
Building a simple e-ink display from scratch - userbinator
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/12/can-you-build-an-e-ink-display-from-scratch/
======
ethagknight
Recently, I tried to contact E-Ink, hoping to get information for an
architectural use of some of their supposed products. I couldn't get any real
information, conceptual pricing, development kit, summary of capabilities, or
anything useful out of their sales staff. I repeatedly explained, I am a well
capitalized entrepreneur wanting to incorporate some of their tech into my
properties at scale, and that I have a development and construction team ready
to work to design and integrate a product for various uses. I my mind, I
should be a good potential tech development partner, ready to waste money on
their tech. I couldn't get anything useful out of them. I am now convinced
that outside of the very basic amazon kindle reader screen type displays, that
the technology does not exist as promised or marketed.

~~~
xeemzorz
If black/white isn't a core requirement look into BluBoard (bluboard.io). They
are a Cleveland-based hardware startup that specializes in 18" epaper displays
and related content management systems.

Sources:

[1] CES News Story - [https://bluboard.io/news/bluboard-at-ces-2017-with-
fellow-cw...](https://bluboard.io/news/bluboard-at-ces-2017-with-fellow-cwru-
innovators/)

[2] BluBoard Chooses Multitech - [http://www.multitech.com/news-and-
events/press-releases/lork...](http://www.multitech.com/news-and-events/press-
releases/lorktech+selects+multitech+for++innovative+digital+signage+solution_o65960)

[3] Local News Segment - [http://www.cleveland19.com/story/34321031/cleveland-
start-up...](http://www.cleveland19.com/story/34321031/cleveland-start-up-
bluboards-a-sign-of-things-to-come)

Disclaimer: I am the Director of Architecture at BluBoard

~~~
mbrookes
> They are a Cleveland-based hardware startup > Disclaimer: I am the Director
> of Architecture at BluBoard

Then you should probably say "we are" rather than "they are" so that it's
clear from the outset. (PS. When you disclose something, it's a "disclosure".)

------
Houshalter
One of my favorite stories about genetic algorithms is how they made an e ink
display work. Taken from a Stack Overflow thread:

>In January 2004, I was contacted by Philips New Display Technologies who were
creating the electronics for the first ever commercial e-ink, the Sony Librie,
who had only been released in Japan, years before Amazon Kindle and the others
hit the market in US an Europe.

>The Philips engineers had a major problem. A few months before the product
was supposed to hit the market, they were still getting ghosting on the screen
when changing pages. The problem was the 200 drivers that were creating the
electrostatic field. Each of these drivers had a certain voltage that had to
be set right between zero and 1000 mV or something like this. But if you
changed one of them, it would change everything.

>So optimizing each driver's voltage individually was out of the question. The
number of possible combination of values was in billions,and it took about 1
minute for a special camera to evaluate a single combination. The engineers
had tried many standard optimization techniques, but nothing would come close.

>The head engineer contacted me because I had previously released a Genetic
Programming library to the open-source community. He asked if GP/GA's would
help and if I could get involved. I did, and for about a month we worked
together, me writing and tuning the GA library, on synthetic data, and him
integrating it into their system. Then, one weekend they let it run live with
the real thing.

>The following Monday I got these glowing emails from him and their hardware
designer, about how nobody could believe the amazing results the GA found.
This was it. Later that year the product hit the market.

>I didn't get paid one cent for it, but I got 'bragging' rights. They said
from the begining they were already over budget, so I knew what the deal was
before I started working on it. And it's a great story for applications of
GAs. :)

~~~
cbr
Link: [http://stackoverflow.com/a/3692882](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3692882)

------
wuschel
I wonder what the current situation with e-ink is.

From my point of view,current e-ink displays have not really improved
significantly in terms of resolution and refreshing speed. Where are the
current difficulties with the technology?

I remember the difficulty of making larger, highly monodisperse SiO2/polymer
particle spheres in the end of the 90s. But I believe this problem was
overcome long ago.

So is it the electronic/particle interface that is problematic e.g. size of
"pixels"/sphere clusters?

~~~
vivekd
I think the real issue is there is an IP moat - Eink corporation was pretty
much a monopoly which kept prices high and research and innovation spending
low - but the patent has been partially annulled in Germany so there might be
more innovation in that field coming soon

[http://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2015/03/02/german-court-
fin...](http://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2015/03/02/german-court-finds-e-ink-
patent-invalid-files-in-favor-of-trekstor/)

~~~
wuschel
Very interesting, indeed. I thought that patent issues were a roadblock. Kudos
to Trekstor to stand up for a fight, and thanks for the link.

On the other hand, taken from the article: "overall quality of the screen
wasn’t quite as good as E Ink, but it wasn’t very far off either".

~~~
linuxkerneldev
> Kudos to Trekstor to stand up for a fight, and thanks for the link.

I fear you may have misinterpreted that result. Trekstor doesn't make panels.
They buy panels from OED Tech based in Shenzhen. OED Tech is actually a
company started by former E Ink engineers who left Boston and moved to China.
They were sued by E Ink because those guys just stole the chemical formulas
and production processes. OED Tech even approached us (we buy E Ink panels)
and promised to undercut their price.

Competition is good but I kind of prefer genuine competition. I had high hopes
for interferometric but Qualcomm shut that down.

~~~
shiven
_Competition is good but I kind of prefer genuine competition._

Except in the industries and product areas where IP is being used for land-
grabs, rent-collection, little-to-none innovation and roadblocking any and all
competition. In those cases (as E-Ink), I am glad there are still places in
this world where people can continue to push the envelope and innovate to
create better products for our species. IP be damned.

~~~
userbinator
There are apparently already a bunch of small companies in China making EPDs
(electrophoretic display, the "generic name" and associated components; E-Ink
is just one company/trademark) so the end of the monopoly may be near, and
prices may drop enough to make them as commonly available as LCDs.

~~~
xeemzorz
I wouldn't count on it. There are still many manufacturing difficulties to
overcome before making large format electrophoretics cheaper.

~~~
wuschel
Interesting. Could you perhaps elaborate further, or point towards any sources
re manufacturering difficulties?

------
userbinator
For those who would just like to _use_ an EPD of reasonable size and price,
the "official" development kits etc. are extremely expensive (likely due to
the IP/patents discussed in some of the comments here) but others have figured
out how to drive the panels you can find cheaply as replacements for e-book
readers:

[http://essentialscrap.com/eink/](http://essentialscrap.com/eink/)

In the usual applications these are driven by a dedicated controller (another
big chunk of IP and thus $$), but it's easy enough to generate the signals
with a regular microcontroller --- there's literally no minimum refresh rate,
so the timing requirements are not high --- and it also gives you more control
over the actual pixel whitening/darkening, allowing such things as grayscale
and incremental updates:

[https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-
calender](https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calender)

------
utopcell
I feel that the displays in the Pebble watches (ie Sharp's memory LCDs [1])
are a much better alternative to LCDs than e-ink. Their power consumption is
in the uW range with more than 30fps refresh rate.

[1]
[https://www.sharpsma.com/products?sharpCategory=Memory%20LCD](https://www.sharpsma.com/products?sharpCategory=Memory%20LCD)

------
DenisM
I wish I could buy a small and light E ink typewriter. Size of iPad mini, but
with a keyboard, and stiff enough to be used on my laps.

~~~
irth
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF1b3qgw-K4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF1b3qgw-K4)

a 9,7" netbook with an e-ink screen. Unfortunately not for sale yet AFAIK

~~~
DenisM
A little bulky I think. Not something I would casually drop into my backpack.

~~~
lj3
Are we looking at the same video? The video should be the Onyx BOOX
Typewriter. It's the size of a tablet and a keyboard cover. It's a HUGE
improvement over the last entry I saw in this space, the hemingwrite[0].

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfbhcddyb8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfbhcddyb8Q)

~~~
DenisM
Sure, huge improvement here.

I suppose if they cut out the entire touchpad area to reduce the depth, and
reshape the screen to size that would be the form-factor I'm looking for.
Something between what they have done and the old PPC from HP:
[http://www.suddenlink.net/pages/curtismc/jornada.htm](http://www.suddenlink.net/pages/curtismc/jornada.htm)

Also I would very much prefer that there was no other software on the device.
I have enough distractions as it is.

That said, I would probably still buy this if I could.

~~~
lj3
Ah, I see. I think your comment about 'Not something I would casually drop
into my backpack' is what threw me. You want something you can slip into a
pocket. I had an HP Jornada 680 and a Nokia N800 with a bluetooth keyboard
back in the day. They weren't as useful as I would have liked. Editing even
plain text prose was difficult.

Personally, I'd love a galaxy s8+ sized phone with an eink display, but I
think the best I'm going to get is either a DPT-RP1 hacked to take a bluetooth
keyboard or the good e-reader tablet. Then again, I prefer a full android
operating system to a single app locked down model. Maybe you could convince
the hemingwrite/freewrite people to come up with something a little more
portable?

~~~
DenisM
Yeah, Jornada 680 would be too small, hence why I said "between".

Imagine the baby macbook with it's touchpad area cut off. So basically just a
keyboard and an equally-size ink screen on top of it. I can imagine myself
going to the park near my house and writing prose sitting on the bench. Ain't
happening with the laptop.

------
gregschlom
Nice, I was researching that very topic the other day.

Note that making a DIY LCD, on the other hand, seems fairly manageable:
[http://hackaday.com/2016/06/17/how-to-make-a-custom-lcd-
from...](http://hackaday.com/2016/06/17/how-to-make-a-custom-lcd-from-
scratch/)

------
walterbell
Android-based e-ink typewriter and slates from 6" \- 13":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14123060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14123060)

------
hawski
Does anyone know what device is used to change image on e-ink pricetags? I
know that there are some wireless ones, but I imagine that wired should be
cheaper and better for hacking.

Those pricetags are pretty cheap. And on Ali Express they sell those 3 color
ones. Maybe it would be possible to use them to make some fun keyboard?

~~~
rwmj
There's some 2011 info here: [https://hackaday.com/2011/04/07/hacking-
electronic-price-tag...](https://hackaday.com/2011/04/07/hacking-electronic-
price-tags/) See also the 2014 presentation linked to in the comments.

------
gravypod
The moment I can buy an 8.5"x11" display I'll be happy with eink stuff. I'd
probably build a Pi Zero E-Reader. Without 8.5"x11" paper there's no point for
the kind of things I'd want to read.

------
pareidolia
Meanwhile I use an original OLPC XO-1 as an e-reader. It has a beatiful 200
ppi color/transflective display. Such a shame that Pixel Qi is no more.

~~~
pasbesoin
What do you run on it?

I have one in a closet, somewhere.

------
c141charlie
Does anybody think having a gigantic e-ink desktop monitor would be rad for
coding? The refresh rate might be a killer, but I wonder how your eyes would
feel after 8 hours compared to an conventional monitor.

~~~
lj3
You mean like the Dasung Paperlike[0]? Consensus from the writers I know is
it's pretty awesome. Not a lot of programmers use them at this point because
it's black and white, so there's no syntax highlighting. It's also powered and
connected via USB, so there is a delay when typing fast that could drive some
programmers crazy. It's about the same responsiveness as a regular monitor
hooked up with a DVI to usb adapter.

[0]: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-world-s-
first-e...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-world-s-first-e-ink-
monitor-13-3#/)

------
costcopizza
Sort of related question I've always had:

What is the highest resolution non-color display? I.e. are there '4K' versions
of things like e-ink? It seems like most of these things are sort of pixelated
looking.

~~~
userbinator
There is the ED312TT2, a 2560x1440 31.2" display which costs $2k:

[http://shopkits.eink.com/product/signage-evaluation-
kit-v3-w...](http://shopkits.eink.com/product/signage-evaluation-
kit-v3-with-31-2-epaper-display-ed312tt2/)

