
13.3" full color ePaper display - bufbupa
https://shopkits.eink.com/product/atelier-with-13-3%cb%9d-acep-display-ac133ut1-%e3%80%90glass%e3%80%91/#tab-custom-tab-third
======
deepspace
Nice, but I fear that this will go the same way as Eink corp's monochrome
displays. They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting
themselves to a tiny fraction of the addressable market (ebook readers) while
shutting out a vast potential low power display market by pricing their panels
far too high. They have also either refused to license their technology to
others or made the licensing fee uneconomical.

A competent company would have pursued the signage market aggressively many
years ago and would have had a massive revenue stream from that by now.

E Ink displays have recently started showing up as price tags on grocery
shelves, which is promising for the future of low cost, low power displays. I
am not sure if these are supplied by Eink or if patents are expiring and
competitors are moving into the market.

~~~
sukilot
signs: [https://eink.com/signage.html](https://eink.com/signage.html)

price tags: [https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-
label.html](https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html)

more: [https://eink.com/application.html](https://eink.com/application.html)

Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do?

~~~
ethbro
How many of those have you seen in the real world?

Maybe they're more popular elsewhere, but outside of warehouse store price
labels I haven't seen the technology.

Certainly not in large format.

~~~
jfim
A ton? Carrefour (I believe they're the second largest retailer, after
Walmart) has had electronic shelf labels for well over a decade.

I haven't seen them in the US, but they're not exactly uncommon in Europe and
Asia.

~~~
smacktoward
Here in the US, Kohl's ([https://www.kohls.com/](https://www.kohls.com/)) uses
the e-ink price tags in their retail stores. They are a _terrible_ application
of the technology. They're not bright enough to be legible from a distance,
and even up-close their legibility is not great. They just look washed-out and
dingy.

One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye,
and in that respect they fail miserably.

~~~
avianlyric
> One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's
> eye, and in that respect they fail miserably.

There I was thinking the main purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price.

Product packaging is meant to grab your eye. Price tags are mostly functional
(although some shops also use them to advertise offers).

~~~
nostrademons
The buyer for price labels is the retailer. The retailer's purpose for a price
tag is to grab your eye and get you to buy more. If the price tag dissuades
you from buying the product, that is a net negative from the retailer's
perspective, and they are the ones that make the purchasing decisions on price
tags.

Don't assume alignment of incentives. From the _customer 's_ perspective, the
purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. The customer isn't making the
purchasing decisions for the price tags.

~~~
pasquinelli
Why would the price tag holding a shopper's attention have something to do
with the likelihood of that shopper buying something?

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Today I went to Tesco - a large supermarket in the UK - to buy 3 items
required for dinner. I also planned to buy some chocolate of some sort.

I bought the requirements, and passed by a the crisps (potato chips) aisle on
my way to the chocolate. A glance half an aisle away told me that one of the
three or four kinds of crisps my partner takes to work was on offer, I had
half an aisles walking where I thought about it and ended up buying it.

In the chocolate aisle I ended up buying a large bag of white chocolate that
was particularly well priced (I could read every label from one place). As
chocolate is a guilty luxury I've been known to leave without it if my
deliberations last too long; being able to parse the information quickly led
to a purchase.

\--

So that is why. Most shoppers are both immediately price driven and don't want
to be there. This can be used to increase spends.

~~~
avianlyric
Interestingly I know a little about why Tesco doesn’t use eInk price tags,
having talked at length with one of the people that evaluated eInk tags for
Tesco.

Top reason was simply price and maintenance. Deploy this kind of tech to 3400
stores is seriously non-trivial (something I know, from having attempted to
build and sell tech to Tesco), and even very low unit costs compound fast.

Tesco top concerns with this type of tech are:

1\. Price. Tesco is very capex sensitive. They generally only want to spend
money on assets that have multiple uses.

2\. Will it work 100% of time, or very close to it. Incorrect price tags are a
serious issue for Tesco.

3\. Who fixes it when it goes wrong and how?

Again these don’t seem like hard issues, but 3400 physical store makes it
hard. Especially when you can’t rely on store staff to deal with uncommon
problems, they aren’t given the time or training, due to retails razor thin
margins.

One of the interesting non-obvious problem Tesco had with eInk price tags was
simply making sure the right product tag appeared on the right shelf in the
right place. This is despite has a very competent stock management system that
tracks exactly what item lives on what shelf.

With paper you just swap the tags and move on. With eInk displays you can’t do
that because then physical location of a tag will no longer match it’s stored
virtual location.

~~~
w0utert
I don't understand why Tesco couldn't just start some pilot in a handful of
stores, iron out the kinks, learn about reliability problems etc. and only
after that decide whether or not to roll out the tech in all stores. That's
what basically every supermarket chain here does (it has to be said they are
often franchises here). For example, self-scanning in the supermarket chain
I've been shopping at for years started used to be in only a handful of
stores, but slowly more and more stores are getting the tech.

Same for the e-ink price tags, I've spotted them in two different supermarkets
of the same chain so far but I'm 100% sure that in ~2 years literally all of
them will have them.

~~~
ethbro
Traditionally brick and mortar retailers, for whatever reason, don't seem to
use pilots and rollouts.

At least not to the extent expected.

The closest explanation I can think of is that so much of store operations'
focus is on standardization (which itself is a tough problem), that
deliberately disturbing standardization seems anathema.

That said, it's definitely changing in some chains. But you'll still get tons
of blank looks or red tape in most, if you want to run an experiment like
that.

~~~
wiseleo
Oh yes they do.

I am a field tech for retail stores and see new technology being piloted all
the time.

Rollouts are how they survive. Every tech refresh cycle is an enormous project
handled by roaming teams who travel. I have done a 9-month rollout project for
a huge chain. It was a great year. :)

------
AlphaWeaver
In the realm of e-ink, I've been loving my Onyx tablet lately. It runs full
Android, has an ePaper display, and has a Wacom stylus for note taking.

Two things I think it's done really well- it has the ability to easily disable
the touch screen so you can pass it around and work with it like it's a real
piece of paper. Additionally, you can change the refresh rate to your
preference, and set it per-app. Higher refresh rates lead to ghosting, but if
I turn the refresh rate high enough, I can watch a YouTube video on ePaper
(!!!) which is crazy to me.

~~~
abraxas
> to easily disable the touch screen

The one feature I wish existed in every smartphone and tablet yet it exists in
none. Perhaps I'm particularly clumsy but the amount of inadvertent
interactions I trigger with my devices is infuriating.

~~~
abtinf
iOS supports this with "Guided Access" mode. It has to be enabled in settings,
then a triple click will turn it off/on. It can have its own passcode as well.
I use it when handing my phone to my kids--start a video, enable guided
access, and not worry about who they might inadvertently call or photo they
might delete.

~~~
abraxas
Doesn't sound all that convenient. In truth I just want a hardware switch.

~~~
gen3
It’s pressing a button three times to enable, three times to disable (with a
passcode).

I would say that’s better because it doesn’t take up more phone real-estate,
and it can’t be disabled by a smart kiddo.

~~~
abraxas
No, it's not like that at all. You have to not just enable it but also select
inaccessible areas of the screen. Every time. And they get greyed out which
makes it unusable for watching videos while disabling inadvertent interactions
(accidental pause/resume/rewind etc).

~~~
gen3
You don’t have to disable any part of the screen. Just hit “start” and you are
locked into the app. I just tested it and the only thing I could not do was
change the volume.

~~~
abraxas
You've missed my point completely. I want the _whole damn screen_ disabled so
I don't inadvertently press pause/skip forward when watching videos for
example. It's exactly the opposite of the behavior you get from "guided
access" thing.

~~~
gen3
I apologize, I misread what you said. In options (bottom left of the screen)
there is a switch to disable touch completely (it also seems to remember it’s
setting for that particular app).

------
otras
> "13.3” ACeP display is suitable for various applications, e.g. Artwork,
> Signage, Retail, etc…"

These various applications sound like static images without fast refresh
requirements. I wonder what the refresh rate is like on these.

I'm still waiting with bated breath for a reliable e-ink computer monitor
comes out with a decent refresh rate. I'd even be happy with just greyscale.

~~~
errantspark
I don't know if anyone is really working on this, the "killer feature" of eInk
is that the display only draws power when it's refreshing. You can drive them
much faster, iirc there have been several proof of concepts using extant
consumer screens going at 60Hz, so it's totally possible. I just don't think
there's much market for it and I bet it stresses the tech in weird ways to run
it that fast. Definitely possible though.

~~~
simias
I'm optimistic because devices like smart phones and smart watches are things
that benefit from having very low idle power when just displaying mostly
static info but require a much faster refresh rate in active use. Being able
to read them easily in bright daylight would also be a great plus. That's a
good market.

Even laptops would probably benefit from it, when you're typing some text or
reading a document you don't need 60fps refresh rate (especially if you can
only refresh portions of the screen). That might save a significant amount of
battery.

~~~
opencl
Non-backlit LCDs already have pretty low idle power though. Normal digital
watches last about a decade on a battery and smartwatches like the Amazfit Bip
last about a month on a charge with the screen always on (and bluetooth, heart
rate monitor, etc which are surely a pretty large fraction of the power draw).
And then the biggest smartwatch manufactures have decided to use OLED and have
2 day battery life for some reason.

------
proee
This has a refresh rate of 25 SECONDS - so it's not going to replace your
black and white kindle display or be useful for dynamic content.

~~~
sukilot
Who remembers browsing the web/usenet on 28800Kbps modems?

~~~
JorgeGT
I think you have an extra K on there! I do remember my 36 kbps modem though,
but the web was optimized for that speed. Webpages had "image warnings"!

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
14.4kbps checking in.

~~~
mc3
A slow modem (or indeed no modem!) is nothing like a 30s refresh rate.

~~~
Avamander
A slow modem meant waiting hours though.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
30 seconds the image load hadn’t gotten to her neck yet.

------
frsandstone
Cached in Archive.org:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200108221349/https://shopkits....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200108221349/https://shopkits.eink.com/product/atelier-
with-13-3%CB%9D-acep-display-ac133ut1-%E3%80%90glass%E3%80%91/)

~~~
kgwxd
Is it archive.org or the original site that went out of it's way to force
"smooth scrolling" on me?

Edit: original site is working now, it's them.

~~~
Zelphyr
There should be a Developers Pledge: I, [state your name], hereby agree upon
pain of death to never do things like force smooth scrolling, override scroll
speed, implement a header that bounces based on scroll direction, etc...

~~~
Xelbair
>override scroll speed

if anyone does that I'll find that person and kill them with dull spoon.

There is nothing more infuriating than that little thing - why would even
anyone do that? what's the use case? why waste dev time on that?

~~~
hirako2000
It's usually not dev, a product guy came up with a stupid idea with enough
cash in hand, dev often oblige and for sure always find a way.

~~~
jjp
And the product guy did it because a sales team came in and said without load
of color and animation then we won't be able to sell the product.

And the sales guy did it because a prospect said we really like all the
features and the price but your product doesn't have as much color and
animation as Acme Inc's product.

And the prospect did it because they actually prefer Acme Inc's product but
they don't like Acme Inc's price so if they are going to have to go with the
second choice product then let's get something done about the colors/animation
before we close the sale.

And then we have the product guy coming back and working out what is the least
or least worst thing we can do to remove the sales resistance, close out the
sale and have everybody paid.

~~~
beaconstudios
what a rare treat on HN, some actual understanding of systemic causality
rather than glib dismissals of the "obvious bad guy" in the scenario.

------
qaq
I want E Ink monitor for programming. It so much easier on the eyes (even if
refresh rate is horrible)

~~~
RL_Quine
I've messed around with this a bunch on some 9" hardware and custom waveforms
to attempt to drive the display as hard as possible, it's almost certainly not
what you want to be using, especially the color ones as they require multiple
passes to actually attain the color. For my Color/Black/White panels that's
normally rendering all the Black + Color as black, and then pulling the black
pigment back as well to expose the Color one (red or yellow).

For the single color ones you can get sub-500ms latency for updating, at the
cost of extreme ghosting. You need to do a lot of changes to the way you think
about graphics to make this a reality. Think of an IRC program for example,
normally every one of them scrolls up text from the bottom but this is
completely a worst case solution for e-ink. To make it work you have to fill
half the screen with text, then add new lines sequentially at the end and only
scroll when you've run out of space. Additions can reasonably be done without
a full refresh, scrolling text just causes it to mud out.

~~~
blululu
This is pretty spot on. I tried something similar a while back and found that
the typing latency was on the order of ~120 ms which made it feel mushy and
led to a lot of errors. The need to rethink graphics to handle refreshes
should not be underestimated. A lot of UI patterns (almost all animations and
transitions) rely on a period refresh rate. In order to make a compelling
experience you need to rework a good bit of the UI.

~~~
zozbot234
> the typing latency was on the order of ~120 ms

You'd just need to adjust to typing "by feel", without needing that instant
feedback from the screen. A typewriter or teletype also has inherently high
"latency", so this fits quite well with that whole "e-paper" approach.

~~~
shantly
Could work like an electric typewriter. Keep the little LCD for the current
line (or maybe 3-5) and let the E-ink be your “paper”.

------
jamilbk
We have great weather here in the Bay Area but are often confined to offices
to get our work done because of sunlight glare on our laptop screens.

I've always thought more people would choose to work outside if their laptop
had a decent e-ink display that performed well in sunlight. Perhaps there'd
even be outdoor co-working spaces complete with gardens, fountains, and grassy
lawns to sprawl onto.

~~~
prennert
I used to have a Toshiba Portege R500 which had a transreflective screen. It
was an LCD that could be used in sunlight because incoming light got reflected
back from behind the screen. The colors suffered a bit, but you could even
switch off the backlight of the screen to save power. Seems to have gone out
of fashion unfortunately..

[http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_notebooks_toshiba_r500.html](http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_notebooks_toshiba_r500.html)

~~~
Polylactic_acid
I really loved that the screen on my pebble watch was always on and the thing
managed a week of screen on time. The colors looked like crap compared to the
newer smart watches but I still feel like something major was lost here.

------
ihuman
What companies make consumer/hobbyist ePaper displays besides Waveshare? I'm
looking for a 5"-7" ePaper display with fast/partial refresh that work with a
Raspberry Pi, but the only one I've found is Waveshare's.

~~~
userbinator
Replacement displays for ebook readers are not that expensive and someone has
figured out how to drive them without the proprietary controller:
[http://essentialscrap.com/eink/](http://essentialscrap.com/eink/)

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Wow those are super cheap.. I'm tempted to pick up one and I don't even have a
use case yet.

------
BeefySwain
My understanding of electronic paper displays is almost entirely founded in
the great Applied Science[0] video about it.

I have to assume that the way that a full color electronic paper display is
done would be vastly different than the method that the 3 color displays work.
Anyone have any insight into this?

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw)

~~~
RL_Quine
The way it's updating here, along with the description, give a good idea.

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

------
m_ke
I was just looking to see if there were any decent ereaders that could handle
research papers in PDF format. I couldn't find anything but I guess there's
hope for one in the future.

~~~
jborichevskiy
Have you looked at the reMarkable tablet?

[https://remarkable.com/](https://remarkable.com/)

Great for reading PDFs as they're displayed at about real size.

~~~
paxys
Looks neat, but $500? Yikes.

~~~
BlueTemplar
How is that expensive ? Unless you expect to only use it very rarely ?

~~~
paxys
While the writing feature may be good, it offers a very tiny subset of overall
functionality than an iPad while being the same price.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Lack of color e-ink (even if only in 4 tones) is probably the only thing that
is keeping me from ditching using lots and lots of paper. Can't wait for one,
even if it's much more expensive than an iPad (which, BTW, always seemed to be
a toy to me, but I hear that they got better...)

------
zhoujianfu
I really want somebody to use one of these to make a picture frame you hang on
the wall with no power cable.. just a spot in the frame for AA batteries, and
some kind of low power Bluetooth connection to your phone to update the
picture via an app.

------
seltzered_
The most interesting new-old startup in this space the past couple years is
clearInk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjJ2-cdhwMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjJ2-cdhwMQ)

..but they haven't shipped anything yet AFAIK. And no idea how electronics/etc
is hidden around their demo frames.

~~~
vanderZwan
They state they are targeting education in developing markets, so that sounds
like they (believe they) have a way to scale this and make it very affordable.

~~~
seltzered_
Eh, I'll believe it when I see it. Saying this from a perspective of:

\- Usually reading seeing what's new in this space every year. Wrote my last
comment in
[https://lobste.rs/s/ahy28r/remarkable_perfect_tablet_for_aca...](https://lobste.rs/s/ahy28r/remarkable_perfect_tablet_for_academics#c_s83pee)
.

\- Taking some of the "developing markets" speech with a grain of "geek
heresy" salt. It's out of my domain, but from what I've heard there's been a
problem where technology in education has been rushed to as a cost-savings
mechanism yet in practice the content / usability issues make the education
experience worse.

------
mwexler
Love the idea of these, after multiple botched attempts to deliver over the
last decade. But refresh rate was always the killer for most applications.
While I don't expect it to be a gaming monitor, any news on whether the
refresh rate has improved? As a baseline, some companies are getting 7.5 fps
with greyscale.

------
stiray
At this price just doesnt matter what size of display is or anything else. It
is like selling toothpicks for 10 dollars. Yes they are usefull, yes I would
like to have them, but the price is so overblown that I would feel stupid if I
would buy it.

Eink is a typical case where instead of scaling up, they try to get rich by
much too expensive product. This is a maximum stupidity as instead anyone
having their product in their home, they will also loose the ebook market over
time.

The second option, the technology is just not there yet and they have problems
manufacturing it in large quantities.

------
mike-cardwell
I had this idea, probably more than 10 years ago now, to have an e-ink display
on my wall which does nothing other than show me my calendar. Every couple of
years I go hunting for a simple and affordable display that's at least 13
inches, but preferably larger. I don't even care if it's colour or not.

The closest I can find is those picture frames that people have. But to auto
update them over the network, they always seem to require the use of some
crappy online intermediary. And they're always way more expensive than they
should be.

~~~
hmottestad
I turned my old ebook into a weather and subway screen:
[https://fluffyelephant.com/2015/12/reuse-my-ebook-
reader/](https://fluffyelephant.com/2015/12/reuse-my-ebook-reader/)

Any ebook that can be hacked to run "regular" android will do the job, since
you will need to turn off the auto-sleep settings. I then used the stock
browser to show a simple webpage with some small javascript. Benefit of using
the stock browser was that sony had implemented partial refresh...so when the
subway times update every 10 seconds it doesn't cause a full screen refresh.

Wifi needs to be rock solid, had quite a few problems with my old
linksys....no problems since I switched to unifi.

------
megous
If anyone wants to play with bw e-ink displays in the form of e-book reader
you easily can. I've ported mainline Linux to PocketBook Touch Lux 3 and I'm
now playing with making userspace apps. You can just pick the kernel load it
to uSD card, put it in the device and you'll be able to boot Arch Linux or
whatever and play around.

[http://linux-sunxi.org/PocketBook_Touch_Lux_3](http://linux-
sunxi.org/PocketBook_Touch_Lux_3)

~~~
24gttghh
Where does one purchase this e-ink reader? I can't find them anywhere, and
their own website link for it seems broken.

~~~
megous
This one is not manufactured anymore, it was replaced with Touch Lux 4. (it's
probably almost the same thing inside, with very small differences, most of
their eink readers are A13 based, even some of the expensive hi-res ones).

You can buy it second hand, or with a broken display and replace the display
(that's what I did).

------
gnicholas
I have looked into low-power color displays and I think their competitor [1]
is currently better positioned. My understanding is their eink has somewhat
better light transmission, but their refresh rate is much, much slower than
the competition. I'm looking forward to seeing the products made from these
faster displays, which I believe are coming later this year.

1:
[https://www.clearinkdisplays.com/solutions](https://www.clearinkdisplays.com/solutions)

------
kepano
The progress towards digital paper has been really slow. Sometimes I wonder if
there is an alternate timeline in which we pursued eink-like displays earlier
on. It would be amazing to watch a movie on this kind of display if the
refresh rate could permit it. I wrote about this on my blog
[http://stephanango.com/the-elusiveness-of-digital-
paper](http://stephanango.com/the-elusiveness-of-digital-paper)

------
gnicholas
Site isn’t loading for me. Am I the only one?

~~~
egypturnash
I got an nginx error after a long wait, I think it is being hugged to death.

Here's an archive.org link:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20200108221349/https://shopkits.e...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200108221349/https://shopkits.eink.com/product/atelier-
with-13-3˝-acep-display-ac133ut1-【glass】/)

~~~
thebitguru
Lol, I have never heard it put this say, but seems exactly right: "hugged to
death"! =D

------
sytelus
Any details on how they made this work? How much power does it draw? This
could have a tremendous impact. You can basically replace every surface with
the programmable display, assuming mass-manufactured cost savings. Walls on
your home or office, dining table, the exterior of the car!

------
elric
I've long thought that it would be great to replace all kinds of signage wit
eInk. Time tables on public transport, any kind of announcement that's
typically printed on paper,... There's lots of stuff with a low refresh rate
(sometimes in the order of months) that could benefit from being easier to
update, but that isn't worth replacing by power hungry, overly bright, hard to
read LCDs. Hell, there are a lot of cases where LCDs are used wher eInk would
be a much better fit. Things like meeting room reservation screens, for
instance.

With largeish colour displays, maybe that'll all finally become a reality.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Meeting room reservation screens should work well with even low-power
transflective LCDs ?

------
krick
This is great. I was dreaming about large full colour e-reader since like 10
years ago, when I bought my first PocketBook. Now, TBH, I'm kinda used to
reading on regular displays, mostly since I carry my phone all day long
anyway. But if there will be a good reader like that I'm pretty sure I'll buy
it. If nothing else, being usable without a daily recharge is huge by modern
standards. It's virtually impossible to buy anything now that can last for a
couple of days without recharging anymore.

Not sure about glass though.

------
cordite
How does long term UV exposure (sunlight) affect pigments in a product like
this? It seems like a cool idea for large format signs, but how long until
everything looks like burnt green-blue?

~~~
BlueTemplar
Well, there are lots of pigments out there available that hold well to long-
term UV exposure... Even if you're talking decades, I don't think that metal-
based pigments uv-degrade easily ?

------
op00to
This would be awesome for comic books.

~~~
dsr_
Any 10+inch color LCD display of 250dpi or higher works well for comic books.
It turns out that if you make a tablet capable of showing HD video at 60fps,
it can show you comic book pages quite well.

I use an Amazon Kindle Fire Ow It Burns HD10 for this, because it's at the
minimum intersection of suitable hardware and price.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
I think the Kindle Fire makes you jump through hoops to get apps via the
Google Play store though and as I understand it, you need to do that in order
to get Marvel Unlimited on there, which is something many people really want
to have on their comics-reading device.

~~~
dsr_
I think I rooted that sucker before installing everything I wanted. I don't
think it's a suitable device for everyone.

------
OscarCunningham
I've been waiting for something like this to use as a digital photo frame. It
lets you have see all your photos without having it glowing at you when you go
to bed.

------
tombert
God this would be great if we could get an Android color e-ink reader released
so I could do Safari Books. The O'Reilly thing is a pretty good deal if you're
a serial-tech-book-reader like I am, but I absolutely hate reading off the
computer screen or my iPhone, but I don't mind reading regular text off my
Kindle.

I know that there's the Onyx Boox Android thing, but that's only black and
white, and technical books are occasionally in color.

------
est
I still wonders what happens to the MEMS display Apple bought from Qualcomm

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/15/apple-has-
taken-o...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/15/apple-has-taken-over-
qualcomms-imod-mirasol-display-lab-in-taiwan)

------
awinter-py
fwiw the sony letter-size monochrome e-reader is amazing

reading PDFs on a device that doesn't burn out your eyes and can't receive
notifications or produce audio is like a digital detox

all my favorite devices recently are low- and no-connection (voice memo,
yubikey) and work fast with limited UX

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passwordds
This is the imitation of the Sony digital paper version ??? Similar price tags
too.

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errantspark
Looks like fun! Perhaps another thing to add to my box of barely used devkits.
I've clicked through their site but I'm not seeing a real data sheet or any
information about the gamut etc. Did I just miss it?

~~~
jlangemeier
Nope you haven't missed anything, their user manual for it is very sparse (to
put it nicely). At least it comes with a pinout? Another user was saying ~25
second refresh rates.

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Noxmiles
"$799.00 (Tax excl.)" it's probably not the for companies buying thousands of
them. But what would you expect is the price?

End user products with this display probably are way over 1000 or 2000 USD.

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beowulfey
Holy shit, they finally did it. I interviewed for a coop with eInk back in
2009-2010 and they had mentioned they were working on full color back then.
Very happy to hear they finally got there.

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rrauenza
I keep wishing for a large enough display I could use it as a digital picture
frame. I was looking at eink's offerings just yesterday after hearing about
Lenovo's new 21" frame.

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kodachi
If you wanna help hack the kindle: [http://fread.ink/](http://fread.ink/)
Reminds me that my Kindle has been going strong for 7 years.

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ThrowawayR2
> " _... Glass..._ "

Oof, that brings back a couple of unfond memories of cracked displays in the
early ebook reader era. Hope they are able to develop a plastic substrate
version.

~~~
bufbupa
Looks like it may be coming soon: "The new printing process alleviates the
need for a glass-based CFA"
[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200107005530/en/](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200107005530/en/)

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chansiky
Its about time. Can't wait to get one. Hopefully it would only be like another
10 years before you can watch video on one of these.

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npongratz
It's 4:3! 1600×1200, 285.80mm (W) × 213.65mm (H). I keep looking for 4:3 non-
CRT displays; what a pleasant surprise.

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z3t4
Make something 16 inches and lightweight. So that you can make it display an
actual A4 "paper" and hold it in your hand.

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mavsman
Hopefully we'll soon live in a world with solar powered electronics that use
foldable e-ink displays.

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imhoguy
I would love to have eink as my main monitor. I am sick of stareing to LED-
backlit screens for 9/5.

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solarkraft
It would be amazing if monochrome 13,3" e-ink displays would go on sale at an
affordable price some day.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Aren't they ? What would be "affordable" for you ?

~~~
solarkraft
I think I'd be willing to pay about 230€ for the screen. Maybe 300-350€ for a
device with a free operating system and very good UX (but I wouldn't be afraid
of building that myself).

~~~
BlueTemplar
Make that 23€ instead :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21997599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21997599)

EDIT : Oops, that's for 6"... For 13" it seems to start at $450 ? :/
[https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=13.3%22+e-ink...](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=13.3%22+e-ink&LH_TitleDesc=0&_sop=15)

Would it be practical to jury-rig four 6" together ??

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jalgos_eminator
Could not find a refresh rate in the documentation, or how many colors it can
create. I also saw something about it having to compensate for temperature
with 7 different maps from 0°-50°C. You can see it on page 8 of the User
Manual.

~~~
bufbupa
Per below vid, Refresh time: ~25 seconds Colors: 32,000

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

~~~
mwambua
Do they actually mean 32768 colors?

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BlueTemplar
Probably just 3 colors, 5 bits of brightness levels per color (aka "16-bit").

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solarkraft
While it's very cool that this is now possible, I think this has almost no use
case. A business that is able to afford e-ink's high prices could also buy an
LCD/OLED, which could also show motion and much better colors.

~~~
htk
E-ink advantage is not about price/motion/colors. Is about how close it is
with printed paper, where external light like the Sun helps the visibility.
It’s also interesting regarding energy requirements, as you can keep the image
displayed without the need of power.

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m712
Seems like the site is suffering from the Slashdot effect.

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Rainymood
All I want is an e-ink display for my monitor!

