12 ms·
Glider – open-source eInk monitor with an emphasis on low latency
- Max-q 2y agoThis is an amazing piece of work and the documentation is a great introduction to EPD.
- carterschonwald 2y agoThis is great!
- localfirst 2y agoim not familiar with this industry but how far are we from magazine quality look and feel using eInk? like there is a scene from an old 80s sci-fi movie dude whips out a game magazine and the screenshot of games are fully animated videos... ive been waiting 30 years now for this tech
- sedatk 2y agoI believe we need to wait for e-ink patents to expire.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoI'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and making real money
- braunboffel 2y ago> I'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and making real money and I'm surprised I keep reading such claims on HN and everytime anyone ask which patent you're referring to, you get no concrete answer. It is like saying "microsoft holds lots of patents on operating systems" and that's why operating systems are so terrible and everyone is still using windows.
- Qwertious 2y agoThe core patents already have expired. They have competition, it's called Reinkstone (and their DES/cofferdam tech). The reason e-inks are so expensive and progressing so slowly is that it's a niche product which doesn't drive much R&D spending (compared to LCDs, which sell billions per quarter and you're reading this comment on).
- sedatk 2y agoDidn’t know that they expired. That’s good news. We just need exciting products now.
- Qwertious 2y agoIt's not exciting, because the patents were never a barrier to innovation in the first place. LCDs have patents up the wazoo, it doesn't stop innovation there. The core problem with e-ink - the lack of market to justify R&D spending - hasn't really changed.
- braunboffel 2y ago> We just need exciting products now. Will you be working on such a product? :-D
- PaulStatezny 2y agoGiven the couple years I spent using a Dasung Paperlike e-ink monitor, I think we're pretty far off from that. There seems to be a direct tradeoff between contrast/image-brilliance and latency/frames-per-second. Many monitors can be switched along that spectrum, but the current tech doesn't seem to be able to deliver both simultaneously at a reasonable price.
- ant6n 2y agoAs a not so proud owner of a Dasung color I have to agree. The product is absolutely atrocious. It has like 8 colors, not thousands. The contrast is shit, „white“ is brown, black is … some darker brown. It’s reflective. It heavily relies on unstable dithering (so moving the mouse will jitter around a large area of nearby pixels), which also makes everything unreadable. The color processing is shit, it won’t even try to approximate displayed colors with the ones it can display. You have to fight with the settings to just get something that is vaguely usable, and set up the OS with custom colors and an accessible theme. But even then it’s so much more straining to use than a normal monitor, because of the reflections and shit contrast. I think you could probably get something more useful by building a 28“ wall paper of game boy colors. Worst purchase ever.
- card_zero 2y agoWhat we need is a structural color display, using octopus proteins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Variable_structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_coloration#Variable...
- Rebelgecko 2y agoA lot of the components you'd need for that sorta kinda exist: Flexible e-ink displays Color eink displays High-ish refresh rate eink displays The problem is AFAICT there's no device that covers all 3. Color displays have pretty big tradeoffs in terms of resolution/contrast/latency. However they're still way ahead of where they were 5-10 years ago.
- exceptione 2y agoImpressive breadth and depth of information in just the README alone. When this kind of stuff gets in the open like it does here, I expect rapid innovation and disruption from the crowd.
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoI would hope that the Pine Note people look at it. Progress for them has been quite slow (I follow the discord), and they are struggling with a lot of basic stuff.
- tadfisher 2y agoBecause someone needs to be paid to land Rockchip drivers in mainline, and Rockchip aren't going to do it.
- dheera 2y agoAt least this is real ePaper and not that previous bull that was trying to pass off monochrome LCD as low-latency ePaper.
- 3abiton 2y agoYou were not kidding, it's much more detailed than I anticipated down to the physics theory of they work.
- tonymet 2y agoI've been using a Kindle for 10+ years now , but the poor responsiveness has always irked me. I can't tell if it's a hardware or software issue. I'm glad to see this project is focused on reducing latency on the hardware side. Does anyone know why the Kindle is such a bad product? I use it because I like e-ink and the e-book market is comprehensive, but I don't think it's actually a good device.
- stronglikedan 2y agoIt's responsive enough to do what it was purpose built for - read a book. It can do other things, but it's not made or marketed to do them, so they keep the cost low by not innovating on responsiveness. Instead, they make it more comfortable to use in other ways, such as how it's held and navigated, and the backlight.
- tonymet 2y agoThere are many high-quality products at a competitive cost. That's a pathetic excuse. A lot of time was spent integrating social features that no one uses. That time could have been spent on quality & latency. I understand their business goals and objectives. It's still a low-quality product. A profitable product can also be terrible.
- Tagbert 2y agofrom what I've read, responsive screen refresh is inversely related to battery life. A more responsive screen results in less battery life. Amazon, and pretty much all other eink readers have prioritized battery life over absolute responsiveness. They have made significant improvements in responsiveness over the years. Do you remember how slow screen refreshes were on the original Kindle? It's just that that is not a high priority for their main use case of linear reading. If you want to use it for reading PDF reference books, you probably should look to one of the eink Android tablets that are more general purpose devices and may have a faster refresh rate.
- 2y ago
- LeoPanthera 2y agoI want to make a Compact Mac clone with an eink display like this. How wonderful would that look.
- afandian 2y agoI’d settle for an eink Newton.
- WillAdams 2y agoI'd be glad of a contemporary device w/ a b/w LED --- still saddened that there wasn't a replacement for the Asus Eee Note EA800 --- and I'm still annoyed that Apple has yet to make a device to replace my Newton (at a minimum, I'd want Apple Pencil support on an iPhone (or iPod Touch if they'd bring that back) or Mini iPad), but using something other than an LCD for daylight viewability would be something I'd be glad of (trying to out-bright the sun on a battery-powered device is just as stupid as it sounds to my mind).
- tonymet 2y agoor reboot Palm pilot
- jollyjerry 2y agoI wish I could find my Palm V. That device felt like quality in your hand. Metal back with satin finish, leather cover, the stylus was a snug fit.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoIt can look good [1] but I haven't yet seen the refresh rate of eInk that I thought could handle a moving cursor. Maybe with the right driver you can these days. [1] https://engineersneedart.com/systemsix/systemsix.html https://engineersneedart.com/systemsix/systemsix.html
- jwells89 2y agoA machine with the 12” Macbook form factor and an e-ink display with optional orange glowlight for night running something akin to Classic Mac OS would make for a very zen, highly portable writing machine. Would probably get battery life measured in weeks, too.
- thetinymite 2y agoI think this is the original repo: https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider based on this tweet: https://twitter.com/zephray_wenting/status/1790173007488450603 https://twitter.com/zephray_wenting/status/17901730074884506...
- SushiHippie 2y agoThe GitHub repository description also says: > Open-source E-ink monitor. Mirror of https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider
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- megous 2y agoOn the other end of the spectrum, there are production devices driving eInk displays using a regular LCD controllers. :))) Anyway, I appretiate the waveform format documentation and tools. Might kick me back to working on my Pocketbook display driver.
- ElijahLynn 2y agoSo so grateful for the open sourcing of all the knowledge about Eink in your brain zephray!!! So much great information in your readme about Eink. I've already read a decent bit of it, and am going to reference it for the years to come!
- OptCohTomo 2y ago"Optical teardown of a Kindle Paperwhite display by OCT": https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.05174 https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.05174 OCT = Optical Coherence Tomography This paper shows what is going on inside the display.
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- rkagerer 2y agoWhat a great primer in the readme!
- karmakaze 2y ago[I know nothing for real in this area.] The Limitations section was interesting to read about. As I was thinking about it, I began to wonder if 1 memory cell per pixel could be used in an analog fashion (if it could mimic the panel response) with a high speed ADC. Seems more complicated and less accurate that what's described, and perhaps not cheaper if possible at all.
- ta988 2y ago[flagged]
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- snvzz 2y agoEvery eINK controller sucks. This person took upon themselves to fix that, and released the result, which is now the state of the art, as open source hardware. I love people and projects like this.
- beacon294 2y agoI was interested in e-ink solutions for a long time due to eye fatigue and dry eye. It turns out I had a very minor stigmatism. My eye doctor did not recommend correcting it, but upon correction my dry eye and eye fatigue completely went away. So, get your minor astigmatism corrected via computer glasses, regardless of the eye doctor, best practice for minimum prescription strength.
- snvzz 2y ago>computer glasses What is this?
- idle76 2y agoGlasses for working at a computer. The same as reading glasses. The word is directly translated from the common name for it in my native language.
- snvzz 2y agoOh. So the glasses correct the astigmatism. Understood.
- jdietrich 2y agoGlasses dispensed for reading often don't work well for computer use. Historically "reading" meant looking at a book held in your hands, but computer monitors are further away and at a higher angle than a book. If you spend a lot of time using a computer, you need to discuss this with your dispensing optician when you buy glasses to make sure you get the right lenses for your needs. You may benefit from a dedicated pair of glasses for computer use, or a properly designed varifocal lens. This is especially important if you're over 35 and are likely to have some degree of presbyopia (look for an "add" value on your prescription, or different prescriptions for near and distance). There are a lot of special lens technologies and coatings that are advertised as being able to reduce eye strain when using digital devices. Most of these have little or no evidence to support their efficacy, so be wary if they try to upsell you on expensive extras.
- 2y ago
- birdlogic 2y agoIt’s a fun coincidence that this is named “Glider”, since a fair number of glider (sailplane) pilots use e-ink displays (rooted kobo/kindle readers usually) due to great sunlight readability, commonly running something like XCSoar: https://www.xcsoar.org/hardware/ https://www.xcsoar.org/hardware/
- 4ggr0 2y agoSo submarines are controlled with logitech controllers, gliders use e-ink readers as displays. Wonder what other tech is being reused inside of niche transportation methods :)
- lionkor 2y agocode I wrote as a 12 year old beginner in python is running all of the Deutsche Bahn, I think. I suspect it anyways, it has the same performance characteristics.
- 4ggr0 2y agoI think python would be too usable for DB :D Probably still on COBOL. Beginning of this year, they were apparently looking for a Windows 3.11 Administrator [0] [0] https://www.heise.de/news/Deutsche-Bahn-sucht-Admin-fuer-Windows-3-11-for-Workgroups-9611543.html https://www.heise.de/news/Deutsche-Bahn-sucht-Admin-fuer-Win...
- b3orn 2y agoInterestingly they're also looking from Smalltalk developers, didn't expect that.
- Alex-Programs 2y agoYou can't just say that without context! What does the code do? How did it end up in DB? I'm really curious now.
- bemmu 2y ago
- feverzsj 2y agoYes, you can make eInk refresh faster, but with ghosting and limited grayscale level. eInk hasn't advanced much since its advent, and no sign it will, as it's controlled by one company.
- girvo 2y ago> eInk hasn't advanced much since its advent Yes, it has. Even purely from the consumer facing side: the latest panels are far better in grayscale depth, sharpness and refresh rate (and their controller still kind of suck). Not to mention colour e-ink panels in consumer products seeing rapid improvements gen over gen. > and no sign it will, as it's controlled by one company. That's less true today, and there are multiple implementations of this idea that are being commercialised. Though, sadly, e-ink the company bought one of them...
- amelius 2y agoDid anyone ever investigate the idea of adding feedback control to e-ink displays? I get the feeling that all this flashing and latency of e-ink displays is entirely due to the open-loop nature of the controller.
- sneak 2y agoWhat’s the fastest cpu/highest ram COTS device that has an eInk display?
- niek_pas 2y agoI'm sure I'm missing it, but is there a video showing the 'low latency'?
- feverzsj 2y agoFor 'low latency' in eInk, it's about the same time to turn over a page.
- mistercheph 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4
- MaximilianEmel 2y agoOf course it's Wenting. Hopefully that means a video about it, too. https://www.youtube.com/@nbzwt/videos https://www.youtube.com/@nbzwt/videos
- ploek 2y agoThey have a video where they have an eInk display show video at 60 Hz. In contrast to a previous video, where the display was running at 2.4 Hz and the video then sped up by 10x, this is not sped up. What kind of black magic is this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4
- sotix 2y agoThe linked GitHub is a mirror of the original Gitlab repo: https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider https://gitlab.com/zephray/glider
- sotix 2y agoThis is a really cool resource! I have been wanting to make a device that uses an sink display for learning purposes for a long time, but I don’t know where to even start with that since I’ve only ever worked on software. This looks like it will help quite a bit with some of that learning.
- elevation 2y agoAny idea what tool was used to create this diagram? https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider/blob/main/assets/glider_overall_block_diagram.svg https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider/blob/main/assets/glider...
- grawp 2y agoThere does not seem to be any release tag or branch nor production gerber files. I was hoping to get my hands on some functional DVI/HDMI controller. Well never mind, I'll wait.