regular picture frame (and it has fooled people already), because it is basically just a printed photo in a nice normal frame. And it looks amazing in direct sunlight, and obviously in the dark you see it less but that's the same with any normal picture frame. If color e-ink was ready for this use case it would be pretty cool, but I think we're still a while away from that. It might also be too expensive.
fgdfg354321 4y ago
mine would take inspiration from HN post 3 years ago where a Google Manager got a hold on a poster size e-ink screen and use it to display front pages of newspaper every morning. I would expanded it to a color display and use it to show the poster of the movie being displayed in my media server, but paying 3000+ for a panel of that size makes it a VERY hard sell for me
- bartkappenburg 4y ago

rektide 4y ago

I wonder what potential there is for a >3 color display. > black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, orange Ok that's only 5 color, but still curious. For displays we seem to be ok I guess? But wow, using something like LiFX bulbs I notice huge ranges of colors that are ultra-washed out, that the light cannot do. That said, I'm here on "orange site" and I can easily say, yup, looks orange. I also keep hearing griping that the color dithering is all patent encumbered and/or that there's few open-source options available. Bother.

Nursie 4y ago
https://www.good-display.com/product/385.html https://www.good-display.com/product/385.html These seem to be pretty cutting edge, and as a result quite expensive, but they claim 4096 colours. The only one I can see with any sort of price is a 31.2", 720p version that does 4k colors and 16 levels of grey, and costs $2200. And is out of stock! https://buy-lcd.com/products/good-display-312-inch-large-e-ink-display-parallel-7-color-e-ink-panel-with-16-gray-level-gdep312tt2-c https://buy-lcd.com/products/good-display-312-inch-large-e-i... There's a video of it in action here - https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY
shultays 4y ago
It looks alright with dithering even with such low amount of colors I also keep hearing griping that the color dithering is all patent encumbered and/or that there's few open-source options available. Bother. Huh, is it? I am using python to dither images just fine

pcurve 4y ago

I'm in my mid 40s. It's actually much easier for me to read text on displays that emit bright light than the ones that don't. :-(

runeks 4y ago
Surely that depends on the amount of ambient light?
quickthrower2 4y ago
Presbyopia Perhaps? I went though the mid stage where I needed more light. Now I just need the glasses for close stuff.
pja 4y ago
You probably need reading glasses.

roschdal 4y ago

What's wrong with paper?

amelius 4y ago
Very long refresh rate.
mdp2021 4y ago
I could not begin to get why you would utter that, so I took a little pause before this, and took the opportunity to crunch some numbers. What's wrong with paper: well, it depends; for example, it is not reused - each chunk of represented info has to be stored -, and it is a stable medium with an important weight. Texts range from a content of 1MB to 100..200KB of chars at upper quintile and lower quintile. An A5 sheet may contain 1500 chars per side, and one square meter of paper, 80g of weight, 33.3 of them "pages", 100'000 chars per square meter. One MB of (printed) chars then weighs ~0.8kg. A small library of 1000 volumes weighs around half a ton (possibly even much more). Similarly for space.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  I just noted: such «small library of 1000 volumes [which would] weigh around half a ton», in chars would be the capacity of a CD. Which would be, 550kg for paper vs 0.016kg for a CD - 35'000 times the weight. Of course, other storage systems today would boost that number - though the dimension of the embedded library would be gigantic (one unity of measure above).

vmurthy 4y ago

If you want the link to the product without going through a wall of text. It’s approx $92 ($134 here in Australia) : https://core-electronics.com.au/inky-impression-5-7-7-colour-epaper-eink-hat.html https://core-electronics.com.au/inky-impression-5-7-7-colour...

yomkippur 4y ago
I want to use this to read old magazines, color manga but this doesn't seem quite there in terms of saturation and color. I await the day when I will be able to look at an eink screen and magazine and not tell the difference.
- kristianp 4y ago
  15 Seconds to turn a page would be rough too.
- Jedd 4y ago
  Pocketbook make two models (15cm and 20cm) of colour e-ink books - they've been around a while, and reviews tend to be generally positive. As noted by others on this thread, latency can be rough. Doubtless other vendors have some similar spec'd devices, but I've only ever used (monochrome) ebook readers from these guys. [0] https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-color https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-color https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-inkpad-color https://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-inkpad...
  - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
    It's not exactly the same -- these readers (and many other color e-readers released in the last decade) use a different type of e-ink panel, likely Kaleido. Kaleido has much better color resolution & depth, and shorter refresh times than the ACeP panel from TFA. However the con is that the colors look much more washed out and the display has less contrast overall and even limited color viewing angles. This is because Triton/Kaleido panels use color filters like any other LCD instead of actually having colored pigments like ACeP. ACeP is the only color e-ink panel I have seen which truly impresses a bit -- if you can stand the obscenely long refresh rate.

lnyng 4y ago

Very nice! I would like to diy this into a picture frame. Wonder where would be a good place to find/make frame and casing that fit it?

quickthrower2 4y ago

Nice that it is available in my hometown of Australia. Surely it is available in US too? My first thought - those early 2000's digital photoframes are gonna come back! Edit: Oh... the good old "Out of stock". Ah the 2020s.

Fnoord 4y ago

On a previous job they reused old tablets to schedule appointments. The devices were on ethernet but ran Android 4.x. They used http to grab the appt URL. It was neatly implemented except they were riddled with vulnerabilities, and VLANs weren't set up correctly. All of this occurred in 2019 and the organization was a non-profit. Given energy crisis, e-ink would possibly save on electricity here. Though in their case b/w or b/w/r would suffice back then.

vincnetas 4y ago
When talking about saving electricity it's always useful to add amount of energy saved and in best case, monetary equivalent. Because yes it saves energy, but also if you drive to work without shoes it saves gas too, because your car is lighter. But inconveniences this (no shoes) creates are obvious.

mwidell 4y ago

I love this thing. I made a youtube dashboard with it, to keep track of my key metrics. It was so simple and great fun to make, just some basic Python programming. See it in action here: https://youtu.be/CV0rt5RkzAI?t=201 https://youtu.be/CV0rt5RkzAI?t=201

shultays 4y ago

Just before you get excited, it takes 30secs to refresh

sydd 4y ago
Yeah, this is the huge drawback. Also AFAIK there are better screens already out there with >1000 colours, e.g. Boox Nova C https://medium.com/boox-content-hub/e-ink-kaleido-vs-new-kaleido-plus-vs-acep-color-e-ink-comparison-647ed241cb3a https://medium.com/boox-content-hub/e-ink-kaleido-vs-new-kal...
- shultays 4y ago
  I heard about that new tech but didn't know about them hitting the market. Are those also sold separately as just displays? Hopefully without the cost of an arm and leg
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sydd 4y ago
    The issue is that the eink company has a monopoly in the market mainly due to them owning lots of patents. Also they seem to be only caring of the wholesale market, thus their new tech for the DIY/hacker crowd arrives always with a significant delay. There is a single competitor DES color, but they seem to be in presale since years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckFJar6NC0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckFJar6NC0o
ElijahLynn 4y ago
The article says 15secs. I don't know what is right, just sayin'.
- shultays 4y ago
  It could be right, 30 secs was my own timings. 2 updates were taking about a minute. Although on a different brand 5.7" 7 color eink display (Waveshare) but they look the same except how they are connected I think it might be because I think two screens are using different algorithms to change images. Mine can only do a full clear, the author mentions that you need to do full clears from time to time to avoid ghosting or permanent burning. So maybe 15 secs is only for non-full clear image change Tbf not much difference between 15 or 30 secs when it comes to usability

ploek 4y ago

Ohh, interesting. From the foto [1] this appears to be the same AC057TC1 panel that the Inkplate 6COLOR [2] uses. [1] https://core-electronics.com.au/media/catalog/product/cache/7401e47060df06e68c8414eefd27ce6e/p/i/pim534-3.jpg https://core-electronics.com.au/media/catalog/product/cache/... [2] https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-6color https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-6color

osense 4y ago

Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still waiting for an affordable PC monitor based on e-ink technology. Dasung has been making some progress in the area but their products are quite expensive, around $1000 or more for anything with a useable size. People might disagree on the count of lack of colors, but to me e-ink technology seems very well suited for writing code. And who knows, maybe in a decade or so the refresh rates for these color e-ink might be in a usable range as well.

Nursie 4y ago
What have Dasung got in that direction? I linked it below but this display looks pretty cool to me - https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY https://youtu.be/bPnJh4QcjDY 32", 4k colors, ~2 second refresh. Unfortunately also $2.2k!
- pindab0ter 4y ago
  I just don't understand. In what other product category do we see barely any finished products and mostly just working prototypes without housing, etc. like in this video? Sure, this technology is new and expensive, but so are foldable phones, for example.
  - Nursie 4y ago
    Really not a clue. I guess a major indicator of progress in this market will be Amazon releasing a colour kindle (if they even want to bother), as that will both indicate prices and performance has become "good enough", and be a further driver on both. Until then, a $2200 32" screen with a 2-second refresh time is a curiosity more than a product. I think, so far, epaper/eink has hit some sort of wall with it not having quite as many use-cases as people assumed.
amarant 4y ago
I have a similar interest. Just wanted to plug Modos here, they're working on Open Source Hardware E-ink laptop that, while not available for purchase just yet, looks pretty interesting to me!

dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago

That's all good and nice but it's been almost 15 years when the first Kindle appeared with a promise of affordable e-ink book readers for everyone. Fast forward and it seems the "affordable" part still applies to the tiny 6 (or maybe 7-8) inches screens, and those who need to need to read anything technical with formulas and diagrams have to pay much more. I don't want anything fancy or "remarkable", just a simple A4 screen allowing me to read technical papers without using a magnifying glass or clunky workarounds. (Sorry for an unrelated ran, I just had to get it off my chest!)

rcarmo 4y ago

These are really nice, and it’s good to see a more sensible price. I’d say the sweet spot for me is going to be around 10”, though, as I’d prefer a bigger picture frame I can have up on a wall with enough battery life to last a year or so (while changing pictures every day).

samwhiteUK 4y ago

Grabbed one of these a few weeks ago to make a calendar that syncs to Google Calendar. Will be a fun project

hnewsum 4y ago

Was rather disappointed that this is not partial refresh- and the refresh rate in general. Might not be too useful as an interactive thing yet.

tejohnso 4y ago

I have this connected to my raspberry pi showing PiHole statistics using a couple of bar charts on a five minute update schedule. I also programmed two buttons to show the stdout results of diagnostic commands when pressed. Mostly just a fun weekend project, but now I've gotten used to seeing the visual output whenever I walk past my router, and on a couple of occasions the bar charts actually made it clear there was a problem (eg: ads blocked bar was at zero). The display has worked flawlessly for about two years now.

paultopia 4y ago

I'd love a wireless version of one of these with mounting hardware. Stick it on the door to have weather and reminders before leaving the house in the morning.

schwartzworld 4y ago
You want to go Arduino / ESP32 for that. Pis require too much power, unless you want to have it plugged in all the time.

xd1936 4y ago

I got one of these a few months ago. I use it to monitor my weather station. I really like it!