
ReMarkable MicroSD (2019) - devnonymous
http://www.davisr.me/projects/remarkable-microsd/
======
MayeulC
I'm tempted to do just this, but I don't really need the extra capacity just
yet. I might wait for a few people to perfect the technique. I hope there's
going to be a write-up of the different attempts on the remarkable wiki [1]

Since the remarkable has a micro USB port, does anyone know if it supports OTG
devices?

It's such an awesome device. 90% of its awesomeness comes from the fact that
they respect the GPLv3 license and give you root access to it trough ssh out-
of-the-box (random password and requires activating it).

If I get enough time on my hands, I'm probably going to port postmarketOS on
it.

[1]
[https://remarkablewiki.com/tips/start](https://remarkablewiki.com/tips/start)

~~~
joezydeco
From looking at the board, it looks like it's mostly copied from the iMX6
reference design and Hobbitboard.

The iMX supports an OTG port in it's stage 0 ROM for device recovery, and it
can be lit up as a USB gadget. It's just a question if it's padded out on the
PCB. Seems like there's a number of pogo pin pads near the edge of the board
and it's probably in there somewhere.

~~~
jschwartzi
Yeah I actually used this years ago on a Sabre Lite clone that I bricked on my
very first embedded Linux project.

------
castratikron
Oh, man. I'm surprised that card works at all with that wiring. High speed
single ended signaling does not do well off-board. Have you done any kind of
integrity testing, like writing a GB to the disk and then reading the
checksum?

If anyone is looking to do this mod, at least consider using a shielded ribbon
cable like so:

[https://www.amazon.com/LANMU-Extension-Flexible-Monoprice-
Ra...](https://www.amazon.com/LANMU-Extension-Flexible-Monoprice-
Raspberry/dp/B01D9JIUU0)

~~~
castratikron
I can't understand the negative sentiment in these replies. A ribbon cable is
objectively a better design choice. If someone is attempting this mod
themselves why would they _not_ pick the best choice? We're all engineers,
here, right? Do you all prefer to drive without wearing a seat belt as well?

~~~
xodice
I think people were more put off by your amazement that it worked at all (and
the "tone" which went with it), when there is no reason for it considering the
original write-up has no issues with its implementation. Of course use what
makes your project work the best, but don't go monster cable level on parts
that need not.

------
ad404b8a372f2b9
Amazing work, I'm going to try and replicate it with mine. The ReMarkable has
an amazing writing-feel and the software is just enough to fulfill its core
function but it could be so so much more. Disappointingly the company doesn't
want to open-source their code and isn't focused on the software side of their
product so we're left to patch the binaries ourselves at a snail's pace. On
the plus side it's given me an excuse to up my Ghidra skills.

Another thing I've I've noticed is that the userbase is highly skilled, people
on the subreddit and discord are constantly publishing hacks and patches and
discussing customization options. It's a very cool community.

~~~
jonahbenton
Pointer to the discord?

~~~
ad404b8a372f2b9
[https://discord.gg/JSSGnFY](https://discord.gg/JSSGnFY)

Also available in the sidebar of the subreddit
([https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/)),
in case the invite expires.

------
nudpiedo
ReMarkable is one of the most exciting Linux eInk tablets out there.

I am still waiting for my ReMarkable 2 preorder since it got with some covid
delay, I hope it will be easy to develop for it since it does include a USB-C
and an Accessory port.

~~~
Waterfall
How many Linux eink tablets or tablets with Linux are out there? I'm not being
sarcastic I don't know of any other ones unless you count Android as linux and
I don't even know if there are any aside from the pine tablet and I dont think
it's out yet either.

~~~
jabirali
If you don't count Android, I'm not sure there are any? Most eink tablets have
a user interface that is more similar to smartphones than computers. Thus,
most people won't need to run GNU coreutils, Gnome, or other parts of an
average Linux desktop. If you do count Android, there are several; my Onyx
Boox for instance runs Android, and can thus use regular smartphone apps for
e.g. file syncing.

~~~
swebs
There's the PineTab, but its still in limited production runs

[https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-
tablet](https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet)

~~~
codetrotter
Doesn’t look like eInk. Description says “HD IPS capacitive touchscreen”.

~~~
swebs
Whoops, I thought it was asking for Linux tablets in general.

------
smcleod
This is awesome!

I have a ReMarkable and really love it, mainly for taking it to meetings where
I felt it was inapropriate to be stuck on a laptop infront of other people, it
just feels more natural making notes on it as if I had paper and with the low
latency it's great to write on.

I haven't had issues with the internal storage not being enough - but if I do,
this is really interesting and I hope the hacker community around ReMarkable
stays vibrant as it's such an interesting device.

~~~
yourapostasy
There is a one-star review on Amazon [1] from 2018 talking about losing data,
has that been addressed?

Another two-star review also from 2018 [2] talking about exported notes only
being raster pictures instead of PDF (even more ideal is time-series encoded
vector data inside the PDF as a side-channel that can be read back out so
other software can perform their own post-capture analysis upon the user's
interaction via the pen/eraser with raw pressure, tilt, coordinate, tip type,
_etc._ data). But it looks like PDF now is possible, and the exporting
problems can be worked around [3]?

How stable have you and others found the software in 2020 for sharing back out
PDF annotations and raw "use it as a notepad"?

[1] [https://smile.amazon.com/gp/customer-
reviews/R1RTYZLCSJR76H/...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/customer-
reviews/R1RTYZLCSJR76H/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B077NSWLH2)

[2] [https://smile.amazon.com/gp/customer-
reviews/R3FGY3FH3XW6OT/...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/customer-
reviews/R3FGY3FH3XW6OT/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B077NSWLH2)

[3]
[http://lisaschwetlick.de/blog/2018/03/25/reMarkable/](http://lisaschwetlick.de/blog/2018/03/25/reMarkable/)

~~~
tonyhb
Amazon reviews are not bug boards.

A one star review from 2018 is an anecdote that seems well out of the norm. I
wouldn't draw too much from a single 2.5 year old review with very few similar
experiences; especially when everyone else says the product is solid.

------
martopix
Allow me a slight OT, I've just finished cleaning up a simple tool for syncing
Zotero with your reMarkable and would love some feedback:
[https://github.com/martinosorb/zoteroRemarkable](https://github.com/martinosorb/zoteroRemarkable)

Note that this is a fork of previous work from Oscar Morrison, no copyright
infringement intended (I have contacted him).

------
davidhyde
I'd like to buy their v2.0 model but I was turned away by their up sell
tactics. You want a pen that can also erase? - Of course you do and it doesn't
cost them anything extra. Another 50 bucks please (marked down from 100 so you
think its a deal). The default cover it comes with is comically inadequate
because a quarter of the device sticks out. Want a cover that covers the
entire screen? 80 bucks please.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I personally felt pretty happy to pay them more for more functionality. It
didn’t feel like upselling to me at all, it felt more like they are a “little
guy” doing limited manufacturing of a tablet in a crowded market, and they
have to be really careful about not missing monetization opportunities that a
lot of their target customers (people for whom the overall price of the device
and all the add ons is pretty trivial) would be fine with.

It’s not like they are generating some insane profit margin on these things.

~~~
mosselman
You can get a normal stylus for $0.36 on aliexpress. I know these ReMarkable
are probably not the same, but they aren't $99.64 or $49.64 more complex than
a stylus from aliexpress. So the margin is probably pretty big. Which is OK,
you don' t have the right to use a cheap ReMarkable product or something, but
lets not pretend they are doing people any favours by 'letting' them buy their
things. They are a company that wants to make a profit, good for them.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
$49 seems like a perfectly low price for a well designed stylus for a limited
manufactured tablet. I don’t see any sense in which it’s useful or fair to
compare that with $0.36 commodity stylus mass manufactured for commodity
tablets.

~~~
mosselman
I was just highlighting that ReMarkable isn’t a charity and they don’t need to
be.

------
irjustin
This is super cool. Love the hacking mentality. I fantasize about owning one
of these.

Used to go into meetings where a key member had one and would take notes on
it. To me, he looked so damn cool.

But alas, it's not for me - I tried moleskins and other things, but I always
get frustrated at writing and I never looked back at any notes I took.

~~~
tweedledee
For me it’s the process of writing them that is important. I normally throw
out my notes not long after writing them.

~~~
pidg
I believe there is evidence that the action of writing by hand forms memories
more strongly.

Since all my meetings are video calls now, I've reverted to writing notes,
simply because I can't feign concentration on the call and type into a
different window at the same time.

I finish my days surrounded by scraps of paper to be typed up. Can't wait for
my ReMarkable 2 to arrive.

~~~
throwanem
I keep my notes in notebooks and never need to bother typing them up - with
numbered pages, I can reference them from my notes file, and with my notes
file split into dated sections, I can reference the other way too. And I look
after my notebooks, so losing my paper notes isn't all that much more likely
than losing my laptop, anyway.

I used to try to take meeting notes electronically, with a laptop or an iPad
or whatever. Paper turns out to just work a lot better, for me at least. It
doesn't take me out of the flow of a discussion the way dealing with a
computer does, I never have battery problems, and I think there's really
something to the idea that the process of writing by hand helps fix memories
in a way that typing doesn't.

 _edit:_ I can also vouch for the value of fountain pens in making the
_process_ of writing pleasant in its own right. A well-designed pen requires
only the pressure of its own weight under gravity to deposit ink reliably;
much of learning how to write with such a pen is thus _unlearning_ the
forcible hand required to use more conventional writing instruments, with the
very pleasant side effect of making finger aches and hand cramps largely a
thing of the past. For the same reason, most people find their handwriting to
improve as a result of the switch - without the need to ram the nib into the
paper just to get a line at all, you find yourself more able to write neatly
without having to overcontrol the way you do with a pencil, ballpoint, or even
a rollerball. Developing a beautiful, personal hand is a pleasure all its own,
and nothing else I've ever tried has helped me do that nearly as well as using
a fountain pen has. And, with a little practice, taking notes quickly is
easier than ever before, too - it's amazing how much of a difference it makes
when your hand doesn't start to hurt after just a page or two!

It's a practice I'm happy to recommend, and not at all difficult to start; a
Pilot Metropolitan in medium or fine should run you somewhere between $12 and
$20, with Pilot Namiki replacement cartridges usually about 50 cents each in
packs of six or twelve, and almost any Moleskine-type notebook will do. That's
where I started, and while I've since moved on to a system more tailored to my
specific purposes, that's definitely the starting point I'd recommend as an
inexpensive way to get a sense of fountain pens' strengths and weaknesses in
general.

As I think must be very evident by now, I'm happy to talk about this stuff!
It's become a bit of a hobby in its own right for me, so if you have
questions, feel free to hit me up and I'll do my best to give useful answers.

~~~
xaqfox
Being able to write left handed without making ink smudges is a big reason why
I now prefer digital notes. G2 gel ink is mostly okay, but I think fountain
pens are out of the question for most left handers.

~~~
samatman
There's a method for left handed writing which avoids this problem, without
wrist strain: simply holding the page at 90 degrees, and writing vertically.

Alas, I wasn't taught it while neuroplastic, and have been unable to get the
hang of it. I regret that my teachers were clueless about the peculiarities of
lefthandedness, but at least I'm not of the era when it would have been beaten
out of me.

------
eigenvalue
I preordered the Remarkable 2 and I’m excited to get it. I’m a bit surprised
by everyone here talking about how they use it for note taking, because my
entire purpose for getting one is to read and annotate pdf files with it. Does
it do a good job for this compared to an iPad (which I use currently with
iAnnotate)? Someone mentioned that the processor is too slow to render pdf
pages quickly enough. Is this true only for high resolution rasterized PDFs or
also for native vectorized ones? Hopefully the new version has a faster chip.

~~~
johnday
In the case of ReMarkable 1, there are almost no issues with vectorised PDFs -
when changing pages the screen update is usually the limiting factor, and
that's relatively quick. For rasters, though, it does take a while to render
out (>1 second for particularly complex pages). I think this is mostly a
software limitation - some time is given over to drawing and saving the small
thumbnail.

------
Waterfall
This reminds me of the hacking community of the Amazon Kindle. The firmware
developers said they could have blocked it out harder but didn't because they
didn't want to cripple the device for hackers. Apparently the Kindles run
awesome windows manager.

I used to be into eink displays but the contrast ratio is too low and it looks
too blurry for me so I went back to screens. Eye strain was the first reason
they said eink was good for eye strain. Turns out it's the DPI or PPI, so
essentially an iPad with retina is less eye strain. I use AMOLED to read since
I read that the wavelengths of blue light also are bad.

~~~
Nursie
It's not DPI or PPI for me, the lack of a backlight and the finish on eInk
seems to be the thing.

I'm not saying it's that way for everyone, but if I'm going to be reading for
a while then my kindle paperwhite is much better for my eyes than any backlit
screen I've used.

~~~
Waterfall
That's what the research says. It is not an opinion of mine. Eye strain may
also be defined differently. [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
conditions/eyestrain/sym...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
conditions/eyestrain/symptoms-causes/syc-20372397) I have had success with
OLED screens with black backgrounds and red font

~~~
Nursie
The page you linked doesn't mention PPI or DPI at all. From what I can see
from a quick search, viewing low-res images strains the eyes but I'm not sure
how that relates to pure text.

It also specifically mentions glare and reflection being part of the problem,
something eInk displays are better at than normal displays IMHO, because they
don't project light at your eyes.

Do you have any links to "the science" here? Because a quick search seems to
pull up a few things supporting less eyestrain from eInk than other screens,
regardless of resolution. For example -
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24386252/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24386252/)

~~~
Waterfall
Low res rendered on a low DPI/PPI screen causes your eyes to strain. I will
link you later.

~~~
Nursie
Please do!

I hope that whatever you link to takes into account different screen
technologies too - I can understand that it makes a difference on back-lit LCD
monitors, but I'm going to take more convincing that the same necessarily
applies to eInk tablets, as that would contradict personal experience as well
as other material I've seen.

------
Pyrodogg
Still waiting for my Remarkable 2 to arrive (now sometime in October). So
frustrating to keep getting so many ads for it.

~~~
lxchase
In the same boat as well. I'm starting to think to file a chargeback as I
gather they are using preorder money to fund advertising like a Ponzi Scheme.

~~~
hoistbypetard
Why would you need to file a chargeback? They say they'll give you a refund
any time. Have you asked for one and been refused?

~~~
throwanem
If you haven't, there's not much point to filing a chargeback; that'll be
grounds for the acquirer to reject it, and your issuer probably will tell you
to ask for a refund first before they'll file.

------
vinniejames
Are folks generally happy with the tablet? I just pre-ordered the new one!

~~~
klauserc
I have a first-gen ReMarkable and I love it.

I use it mostly to take notes in meetings and as a scratch pad. The small
vertical separation between the surface and the screen and the replaceable
tips make it feel _very_ close to writing on real paper.

For PDFs, I found the first-gen processor to be too slow to be practical. I
doubt this has improved much.

The e-Ink screen can make flipping through past notes a bit of a pain. For
reading/later reference, I prefer opening the notes on a real computer via the
desktop app/cloud sync.

I did not order the ReMarkable 2 because I felt the upgrades were not worth
the price. While I would love to have an eraser tip and USB-C, it _is_ still a
very expensive gadget.

------
ezoe
He did it for "without wearing out the internal eMMC". Does it wear out that
fast?

~~~
float4
I'd say it's very unlikely. In super cheap eMMC the controller usually has the
largest chance of dying early, but a proper 8GB eMMC modules really isn't that
expensive, so I don't think they saved money there.

If the controller doesn't die, then the next reliability issue for your eMMC
module is probably NAND wear. The ReMarkable has an 8GB eMMC module. Such a
module can probably manage at least 1TB TBW (Total Bytes Written), and you
won't reach that too quickly: the OS will eat a significant chunk of that 1TB,
but apart from that all you do on this device is reading, writing and drawing.
Those tasks do not require many program/erase cycles on the NAND at all, so
I'd say it would take many years before you've worn out the NAND blocks.

~~~
cptskippy
> In super cheap eMMC the controller usually has the largest chance of dying
> early

Why is that? One would assume the NAND was the most likely point of failure.

~~~
monocasa
On SD Cards at least, I've seen the software bugs in the FTL lose track of
sectors more often when I've had the tooling to tell the difference. There's
some terrible code in those things.

~~~
cptskippy
I had heard that SD cards were bad but I was under the impression eMMC was in
a completely different class.

------
heroin01
> I have not yet determined what melts this glue, or how to “properly” take
> the back off.

One trick is to heat the device to 60-70°C. You can use heated bed of a 3D
printer.

------
Teknoman117
I'd love it if someone managed to reverse engineer the Remarkable such that we
could run our own Linux distro on it with access to all the hardware.

The Remarkable is an awesome device, but it's so very limited by the software.
It's extremely difficult to use it in a enterprise scenario due to lack of at
rest encryption (on device) and no (official) private cloud options.

------
rowanG077
I saw the remarkable before and thought it was cool. But now that I know it
runs Linux and we have full acces it's a must buy.

~~~
bajsejohannes
One really cool thing about it is that you can ssh to it over USB. No setup or
installation, just find the IP-address in on the tablet and connect.

------
cdbattags
ReMarkable should hire this person and make a "v2.1".

------
lpcam33
Regarding closing the case with glue, I have an iPod Classic 5Gen and there
are a lot of mod's but I don't see one that change the case to be easily open.
Remarkable don't apply to this because they are extremely thin but it should
be a good feature to have in other devices.

------
guyzero
Having cracked e-ink displays by looking at them wrong, this person is a lot
braver than I am.

------
achn
Can the remarkable tablet (or 2nd gen) be used as a epaper monitor? I would
love to be able to code on an epaper screen, even if only in a simple text
editor with minimal visual change/animation.

~~~
simonbarker87
I would pay a silly sum of money for an eInk laptop so I can code outside in
the sun. We get so little sun here in the UK that my side project productivity
plummets in good weather because I was to sit out and enjoy it. It doesn’t
need to have a high refresh rate, it just has to be able to display text and
browser the internet in some semblance of reasonable.

~~~
feteru
What do you think is the lowest acceptable refresh rate to make typing feel
smooth? If you're a 60wpm typer, that'd be 60hz to display every character as
you type it, might feel disjointed otherwise.

~~~
IceyEC
60 wpm == 1 hz

~~~
sangnoir
1 hz per word - but people type a character at a time. A word per second isn't
great.

------
chrisweekly
Increasingly stoked I put in my order for a ReMarkable 2 (November batch),
it'll be my first such device.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I'm waiting for v3. Version 3 is always the best version of anything ;)

