I'm still waiting for widely available and affordable e-ink displays for tinkerers. I'd love to put one onto a Raspberry Pi to show some information, but it's just too expensive right now.
I just bought an InkPlate. It's a recycled Kindle display on a board with an Arduino, Wifi, SD slot, and even a couple of capacitive touch spots on the board for interaction. Can be programmed in C or MicroPython, or switched into "peripheral mode" (I might have gotten that name wrong) and glommed onto a Pi or whatever.
The larger the display, the more expensive it is, but that's not unusual, and LCDs aren't much different in price until you start to get to really large e-ink panels. (Given the depth of the LCD market, I'm sure you can find unusually cheap panels somewhere... the point remains. The prices aren't that bad these days for e-ink.)
For that size screen, yes. I think roughly $1-3/screen for that size is good. That’s what a small OLED screen will run you at any kind of volume. For $20 I would want something on the order of 6x8”. For $35 a 20” diagonal panel.
Granted you linked to Adafruit which is wonderful for their educational resources and easy to use high quality components, but that’s not where I would source parts for a project unless they had something truly unique or I was buying it for a newbie who could use the support they provide (bought some Arduino stuff from them recently for my kids).
If you negotiate directly with manufacturers, or order direct from china, I'm certain both of these would be much cheaper, but I'm talking about US retail prices and how LCD and E-Ink are very similarly priced at this level.
> but that’s not where I would source parts for a project unless they had something truly unique
I can link you to other retailers who charge very similar prices. Direct from china is different, and similarly, you can find these e-ink displays for cheaper on aliexpress and similar. That's irrelevant to the discussion.
$20 is fine for this. We're not (as far as I'm aware) talking about someone making a product to sell in bulk on kickstarter. We're talking about buying one to use at home.
This is the price you’d pay if you are willing to wait. I rarely need just one component and 5 displays at $20 is serious. If you want to sell a device, a $20 can easily kill your profit margin.
I am talking about direct from China and potentially selling products because if you just limit the discussion to single component hobby use then no amount is really too high. Why not $40? $80? You only need one, right?
I literally already said you can pay less on aliexpress, and the same absolutely applies to e-ink.
If you're making a point, I can't figure out what it is. This is way off topic.
EDIT: you have edited in some more relevant points, but there definitely is a price that's too high. If you had to pair a $35 computer with a $100 display, most people would absolutely find that to be too much in this hobby context. They would have to either have a lot of money, or a lot of passion for a particular project in order to justify that. Most people will find $20 to be reasonable.
$20 for the LCD is one component among many that you need to build a hobby project. It adds up quick if you pay retail like that. Meanwhile, if you can reduce that by an order of magnitude, the number of projects that will take advantage of it will increase. As for hobbyist projects vs commercial products, many hobbyists have created businesses from their projects, and that goes from woodworking to baking to electronics. Seems like 6-7 years ago there was a lot of excitement around the idea of "desktop manufacturing" and realizing the promise of 3D printing for small batch electronics. Maybe that was a little early in the hype cycle but I very much would like to see this sort of thing take off. Every $ counts in making that a realistic possibility.
I think you have a point, that Adafruit isn't trying to sell you the raw screen and compete with component suppliers.
I think of it more as a hobby screen kit. The $20 dollar one is on a custom board that interfaces with adafruits existing kits (Raspberry pi or "StemmaQT interfaces). They even supply "Circuit python" libraries to drive the thing, which is a their value add.
If you were mass manufacturing a screen for your custom board you'd order the part direct, but for a quick hobby project screen its not completely crazy.
Having worked for a company that had custom electronics hardware built with components, certainly we ordered direct from Chinese suppliers, it was much cheaper (with the associated lead times).
