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Solreader: E-Ink Smart Glasses for Reading
- jksflkjl3jk3 3y agoTheir website is broken for me. All that's displayed: > Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).
- YellowSuB 3y agoIt seems to be an incredibly heavy site at least on my work computer, locks up the browser on scrolling the pages and severe latency on clicking actions.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoIt shot my CPU usage up then locked up and finally crashed my firefox tab. Second try it seemed to work just fine.
- michaelmior 3y agoThis looks really intriguing, although I don't think I could justify spending $350. I assume the cost is primarily due to the relatively high resolution e-ink displays that are probably necessary to represent characters at the necessary scale.
- dhruvmittal 3y agoAgreed. I think this looks like a lot of fun and could make reading during long flights a lot more comfortable, but $350 on a pre-order is a little steep for me. I can't imagine getting nearly enough utility out of this to justify that price. Maybe there's a category of person for which this is a hit.
- johnboiles 3y agoWe would love to get this down eventually.
- swesak 3y agoFrom the specs: "256x256 per eye resolution" Not sure I'd call that high resolution...
- michaelmior 3y agoI missed the specs and seeing that I would tend to agree. This seems rather disappointing. I'd certainly be curious to see what it looks like hovering so close to your eyes.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoNope. That right there is a solution in search of a problem.
- hrnnnnnn 3y agoIt took me a while to find a through-the-lens view. https://i.imgur.com/7iwNBeP.png https://i.imgur.com/7iwNBeP.png
- YellowSuB 3y agoOof that is rough
- deepspace 3y agoYikes, yes, I was expecting bad, but not that bad.
- thomascgalvin 3y agoThis can't be real ...
- swesak 3y agoIt's like reading in Minecraft.
- zaptrem 3y agoOr reading on an old iPod!
- eimrine 3y agoHN renders nice on my friend's old ipod.
- zaptrem 3y agoMaybe we’re thinking about different iPods https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/378227457750466574/1164949088148668476/IMG_0462.jpg?ex=65451262&is=65329d62&hm=a9e6a8fc0a5766bae14a134671529bfbc3e1a7738e228006207b2dfaf98cfa11& https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/378227457750466574/...
- 3y ago
- SiempreViernes 3y agoThey should look into commercialising this technology that allows them to receive reviews by customers of a product that you can only pre-order. More seriously, looking at the reviews this might be a good product for people with attention disorder? But with the sales page is styling itself like a luxury lifestyle brand, I guess they are targeting rich people with undiagnosed problems tying to self medicate?
- lm28469 3y ago> We are Sol, a reading technology company creating tools to illuminate the mind. In an age of distraction, we're reimagining the reading experience to help you feel1Insight. Escape. Catharsis. Joy. Wisdom. Reading is so much more than a method for delivering information. It’s a technology for transforming how we experience the world and ourselves. the power of being immersed in a good book again. Discover new worlds. Revisit old ones. Uncover fresh insights and inspiration. Another company I literally cannot differentiate from pure satire
- k1ns 3y agoThis VC-frenzied industry did it to themselves. They all want "disruption" so badly that they start to see it everywhere.
- icapybara 3y agoWhen ChatGPT writes your ad copy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jklinger410 3y agoWhat's crazy is that I think something like this would be super cool, but the website and marketing copy actually turn me off from this execution of the idea. I will look for another company to do this, just based on what I see here. Unless the reviews show that the product supersedes this presentation.
- deepspace 3y ago> "Discover new worlds. Revisit old ones. Uncover fresh insights and inspiration." ... Forge meaningful connections. Ignite your creativity. Elevate your perspective. Redefine your limits. Embrace change. Keep exploring, within and without. See, it's trivially easy to spout meaningless drivel with the aid of a LLM.
- _visgean 3y agoIs this healthy for eyes? I thought such a close focusing distance for long term wear would be quite bad? I can sort of understand this format for movies enabling larger than screen interface during flying etc. But not sure whats the point for reading - having something like kinlde seems way more convinient.
- Shorel 3y agoWhile in general this is a valid concern, so don't read from your cell phone too closely... Also don't confuse focal distance with real distance. We can potentially have a very close lens focused as if we are looking at an infinite distance.
- notfried 3y agoAn intriguing idea, but a few issues make this a very hard sell: 1) resolution is too low, 2) eInk's slow refresh time will make it look like your entire world is flashing, 3) due to the low resolution, you can only render like a paragraph worth of text; there will be a lot of page scrolling, and 4) price is too high for a one-utility device. Maybe there could be a v3 or v4 that can solve these issues.
- drcode 3y agoI don't think the eink will make it look like the world is flashing, because I'm guessing the text is fixed in one place, moving with you when you turn your head. which is also not great for entirely different reasons
- valine 3y agoI doubt it. To pull that off you need a high frame rate and lots of motion tracking.
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoI think parent is saying the opposite of what you think. No tracking, no VR. Just e-ink screens in sunglasses > moving with you when you turn your head As in, unlike vr it doesn't stay in place- much dumber tech. just Kindle on your face
- valine 3y agoYeah that makes sense, their original wording was ambiguous.
- tiltowait 3y agoIt won't look like the world is flashing, because eInk just doesn't work that way anymore. Any modern eInk display can go many page turns without a full-screen refresh. IIRC Kobos, Nooks, and Kindles come preconfigured to only refresh on chapter breaks.
- 3y ago
- nightowl_games 3y agoHonestly reading a book in a bath tub is really relaxing for me, but is a pain to hold the book above the water. So I see value here. But the marketing images look hilarious. Showing "models" looking in the distance with these things on looks like a joke. Showing a middle aged guy with these on sitting in a chair makes more sense to me.
- cfeduke 3y agoBathtub caddies that hold books are $10-30, with the upper end having a few other niceties.
- AC_8675309 3y agoIs this going to give me motion sickness? FPS games are so bad that I have never even considered VR.
- johnboiles 3y agoProbably not, it's statically projecting (with fancy optics) an eink page out in front of your face. There's no 3d tracking / fast refresh or anything like that. Imagine something that mounts an ebook a meter out from your face, but in a small package.
- pyrophane 3y agoI wouldn't think so. VR motion sickness is caused by "seeing" yourself moving in the VR space in a way that doesn't match what your body is doing. That is why a lot of VR games either keep you in one place (beat saber, space pirate trainer) or rely on instaneously "transporting" you around the world (steam lab, ms mixed reality). Games where you move yourself around using the thumbstick just like you would in a regular FPS tend to make people who are susceptible to it feel motion sickness. The other culprit is lag or drift in the headset image when you look around, which makes the world appear to be spinning. All that being said, I don't believe that anything they are doing will create that first-person appearance of movement, so it shouldn't make you feel motion-sick unless you are using it in a car.
- asow92 3y agoBehold, the lovechild of a Pebble watch and Apple Vision Pro
- johnboiles 3y agoI cannot upvote this enough
- reneherse 3y agoFor a first gen hardware product this looks promising. Hopefully the overall UX (and particularly the resolution of the screens) lives up to the luxe / high fashion feeling you get from the website. A big, AFAIK unstated benefit of this device is the potentially positive impact on the reader's posture. Reading-oriented tasks usually place us in a head forward posture, eventually causing musculoskeletal problems (E.G. "tech neck"). This device frees the user to take nearly any position when reading. So at minimum it avoids contributing to poor posture, but could even be worn while the user is in therapeutic positions that lengthen the spine and stretch the front muscles of the neck and core.
- johnboiles 3y agoYou nailed it -- this is exactly what we want to do -- make the most comfortable reading experience. This is the alternative right now: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-kindle-accessories/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-kindle-accessor...
- yogurtboy 3y agoThis is a great point! I would love to use this while exercising on a bike or strolling around my house.
- Escapade5160 3y agoIs there actually a market for this ? Like do people say to themselves"this book would be better if it was strapped to my eyes"?
- trey-jones 3y agoI can only speak for myself - I like reading while lying down (and holding a Kindle in front of my face), and my arm does get tired, but even in bed I don't think I would sacrifice awareness of my surroundings for slightly more comfort.
- conesus 3y agoYou can see around the lenses and have decent awareness of what’s going on. I can see my partner and interact with her on the edges. I can also drink tea and see where everything is. It’s nowhere near complete isolation.
- tiltowait 3y agoI can definitely see a use case. Reading while lying down, in the bath (okay, that's lying down again), on an airplane, when it's so cold out your hands freeze, etc. I don't think it's a product for me, but I think there's at least a small market for it.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> Reading while lying down Absolutely. I read before going to sleep every night. Back in the day, I'd often wake up in the middle of the night with the bedside lamp still on. Now I use a Kindle that turns itself off after a while (I have an iPad too, but iPads hurt when you go to sleep and they bonk you in the face), but it's still not entirely comfortable to use for that purpose. If the glasses were comfortable enough to not disturb sleep, and durable enough that you didn't have to worry about shattering the eInk display if you rolled over on them, I would definitely be interested.
- 3y ago
- vaylian 3y agoI'm not entirely sure what the use-case is. Is the visual isolation from the environment a central feature? What makes this a better reading experience than an e-paper Kindle?
- devin 3y agoSharper Image called: they want their glasses back.
- abeppu 3y agoWhen I complain about current e-ink book replacements, the problems are the ways in which it fails to act like a real book. For example, it's still slow/awkward to jump back and forth between different pages, e.g. when a definition in a list 20 pages back is important for understanding some piece of reasoning. But for something like this, the tiny amount of text visible at a time would make things far worse!
- redundantly 3y ago"Illuminate your mind" lol okay
- uni_baconcat 3y ago> a battery life of up to 25 hours ... For the first time in an e-reader, we have combined E Ink displays with an ultra-low power processor. Huh?
- fnord77 3y agopage crashes on firefox > Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).
- johnboiles 3y agoThanks for the report, I'll look into it!
- anotheryou 3y agoWhy on earth would you need e-ink in an environment where you have full control over the light? Just use a normal display and set it to the brightness you like. More even illumination, no flickering when the outside light changes. If you really want to: put a photo sensor or two on the outside, smooth the f* out of them and use that to dim up or down a bit.
- Jansemon 3y agoPower consumption?
- anotheryou 3y agoActually the device doesn't seem to use ambient light at all. not sure backlight would be that much less efficient than side-lit.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoI have full control over my light, and I read from my Kindle all the time. Reading by reflected light from an eInk screen is far more comfortable, at least for me.
- anotheryou 3y agowell paper has the best "auto" ambient light adjustment. I don't tweak my phone screen to me room lamp every time I read something on it.
- conesus 3y agoHey HN, I helped build the Sol Reader glasses and would love to answer any questions. It helps that I've spent months using the glasses and can attest to the increased amount of reading these glasses have unlocked. I have a 2 year old and making time for reading books is hard, but now I've found chunks of phone time being replaced with Sol time, esp. in the middle of the night when I don't want to have a light on that wakes my partner. One note on the screen resolution, the screenshot linked on this thread is from our SDL2 simulator. The actual page feels more like paper, with warm eink artifacts and slight character bleed. No one who puts these glasses on talks about the resolution, instead they all have this huge smile on their face.
- vaylian 3y agoWhat are the advantages of the Sol Reader over paper books and other e-paper readers? Is the system able to adjust to the strength of your eyesight?
- conesus 3y ago> Is the system able to adjust to the strength of your eyesight? There is a per-eye diopter adjustment, ranging from 0 to -5.75, so you have quite a bit of focal adjustment. > What are the advantages of the Sol Reader over paper books and other e-paper readers? Not having to hold a book is huge, IMO. I didn't realize it until I started wearing my Sol Reader regularly, but it's basically as much work as watching TV while capturing the words of a book. Also, the lack of light output means I can read in the middle of the night. There's dark mode and an ambient light sensor for auto-adjusting brightness.
- fold3 3y agoWill it have an unlocked bootloader? sd card slot? Do you need an app to add book in the device? (sounds like it from the tech specs) Is it sweat/water resistant?
- conesus 3y agoSo far the boot loader is unlocked and you can flash on top of it, although I don’t know why you’d want to since you’d have to rebuild an entire OS but it would be possible. Our waveforms were easy to get right so it’s not as simple as driving the eink displays with OSS drivers. To add a book you can use a mobile app or text directly since we’re manually buying the books for now. Once we have a book marketplace it’ll be self serve on the mobile apps. We are planning side loading capabilities so you can use the mass storage device, but there’s a bit of preprocessing we’re doing to the epubs that we’ll have to replicate for self serve epubs. To get around that you can email an epub to add@solreader.com and we deliver it directly to your device. Handy! The lenses that ship with these limited editions will be dust and moisture resistant. But if they drop in a tub all bets are off. That may change one day.
- itsrobforreal 3y agoI'd take it more seriously if the website wasn't in color and animated
- lawlessone 3y agoSince this is just for books , why does it need to be "VR"? Couldn't you use a single e-ink screen and project/reflect the results onto areas in front on both eyes? I'm not sure this will work out , but it is nice you tried.
- johnboiles 3y agoSimpler and smaller to just use two screens.
- frankhorrigan 3y agoI'd fall asleep in 30 seconds.
- johnboiles 3y agoFeature not a bug :)
- johnboiles 3y agoHello! Sol Reader CTO here. What a fun post to wake up to. AMA
- deepspace 3y ago[flagged]
- cycrutchfield 3y ago[flagged]
- omarfarooq 3y agoWhile reading: 1. No more neck strain. 2. No more eye strain. 3. No more arm strain. 4. No more context switching strain. 5. No more distraction strain. (My Solreader is on? Do not disturb). A truly strain free experience!
- johnboiles 3y agoNailed it. Here's how you do some of those things with a Kindle: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-kindle-accessories/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-kindle-accessor... Also no glasses/contacts if your vision prescription isn't too intense.
- pyrophane 3y agoThere are a few red flags for me here: 1. I can't find any information on the website about the company itself, where it is located, or who runs it. 2. The testimonials are described as being from "early Sol Reader customers," but I don't think they've shipped any of these yet, so without anything more specific than "Dave B" or "Maya S" these at least seem fake. 3. The images of the device look like renderings rather than actual images of the hardware.
- conesus 3y agoWe’re in SF. Those are real testimonials. And while those are renderings the actual devices look identical. Lots of photos on X showing they look like you’d expect. As much as a photo on Apple’s website looks like the real thing.
- pyrophane 3y agoSorry for the late reply. I'm a big fan of both reading and eInk so I think I'm in your target customer group, and I appreciate the response. I would recommend you be a bit more up front about who you are on your website, and also that you try to get more in-depth statements from you early adopters. It seems like you have a good story and people who really love your product, but your website doesn't say that to me.
- kalupa 3y agoI cannot express how little I would want to spend staring at that typeface for more than 31 seconds
- diimdeep 3y agoI get the idea, but the execution is.. here is metaphor, it is like building and selling people bicycles and bike lanes to travel across continental US while on the other side of planet people building and taking Maglev trains. This is like trying to sell me Nokia Symbian with Opera Mobile instead of iPhone 15 to browse web in year 2024. Apple Vision Hypetrain.
- XavierFras 3y ago[dead]