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If anyone reading this is interested in throwing caution to the wind and doing a hardware startup: I'd love a 24" eInk display or two, connected via USB. Ideall

If anyone reading this is interested in throwing caution to the wind and doing a hardware startup: I'd love a 24" eInk display or two, connected via USB. Ideally usable in either portrait or landscape orientation. Sure, the refresh rate would be super slow, but I'd use it for documentation and other reference material while actually coding on my macbook or one of my external LCD displays.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
switz 14y ago
I've always wanted an e-ink display for development. Would be so cool.
- aaronblohowiak 14y ago
  http://tinyapps.org/docs/e-ink-monitor.html http://tinyapps.org/docs/e-ink-monitor.html
cskau 14y ago
I was watching a bunch of YouTube reviews of some of the current generation of ereaders. And what struck me the most is how good the refresh rate was on some of these devices. In the some of videos they show how even pinch zooming and panning around is possible, which I think is really impressive. Surely it's not the rate of an LCD but I bet it would be near usable for coding. I guess what I would miss the most is color syntax highlighting. I'm curious, since you mention USB, if you've done any calculations on USB vs Eink bandwidth? Would USB2.0 have enough to keep up with 24" worth of "pixels" even at Eink's relative low refresh rate? Or would USB3.0?
- shrughes 14y ago
  Let's say it's 24" at twice the resolution of 1920x1200 or four times the pixels, with 8 bit grayscale (because this is a fancy e-ink display, after all). USB 3.0 can do 5 Gbps which means 67 Hz would be an upper bound.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    >USB 3.0 can do 5 Gbps which means 67 Hz would be an upper bound. That's assuming that it's uncompressed, and if you're talking about using it largely for text, not compressing would just be crazy. For that kind of input, you can easily get 10x compression ratios losslessly. And at that resolution you can get away with extremely aggressive lossy compression, and ratios on the order of 50x are totally plausible. There's no reason for bandwidth to be a problem here.
    - m_eiman 14y ago
      Lossy compressions would probably be very annoying, imagine having slow-motion MPEG defects around everything that's updated :P
      - mistercow 14y ago
        No need to use interframe compression. Just JPEG will get you around 50x ratios with virtually no discernible artifacts at pixel densities that high (for mostly-text input). And there's no slow-motion about it; the whole point of compressing is to allow for very high framerates. If you can't get the E Ink to push 30hz, then there's probably not much reason to use lossy compression anyway. If you can get over 30hz, then lossy compression will keep you from totally saturating the USB 3 bus.
  - jamesmcn 14y ago
    There are eInk specific things that a graphics controller needs to know about, like flashing the screen (or a region) after an update to eliminate ghosting. So it would probably make more sense for the communication between the host and the panel to be at a higher level than a bitmap of the entire screen - something more like the Windows GDI, Display Postscript or Xlib. Sure, you'd occasionally need to blit in the whole screen, but you could limit the number of pixels to update, and limit the number of updates per second. I'd much rather have a display that doesn't suck up all my USB bandwidth. If you are going to do that, you might as well use the Thunderbolt port. But then you just have a big, expensive grayscale screen with a low refresh rate.
JVIDEL 14y ago
Been there, the project stalled when we couldn't get any panels of that size so it had to be custom made, and considering any panels bigger than the standard 6 inches were already expensive the price of these other panels was going to be plain crazy, and we needed no less than 1,000 people to signup for it.
corysama 14y ago
Anyone here coding on a Pixel Qi screen? The OLPC in reflective monochrome mode looks nearly as sharp as e-ink but refreshes at 60Hz. This is a 7.5 inch screen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirak/2113877184/sizes/o/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirak/2113877184/sizes/o/in/pho...
- cskau 14y ago
  I really wish there were more screens like the Pixel Qi. If it was an option for my laptop I'd buy it right away. Pixel Qi's big problem as I see it is that they can't seem to get their production up to speed. The few (two?) options they have are so outdated they really only make sense on the OLPCs. Except of course that they are rather pricy at 275 USD. And if you're going to use the screen entirely in monochrome anyway, what you really need is just the LCD stripped of the color filter and the backlight replaced with a simple mirror. Should be much cheaper than what PixelQi is doing. I'm even tempted to try this as a DIY project at some point. That would be a nice monitor for coding on.
jcr 14y ago
You're not the only one. I put a whole bunch of details here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3898311 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3898311 The delta.com.tw links in the above are dead. It seems Delta was using tech from Bridgestone, and Bridgestone got out of the epaper market last May: http://www.bridgestone.com/corporate/news/2012051501.html http://www.bridgestone.com/corporate/news/2012051501.html eink/epaper displays should be up to 40" by now, but with the exit of Bridgestone, who knows: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111102PD209.html http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111102PD209.html

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

switz 14y ago

I've always wanted an e-ink display for development. Would be so cool.

aaronblohowiak 14y ago
http://tinyapps.org/docs/e-ink-monitor.html http://tinyapps.org/docs/e-ink-monitor.html

cskau 14y ago

I was watching a bunch of YouTube reviews of some of the current generation of ereaders. And what struck me the most is how good the refresh rate was on some of these devices. In the some of videos they show how even pinch zooming and panning around is possible, which I think is really impressive. Surely it's not the rate of an LCD but I bet it would be near usable for coding. I guess what I would miss the most is color syntax highlighting. I'm curious, since you mention USB, if you've done any calculations on USB vs Eink bandwidth? Would USB2.0 have enough to keep up with 24" worth of "pixels" even at Eink's relative low refresh rate? Or would USB3.0?

shrughes 14y ago
Let's say it's 24" at twice the resolution of 1920x1200 or four times the pixels, with 8 bit grayscale (because this is a fancy e-ink display, after all). USB 3.0 can do 5 Gbps which means 67 Hz would be an upper bound.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >USB 3.0 can do 5 Gbps which means 67 Hz would be an upper bound. That's assuming that it's uncompressed, and if you're talking about using it largely for text, not compressing would just be crazy. For that kind of input, you can easily get 10x compression ratios losslessly. And at that resolution you can get away with extremely aggressive lossy compression, and ratios on the order of 50x are totally plausible. There's no reason for bandwidth to be a problem here.
  - m_eiman 14y ago
    Lossy compressions would probably be very annoying, imagine having slow-motion MPEG defects around everything that's updated :P
    - mistercow 14y ago
      No need to use interframe compression. Just JPEG will get you around 50x ratios with virtually no discernible artifacts at pixel densities that high (for mostly-text input). And there's no slow-motion about it; the whole point of compressing is to allow for very high framerates. If you can't get the E Ink to push 30hz, then there's probably not much reason to use lossy compression anyway. If you can get over 30hz, then lossy compression will keep you from totally saturating the USB 3 bus.
- jamesmcn 14y ago
  There are eInk specific things that a graphics controller needs to know about, like flashing the screen (or a region) after an update to eliminate ghosting. So it would probably make more sense for the communication between the host and the panel to be at a higher level than a bitmap of the entire screen - something more like the Windows GDI, Display Postscript or Xlib. Sure, you'd occasionally need to blit in the whole screen, but you could limit the number of pixels to update, and limit the number of updates per second. I'd much rather have a display that doesn't suck up all my USB bandwidth. If you are going to do that, you might as well use the Thunderbolt port. But then you just have a big, expensive grayscale screen with a low refresh rate.

JVIDEL 14y ago

Been there, the project stalled when we couldn't get any panels of that size so it had to be custom made, and considering any panels bigger than the standard 6 inches were already expensive the price of these other panels was going to be plain crazy, and we needed no less than 1,000 people to signup for it.

corysama 14y ago

Anyone here coding on a Pixel Qi screen? The OLPC in reflective monochrome mode looks nearly as sharp as e-ink but refreshes at 60Hz. This is a 7.5 inch screen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirak/2113877184/sizes/o/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirak/2113877184/sizes/o/in/pho...

cskau 14y ago
I really wish there were more screens like the Pixel Qi. If it was an option for my laptop I'd buy it right away. Pixel Qi's big problem as I see it is that they can't seem to get their production up to speed. The few (two?) options they have are so outdated they really only make sense on the OLPCs. Except of course that they are rather pricy at 275 USD. And if you're going to use the screen entirely in monochrome anyway, what you really need is just the LCD stripped of the color filter and the backlight replaced with a simple mirror. Should be much cheaper than what PixelQi is doing. I'm even tempted to try this as a DIY project at some point. That would be a nice monitor for coding on.

jcr 14y ago

You're not the only one. I put a whole bunch of details here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3898311 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3898311 The delta.com.tw links in the above are dead. It seems Delta was using tech from Bridgestone, and Bridgestone got out of the epaper market last May: http://www.bridgestone.com/corporate/news/2012051501.html http://www.bridgestone.com/corporate/news/2012051501.html eink/epaper displays should be up to 40" by now, but with the exit of Bridgestone, who knows: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111102PD209.html http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111102PD209.html