Hi, Ursa from Visionect here, the company powering the Sydney traffic signs. To answer your question: electronic paper technology is 99% more power efficient than LCD (uses energy only when changing content). In many applications, it can also prove to be as much as four times more reliable than LCD.
> Hi, Ursa from Visionect here, the company powering the Sydney traffic signs.
You're also the poster of the article which is an ad from your company.
> In many applications, it can also prove to be as much as four times more reliable than LCD.
That's a really vague answer. Are you saying your solar powered road side display panels are 4 times more reliable than the LCD panels used with everything else? Could you share some data with us?
Life expectancy of LCD/LEDs depends greatly on the type (consumer would die fairly quickly in outdoor scenarios) and I'm sure one could build an LCD/LED display that will last 4 years outdoors. It's hard to deploy such LCD/LED sign (you require power and lots of it to be visible in sunlight) but it's possible.
The important thing here is that this first production outdoor deployment of EPD signs in the world works for for years without any serious problems which confirms that e-paper is a viable technology for outdoor deployments. There was a lot of skepticism back in 2013 if this is at all possible.
> It's hard to deploy such LCD/LED sign (you require power and lots of it to be visible in sunlight) but it's possible.
What? Most of the signboards you see on the road are LED signboards. You know the ones we have in freezing winter or in blazing summer! So not only is it possible, it's what's commonly done.
> The important thing here is that this first production outdoor deployment
There's very little data provided in the article, no real accurate data on what kind of environmental conditions were experienced by the devices. Seems like a puff piece.
The contrast on those looks really bad compared to the normal ultra high contrast color schemes used in road signs. I'm not sure that reliability is more important than visibility.
Hi, the article is back up. No worries, you're right, the tech is perfectly safe for the road - in traffic signs and in many other applications (www.visionect.com/blog/electronic-paper-truck-displays). So many exciting projects yet to come!
The site was up a few minutes ago, I bet somebody thought they were getting DDoS'ed and took it down.
Also normal road signs use retro reflective spheres mixed into the paint to increase brightness at night, not sure if those can be carried over to e-ink displays?
What is really important is the value that is provided to the city and end users - you get up to deliver information to your commuters in real time. This is hard/impossible to do if you need to deploy LCD signs that require massive roadworks to connect to power.
When it comes to deploying outdoor signs the price of a sign is the least of your worries when it comes to TCO. It's more about how much does it cost to deploy and how much does it cost to manage the signs. Digital signs also give you the ability to update information more often.
Given the positive feedback from the end customer and Mercury Innovation (http://www.mercuryinnovation.com.au/) that took our platform and built the traffic sign (we're not the ones selling the end product) I'd say that TCO is in favor of e-paper traffic signs.
Couple of questions. How are they powered (solar?). If someone were to get a ticket and protest that the sign changed after they had parked, what process is in place to allow them to review the content record for that sign?
They are powered with solar. The technology doesn't change the other problem - they changed the signs previously by updating the content manually (replacing the plates). I'm guessing they have this sorted out.
I haven't seen the signs used in Sydney for anything except clearways, as pictured in the article. The contrast isn't great but you don't really need high-vis for no-stopping-or-we-tow-you signs.
Judging by their posts on this page, the company that manufactures the signs is clearly hooked up to an IV drip of their own koolaid. Still, for this particular application (temporary parking restrictions) e-paper is much better than the previous solution, which was to print plastic inserts and drive around the city sliding them into tracks on the signs.
How many HN id's do you have dude?
I'm counting at least 3 on this thread alone; luka-birsa, Ursa83 and esteradezelak. I get that you want to put your ad on HN but atroturfing us isn't going to help you.
I would love to have an unadorned A3 or larger e-Ink device to mount on the wall next to my front door for a smart calendar/weather/to-do.
I also really, really want an A4 sized eReader but for reasons completely beyond me the only manufacturer of such a device is Sony and not only are they ridiculously overpriced they've got bizarre anti-consumer constraint to basic functionality as well.
I have this exact same problem, I'd really like an A4/US-letter sized E-reader, but last time I researched they were insanely expensive ($1k+), had horrible resolution and very hard to find. I can't be the only one, right?
Suggested it to them in another thread for an open version of their Joan product [0] and as I remember it, someone from Visionect hopped in and said it'd raise their support requirements a bit too much for hobbyists.
These guys have been advertising heavily recently, and have been featured here on HN: https://getremarkable.com/
The HN discussion has some good arguments about whether the startup can deliver what they say they can or not. Healthy scepticism combined with some signs they really might be able to. I decided to pre-order after reading this thread, and I hope my money isn't gone ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113819
Do you know if anyone is building a large format e-reader for sheet music? Having a nice way to flip pages would be nice, too (full touch screen probably unnecessary).
That looks pricey, but great. Thank you. I'm not sure if a double-page is necessary. I was thinking about using an old iPad in the meantime. I wonder if a microphone could follow the music well enough to follow along -- detect mistakes or automatically change pages.
Aside: I wonder if two Kindles/Nooks couldn't be rigged up side by side, with some xrandr magic on a rooted device... surely would be done by now if possible?
These are fun[0] but no sign of additional screens.
I would love to have a two screen eReader that would open like a physical book. It could have multiple modes of operation:
1. a page turn would change both displays like a physical book
2. a page turn would just shift one page over and bring up the next page
3. one page could be 'pinned' and page turning would just occur on the unpinned screen
I would also like to be able to create bookmark 'pairs' that would bring up two (not necessarily adjacent) pages of my choosing. I think this would make eReaders much more useful for technical books.
Yeah i'd love to have giant epaper screens for use in a coder's workstation where emphasis is only writing code and looking at terminal screens. along with a b&w focused windowing system.
It'll be like sitting on an old school workstation again, more focus, less distraction and still have modern underlying hardware.
Oh very much yes. Though I feel compelled to point out that my brief foray into getting Android running on Nook, the disconnect between a graphics system predicated on the sort of refresh rates that exist on LCD screens and the reality of the refresh rates for e-Ink displays suggests that just a naive installation of secondary display on an existing workstation would wind up being intolerably frustrating.
I think there's a market for a workstation like this, but it's the matter of creating the supply first.
people need to see it in action, and boss need to see that they can purchase it for their backend developers (non color requiring devs) and think "wow this will save me $$$ on developer distractions."
Is there really a big market for a hardware solution to something that can typically be solved with software? There are all sorts of focus-inducing apps, from DNS servers that refuse to serve distractions, to software that actively blocks certain non-white-listed apps from running.
I use IDEA, Eclipse, VS, etc on an e-ink. Use the light-theme that comes with your IDE (not the Dracula theme). You will see the colors as different shades of gray (not just b&w) - it's fine, one gets used too. And color e-ink exists just still too expensive - there were rumours that the next Kindle after v3 gets a color e-ink (2010), but Amazon shifted the focus to Kindle Fire. The technology is there, just the volume is too low, so color e-ink are still expensive.
I recently made myself a nice mono colormap for Kakoune. I have four terminal windows open right now, each one connected to the same editor session, and each with a different foreground color, all using the same colormap. I'd give up the extra colors for a big grayscale e-ink display though.
Big e-ink displays are not happening any time soon. There's so many patents on the technology that it only makes sense to use on devices with huge margins. It's much like 3D printing where our wonderful patent system kept the ecosystem nice and chilly for 15 years.
I bought an 10" / A4 size e-ink Android tablet last year and use it as second/third screen. And I take it outside park/garden and use it with the stylus and a bluetooth keyboard. I feared the latency common with e-ink but it's quite fast nowadays and perfectly fine for coding in full sunlight, even watching YouTube videos in non-fullscreen mode works fine.
CLeary I didn't keep up with the evolution of the technology, the last time I tried e-ink, the refresh rates were so slow that being able to watch videos was completely unconceivable... I'm impressed that you can now do that (even though not in fullscreen mode). By the way, what's the manufacturer of the tablet you have bought?
> I also really, really want an A4 sized eReader but for reasons completely beyond me...
I think it's because e-reader screens are made on a glass substrate, and a large, thin glass screen in a large, thin, plastic device frame is going to be difficult to reinforce so that it doesn't break. There have been a couple of attempts to manufacture plastic-backed e-reader screens – I recall Plastic Logic from Cambridge a few years back, who were going to make an A4 e-reader but struggled to scale up the technology, and shifted to licensing.
E-Ink have just recently got their technology into production, called Mobius, but they haven't yet caught on in retail devices yet (given the market is mostly a walled garden quasi-monopoly, in practice I mean Amazon haven't used them in Kindles yet). Hopefully when the technology becomes mainstream it will remove some constraints on e-readers, and they'll become thinner, more robust, and easier to produce in large sizes. And hopefully alongside that we'll also get some competition in the e-reader market, and devices which are more open.
I'm working on a board that will allow you to address multiple kindle form factor screens in an array (each with 600x800 resolution).
I noticed that the module I purchased last year for development ED060SC4 has become quite a lot more expensive on eBay but is still pretty cheaply available on Alibaba, the issue I forsee having is that the screens have edges which will create gaps in the image, might not be too noticable in a sufficiently large array if the virtual image is larger to account for the gaps in the physical display.
There's also the ED097OC1 which is much larger but I think would still suffer from the edge problem and I'm not sure what the price is at medium scale (10s of units).
Please e-mail me if you have a source on these parts or larger tileable panels!
> ...they've got bizarre anti-consumer constraint to basic functionality as well.
Can you elaborate on this? I've considered buying one of these things since the price dropped from $1k to $700, but if I can't read and annotate PDFs without pointless barriers it's useless to me.
It's been some time since I have read the reviews of the big Sony devices. My recollection is that the most recent version will only handle PDFs. I think it does support making annotations but with some sort of weird limitation.
Anyway, my memory could be faulty, so it's best if you find and read the reviews yourself.
This article is jut an ad. What I'd really like to know:
- What is total cost and what maintenance is required (annually) and how does it compare to the traditional road signs?
- What about visibility (I assume, it doesn't have reflective property as traditional road sign paint)? At night? At rain? At other extreme weather conditions?
- What connection is used and how secure is it (I assume, it's controlled remotely)?
- What protections does it have against vandalism and theft?
This might explain things a bit more: www.visionect.com/blog/worlds-first-epaper-traffic-signs In short, the signs are paperlike, with a 180-degree viewing angle and no glare, but they do have a frontlight. They connect via 3G and have tamper detection.
> What about visibility (I assume, it doesn't have reflective property as traditional road sign paint)? At night? At rain? At other extreme weather conditions?
So far, this seems to only be used for parking signs, where visibility isn't as much of a concern.
This looks like a great recipe the 'parking laws' being changed with zero notice and your car getting towed away. No longer does the city have to send someone out to mark where your car is currently parked as an immediate towaway zone.
My local bus stop has had an e-ink display showing when the next few bus routes are due, since last summer. I don't get to use it that often, but when I do it's often broken or stuck displaying wrong information. Just last week it was replaced, and this morning I noticed it appeared functional, but less accurate than Google Maps and Citymapper.
So much potential, but seems to be poorly implemented by Tfl.gov.uk
67 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadYou're also the poster of the article which is an ad from your company.
> In many applications, it can also prove to be as much as four times more reliable than LCD.
That's a really vague answer. Are you saying your solar powered road side display panels are 4 times more reliable than the LCD panels used with everything else? Could you share some data with us?
The important thing here is that this first production outdoor deployment of EPD signs in the world works for for years without any serious problems which confirms that e-paper is a viable technology for outdoor deployments. There was a lot of skepticism back in 2013 if this is at all possible.
What? Most of the signboards you see on the road are LED signboards. You know the ones we have in freezing winter or in blazing summer! So not only is it possible, it's what's commonly done.
> The important thing here is that this first production outdoor deployment
There's very little data provided in the article, no real accurate data on what kind of environmental conditions were experienced by the devices. Seems like a puff piece.
Also normal road signs use retro reflective spheres mixed into the paint to increase brightness at night, not sure if those can be carried over to e-ink displays?
The fact that they don't break down is just a further testament to e-paper's versatility - we'll see more and more applications using e-paper in digital signage. There's a lot of examples what our customers are building on our blog, like smart citizen information (https://www.visionect.com/blog/soofa-sign-reinventing-citysc...) or trucks equipped with digital signs (https://www.visionect.com/blog/electronic-paper-truck-displa...).
How many employees could be hired changing the physical road signs given the price difference?
Given the positive feedback from the end customer and Mercury Innovation (http://www.mercuryinnovation.com.au/) that took our platform and built the traffic sign (we're not the ones selling the end product) I'd say that TCO is in favor of e-paper traffic signs.
Disclaimer: I work for Visionect
Judging by their posts on this page, the company that manufactures the signs is clearly hooked up to an IV drip of their own koolaid. Still, for this particular application (temporary parking restrictions) e-paper is much better than the previous solution, which was to print plastic inserts and drive around the city sliding them into tracks on the signs.
I also really, really want an A4 sized eReader but for reasons completely beyond me the only manufacturer of such a device is Sony and not only are they ridiculously overpriced they've got bizarre anti-consumer constraint to basic functionality as well.
Anyone know any cheaper competitors?
http://shopkits.eink.com/product/signage-evaluation-kit-v3-w...
[0] https://www.visionect.com/solutions/meeting-room-booking/
The HN discussion has some good arguments about whether the startup can deliver what they say they can or not. Healthy scepticism combined with some signs they really might be able to. I decided to pre-order after reading this thread, and I hope my money isn't gone ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113819
Point is, if real, it looks fantastic.
These are fun[0] but no sign of additional screens.
--
[0] - https://hackaday.com/category/kindle-hacks/
1. a page turn would change both displays like a physical book 2. a page turn would just shift one page over and bring up the next page 3. one page could be 'pinned' and page turning would just occur on the unpinned screen
I would also like to be able to create bookmark 'pairs' that would bring up two (not necessarily adjacent) pages of my choosing. I think this would make eReaders much more useful for technical books.
It'll be like sitting on an old school workstation again, more focus, less distraction and still have modern underlying hardware.
people need to see it in action, and boss need to see that they can purchase it for their backend developers (non color requiring devs) and think "wow this will save me $$$ on developer distractions."
I think it's because e-reader screens are made on a glass substrate, and a large, thin glass screen in a large, thin, plastic device frame is going to be difficult to reinforce so that it doesn't break. There have been a couple of attempts to manufacture plastic-backed e-reader screens – I recall Plastic Logic from Cambridge a few years back, who were going to make an A4 e-reader but struggled to scale up the technology, and shifted to licensing.
E-Ink have just recently got their technology into production, called Mobius, but they haven't yet caught on in retail devices yet (given the market is mostly a walled garden quasi-monopoly, in practice I mean Amazon haven't used them in Kindles yet). Hopefully when the technology becomes mainstream it will remove some constraints on e-readers, and they'll become thinner, more robust, and easier to produce in large sizes. And hopefully alongside that we'll also get some competition in the e-reader market, and devices which are more open.
I noticed that the module I purchased last year for development ED060SC4 has become quite a lot more expensive on eBay but is still pretty cheaply available on Alibaba, the issue I forsee having is that the screens have edges which will create gaps in the image, might not be too noticable in a sufficiently large array if the virtual image is larger to account for the gaps in the physical display.
There's also the ED097OC1 which is much larger but I think would still suffer from the edge problem and I'm not sure what the price is at medium scale (10s of units).
Please e-mail me if you have a source on these parts or larger tileable panels!
Can you elaborate on this? I've considered buying one of these things since the price dropped from $1k to $700, but if I can't read and annotate PDFs without pointless barriers it's useless to me.
Anyway, my memory could be faulty, so it's best if you find and read the reviews yourself.
- What is total cost and what maintenance is required (annually) and how does it compare to the traditional road signs?
- What about visibility (I assume, it doesn't have reflective property as traditional road sign paint)? At night? At rain? At other extreme weather conditions?
- What connection is used and how secure is it (I assume, it's controlled remotely)?
- What protections does it have against vandalism and theft?
So far, this seems to only be used for parking signs, where visibility isn't as much of a concern.
In this photo, for example, the "2" and "T" could have been shifted a little so that they didn't cross a boundary.
https://www.visionect.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/sydney_...
So much potential, but seems to be poorly implemented by Tfl.gov.uk