Exactly what I've been wanting to do, use it as a display for emacs with a bluetooth keyboard. Don't mind if it has to pass through my laptop. Does anyone know how to do something similar with the reMarkable 2?
I did this once, with a shared terminal via screen or tmux (and thus not VNC). You can install https://github.com/Eeems-Org/oxide and a terminal application via the toltec repoitories and then ssh (or mosh) from remarkable to the device that has the keyboard.
Wow, this is great! I've been hoping for eInk with good refresh for years, and seeing it in action in your demo is very cool.
> The screen can refresh up to 30 times per second, this will degrade the eInk display rapidly. Do not use with fast changing content like videos.
Have you noticed the degraded display in your Kobo? I imagine it's not uniform across all pixels, since editing would mostly be localized to your cursor area (though scrolling and other actions would be wider). I'd also be interested in hearing what the timeline looked like for the quality drop, since it sounds like it's a function of the total number refreshes for each pixel.
I haven't noticed any degradation, but I put the warning up just in case. There is research suggesting that the ink "drops" stick together or break up after so many refreshes.
You can quickly skim this page for more info (the title should be findable on libgen): sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030399217315487
Do you mind sharing your fork with the font change?
I tried to get a font that supports other characters but the mkfont_bdf tool didn't like the files I fed it.
I'd love to see someone crack the partial fast update modes of the Boox tablets.
They run Android apps, but only the included, closed-source apps like the note-taking app and browser get fast screen updates at high quality. If you try to install a third-party note-taking app the experience is crap.
Maybe the apps are completely normal, but whitelisted somewhere in the system for different behaviour. Like some phone manufacturers cheat at benchmarks...
I don't think that's it. The issue is how to tell the screen to do a fast partial refresh at the expense of not refreshing anything else, which is what you want for handwriting. The app would need a way to tell the system what to partially refresh, i.e. some sort of nonstandard Android API.
The Boox tablets are touted for their ability to run third-party Android apps, so I highly doubt they would deliberately cripple them.
The kicker is this: “- Freeform annotations with the stylus utilize special rendering on Boox devices allowing the drawings to show up in real time. This makes it much easier to write and draw.”
I use this app on a Boox Max Lumi and the effect is very pronounced. It really doesn’t have any noticeable delay, just like the “native” Boox apps.
So, I think someone did indeed crack the code for fast updating.
I'd say you might get your wish in about five years, after present patents expire. There will doubtless be new developments, but present devices are absolutely sufficient for e-book reading and most web surfing / tablet tasks, even at monochrome and modest 0.5 -- 16 Hz refresh or so. Higher-quality display is slower to refresh, though almost all instances are well under sub-second.
Also a matter of how many patents are accumulated by a single entity.
In days of yore (and possibly still today), IBM would reach into its bag of thousands of patents, extract a handful, and allege infringement. The target might well successfully prove otherwise.
IBM would reach into its bag of thousands of patents, and extract another handful. The first defence had already cost the target several millions in litigation, not recoverable even on a finding of non-infringement.
This was explained to me in person by an individual with a long history of fighting such fights, back in the 1990s.
Yes, 20 years in the modern world is far too long given that the pace of change is dramatically faster than it was when 20 years seems reasonable. It would motivate patent holders in their efforts to get the most from a patent, as many sit far too comfortably bidding their time which defeats the public good purpose behind patents
> Because those were simply phenomenal. I have two and I've never had a display quite their equal in direct sunlight.
That's odd. I've had and evaluated the XO-1 using Jepsen's displays and found them to be of low quality for even that timeframe. Even basic things like the resolution were terrible for that time. There's good reasons why they (both OLPC and PixelQi) were unsuccessful. OLPC was a disaster and in my opinion just a way to transfer money from the education budgets of developing countries and UN funding into the pockets of people who enjoyed hanging out in swanky incredibly costly offices at 1 Cambridge Way with guys like Nicholas Negroponte, Joi Ito and Jeffrey Epstein instead of actually achieving real progress. [1]
Direct sunlight being the key part of what I said; I've never had any other display that was so legible while sitting at the end of a dock with a blazing sun blasting straight down upon the screen.
Otherwise, for sure, in general conditions it was mediocre.
And yes, the whole project was sketchy as hell, in retrospect.
My Panic PlayDate, which lacks the paper-like contrast of e-ink but can refresh at 50 fps, looks fantastic in direct sunlight. I believe it’s using a Sharp Memory LCD.
Which specific patents are you referring to? If you can't answer that question without googling "eink patents", then like many others who've made this claim on HN you're not in the industry and don't actually know anything about electrophoretic chemistry and don't realize what the real obstacles are. See my comment history for details.
Searching "by:robinsoh e-ink patent" over the past year turns up numerous comments, mostly variants of "I've explained this before", but none with a link to the specific explanation you have in mind. If you happen to know of a reference, it's a courtesy to others to provide it directly.
> but none with a link to the specific explanation you have in mind. If you happen to know of a reference, it's a courtesy to others to provide it directly.
It is unclear what exactly you want explained to you. Or what reference you are referring to. I asked what patent you are pointing to as evidence of the allegation that you made and instead of addressing that, you're asking me for evidence that no such patent exists? How will I be able to do that?
What I'm hoping for here is for you to point to the specific comment(s) you have in mind.
You're ... being somewhat less than helpful here, and are doing much the same as you've repeatedly accused others of doing: hand-waving vaguely in some general direction without being specific.
I'd be interested in discussing, or even simply understanding, what point(s) you're making. But you're failing to make them here, or indicate where you've made them previously.
If you have a specific comment that discusses the objections to the e-ink patent encumbrance concept, please link them or make them again here.
> If you have a specific comment that discusses the objections to the e-ink patent encumbrance concept, please link them or make them again here.
You seem to be intentionally engaging in a circular argument. The parent post said "after present patents expire". So please answer a simple question. Which specific patents are you referring to? Are you going to google and give a random list of eink patents? I hope you can see why I think that's a counterproductive response.
I stand by what I wrote earlier.
I'll repeat it again.
"
Which specific patents are you referring to? If you can't answer that question without googling "eink patents", then like many others who've made this claim on HN you're not in the industry and don't actually know anything about electrophoretic chemistry and don't realize what the real obstacles are. See my comment history for details.
"
It is the equivalent of saying IBM is blocking progress in the software industry because of IBM patents.
I hope it is clear how ridiculous that claim is. That's why I asked the simple question to which I still haven't gotten an answer.
OK. And you've not responded to the simple question of which patent you were referring to. That makes it clear of your 'substantive'ness and again is consistent with what I've observed on HN about this type of comments.
At this point, I'm investigating the issue. I don't jump immediately to conclusions. And I'd wanted, as noted several times above, simply to understand what your own argument / evidence is.
There's also a comment in HN history by an insider using a throwaway who discusses the dynamics by which control is exercised. And it's not through specific patents, as my comment linked above notes. Quantity has a quality all its own, as Stalin reputedly said.
I'm sure you can find it with as much ease as I'd turned up your own earlier relevant comments.
I suspect we'll have an opportunity to address this question again in future.
Could you state clearly that you are not an industry insider. You simply made a claim that patents were being used to block progress, but had no specific evidence for it. Correct? Very simple and allows readers to form their own conclusion about your allegations.
I measured and split the latency between the main tasks of a single frame draw.
The main culprit was network delay as I am transmitting raw pixels (one u8 per pixel) compressed with zlib. That's a hit of ~140ms for half a screen.
Next in line is the screen refresh (unmeasured, perceived).
Then the optional post processing (~20ms for half a screen), and housekeeping, like keeping track of dirty regions (about as long).
Lastly writing to the framebuffer (less than 20ms, I don't remember exactly how long).
I took great care to optimise the process, and my next step was to transmit multiple pixels as a single u8 int, the physical display cannot render 255 distinct shades of gray.
P.S. parent was right in doubting the claim, as a parallel connection from a client on a regular desktop refreshes at 30 HZ regardless of the size of the update.
The explanation is that I take end-to-end network measurements (from request of update to a full buffer of pixel bytes). That delay might be due to the slow processor on device, or an inefficiency in the networking code in my application.
Interesting. But updating one character should be much faster than updating the whole screen then surely since you don't have to send so much data?
By the way I suspect compressing multiple pixels into one is unnecessary - just quantise them and let the compression deal with it.
Also zlib is not designed for image compression. I'm sure there is something more suitable, e.g. QOI.
In fact, given that you're mostly compressing mono text I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of dynamic sprite atlas kind of system was better, like in JBIG2.
Anyway if it is network latency that seems like good news because you should be able to get it to near 0. What is the ping to the reader?
I'm also curious as to what display damage high-speed refresh causes, and what reasonable guidelines at avoiding this might be. I have an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, whose display is excellent, and do very occasionally watch video. (More often I'll simply play the audio via mpv in Termux.)
Note that even electrical displays can suffer burn-in, with CRT, LCD, and LED screens all exhibiting this. (I'm unsure about plasma displays, as I don't understand that technology.)
Yes! But intuition tells me that suspended particles moving past each other make a more fragile system than solid state devices.
Also take into account the difference in refreshes between reading a book (0.05 HZ) and writing (30 HZ). That is, using the display as a general purpose monitor necessitates 600 times as many partial refreshes. I approximate full screen refreshes occur 6000 times more often.
If degradation goes linearly with usage then the lifespan of the display would decrease significantly if used as a monitor. It would be good if someone in the industry could comment on this.
I've pursued that eInk life style for about a decade now :) My best setup is with a Dasung Paperlike, but in practice the ergonomics keeps me from using it often (too many things to carry outside and setup). What I hope to see one day is a Linux friendly laptop with an eInk display (frontlit for extra bonus [1]). I wouldn't use it as a replacement, but for quickly grabbing when spending a few hours outside. Maybe Framework or MNT Reform could do it?
[1] the Dasung has multiple settings for the backlight and it's an absolute necessity for using it indoors.
EDIT: backlit -> frontlit, silly me.
ADD: PineNote is also promising as it support BLE and thus could be used with remote keyboard/mouse.
My Dasung Paperlike is a monitor also. In practice it's not a great solution for me compared to laptop (self-contained, batteries included). An external monitor (incl. the Boox) is quite impractical to lug around and set up.
The boox refresh rate is not adequate for anything besides regional (text) updates. I have used the max, max2 and the mira and they have all been pisspoor for anything besides wordprocessing.
VNC and RDP have mostly been better as these protocols understand regional changes more than the Toshiba HDMI converter chip they use.
Oh, this is great. I love my Kobo Libra 2 mostly due to its form factor and weight and have been thinking of using it for something more. Hard to believe the thing can do full scan text refresh 30 at fps, though. Probably not updating everything at once?
Also, I did not know eink degradation due to normal use - as opposed to sitting on your beloved device :( - was a thing, even at high fps.
The degradation is speculation on my part. I haven't ever experienced it.
Yes, the 30 fps rate is for small updates. A full screen update (scrolling) is commonly less than ~200 ms, and there are still ways to bring that number down.
I agree, the Libra 2 is great :) Try koreader, it's noticeably faster than the stock reader application.
I'm trying to reconnect with my sister with whom I lost contact while we were kids.
I link to this page containing both our names and a way to contact me, for search engines and archives to index: https://zmarshall.nl/static/orian-marshall.html .
Orian (Oriyan / Oryan, Marshall), if you're reading this, please get in touch.
For anyone downvoting this: The person who wrote this comment is the same person who created the e-ink project. If they might have created a popular project partly in an attempt to get enough visibility that their sister might see it, it's really cruel for you to downvote them.
@Max, have you considered hiring a private investigator? I have no idea if that works in real life like it does in fiction but maybe it's a possible route?
Another thing you might be able to try is to access public records starting from the time when you were children and working forward through time to today. In some cases the public records might be accessible through legal requests (whatever is the Israeli equivalent of FOIA or something like that), or if you are willing to do whatever it takes you could try asking favors of government workers or even try to get someone who's a gray hat to try to obtain the records on your behalf. If your sister wants to reconnect then a gray hat method of obtaining records should in my view still be considered the right & moral thing to do. If anything, part of what I believe the private investigators do (at least the good ones) is provide plausible deniability by using gray methods or hiring those who do, for you, without ever saying so.
If you're really dedicated, you could even apply for a job at the relevant government agency and look up the records yourself once you work in that job.
> If you're really dedicated, you could even apply for a job at the relevant government agency and look up the records yourself once you work in that job.
That is going to get you fired at the least and serious criminal charges at the worst, pretty almost everywhere.
Do not ever, I repeat ever, abuse any kind of database access you have for personal stuff unless approved by whomever you are reporting to and allowed by law.
I agree. It's a question of how much finding his sister means to him. We don't know his story, and maybe he'd be willing to spend some time in jail and lose his career if it meant the chance to find her.
It's in nixpkgs (for MacOS and Linux). I haven't tested it because it's flagged as having a security vulnerability (actually that's an excuse - it's really because I'm busy) but it should work.
A comment in the video says that the framerate is being held back primarily by network latency. Would something like mosh, which immediately updates local state based on how it thinks your input will change the state (and then applies any necessary corrections once the network round trip happens) help here? I guess it would only apply to text-based sessions, but it sounds like there's already a recommendation against using it for video content.
Do you mean "how am I SSHing to the remarkable"? That's pretty straightforward - follow https://remarkablewiki.com/tech/ssh. I'm just doing it from my laptop. You don't have to SSH though, you can plug a keyboard in as well but that's a little more involved.
I appreciate the effort and novelty that goes into things like this, but I would never, ever use such a thing. Sure I have a kindle that I read on, but I'll keep my 27" 5k screen for coding thanks.
105 comments
[ 1107 ms ] story [ 3497 ms ] threadTry to solve the world climate and energy problems first
> The screen can refresh up to 30 times per second, this will degrade the eInk display rapidly. Do not use with fast changing content like videos.
Have you noticed the degraded display in your Kobo? I imagine it's not uniform across all pixels, since editing would mostly be localized to your cursor area (though scrolling and other actions would be wider). I'd also be interested in hearing what the timeline looked like for the quality drop, since it sounds like it's a function of the total number refreshes for each pixel.
I haven't noticed any degradation, but I put the warning up just in case. There is research suggesting that the ink "drops" stick together or break up after so many refreshes.
You can quickly skim this page for more info (the title should be findable on libgen): sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030399217315487
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxwceUvxlCo
But all e-ink devices I have seen since were slow and would form time to time show remanence.
You can install any app on this device. I find it's acceptable to code with web-ides like replit.com. But my main usage is reading and note taking.
1. https://github.com/timower/rM2-stuff/tree/master/apps/yaft
Added a Dockerfile to make the build easier here: https://github.com/DaveHarrington/rM2-stuff
[1] https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/
Would be a nice console or something.
In fact I'd love a laptop with eInk which I could use outdoors in the sun.
They run Android apps, but only the included, closed-source apps like the note-taking app and browser get fast screen updates at high quality. If you try to install a third-party note-taking app the experience is crap.
The Boox tablets are touted for their ability to run third-party Android apps, so I highly doubt they would deliberately cripple them.
https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum/archive/index.php?t...
The kicker is this: “- Freeform annotations with the stylus utilize special rendering on Boox devices allowing the drawings to show up in real time. This makes it much easier to write and draw.”
I use this app on a Boox Max Lumi and the effect is very pronounced. It really doesn’t have any noticeable delay, just like the “native” Boox apps.
So, I think someone did indeed crack the code for fast updating.
Colour displays are slower as I understand.
Things are moving faster these days, with the interwebs and all.
In days of yore (and possibly still today), IBM would reach into its bag of thousands of patents, extract a handful, and allege infringement. The target might well successfully prove otherwise.
IBM would reach into its bag of thousands of patents, and extract another handful. The first defence had already cost the target several millions in litigation, not recoverable even on a finding of non-infringement.
This was explained to me in person by an individual with a long history of fighting such fights, back in the 1990s.
Because those were simply phenomenal. I have two and I've never had a display quite their equal in direct sunlight.
That's odd. I've had and evaluated the XO-1 using Jepsen's displays and found them to be of low quality for even that timeframe. Even basic things like the resolution were terrible for that time. There's good reasons why they (both OLPC and PixelQi) were unsuccessful. OLPC was a disaster and in my opinion just a way to transfer money from the education budgets of developing countries and UN funding into the pockets of people who enjoyed hanging out in swanky incredibly costly offices at 1 Cambridge Way with guys like Nicholas Negroponte, Joi Ito and Jeffrey Epstein instead of actually achieving real progress. [1]
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/09/05/133159/mit-media...
Otherwise, for sure, in general conditions it was mediocre.
And yes, the whole project was sketchy as hell, in retrospect.
So there is other tech for this.
My Pebble Time Smartwatch had a color memory LCD which was also easy to read in direct sunlight, but the PlayDate's screen looks a lot better.
Which specific patents are you referring to? If you can't answer that question without googling "eink patents", then like many others who've made this claim on HN you're not in the industry and don't actually know anything about electrophoretic chemistry and don't realize what the real obstacles are. See my comment history for details.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
Do you mean this comment?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28465158
It is unclear what exactly you want explained to you. Or what reference you are referring to. I asked what patent you are pointing to as evidence of the allegation that you made and instead of addressing that, you're asking me for evidence that no such patent exists? How will I be able to do that?
You're ... being somewhat less than helpful here, and are doing much the same as you've repeatedly accused others of doing: hand-waving vaguely in some general direction without being specific.
I'd be interested in discussing, or even simply understanding, what point(s) you're making. But you're failing to make them here, or indicate where you've made them previously.
If you have a specific comment that discusses the objections to the e-ink patent encumbrance concept, please link them or make them again here.
You seem to be intentionally engaging in a circular argument. The parent post said "after present patents expire". So please answer a simple question. Which specific patents are you referring to? Are you going to google and give a random list of eink patents? I hope you can see why I think that's a counterproductive response.
I stand by what I wrote earlier.
I'll repeat it again. " Which specific patents are you referring to? If you can't answer that question without googling "eink patents", then like many others who've made this claim on HN you're not in the industry and don't actually know anything about electrophoretic chemistry and don't realize what the real obstacles are. See my comment history for details. "
It is the equivalent of saying IBM is blocking progress in the software industry because of IBM patents.
I hope it is clear how ridiculous that claim is. That's why I asked the simple question to which I still haven't gotten an answer.
I was simply looking for the substantive version of your position.
I believe you've expressed it.
At this point, I'm investigating the issue. I don't jump immediately to conclusions. And I'd wanted, as noted several times above, simply to understand what your own argument / evidence is.
There's also a comment in HN history by an insider using a throwaway who discusses the dynamics by which control is exercised. And it's not through specific patents, as my comment linked above notes. Quantity has a quality all its own, as Stalin reputedly said.
I'm sure you can find it with as much ease as I'd turned up your own earlier relevant comments.
I suspect we'll have an opportunity to address this question again in future.
What do you mean? Any data or evidence for that?
Using an Onyx BOOX with Termux, terminal lag is not perceptible. The lagged updates look like packet jitter to me.
The main culprit was network delay as I am transmitting raw pixels (one u8 per pixel) compressed with zlib. That's a hit of ~140ms for half a screen.
Next in line is the screen refresh (unmeasured, perceived).
Then the optional post processing (~20ms for half a screen), and housekeeping, like keeping track of dirty regions (about as long).
Lastly writing to the framebuffer (less than 20ms, I don't remember exactly how long).
I took great care to optimise the process, and my next step was to transmit multiple pixels as a single u8 int, the physical display cannot render 255 distinct shades of gray.
The explanation is that I take end-to-end network measurements (from request of update to a full buffer of pixel bytes). That delay might be due to the slow processor on device, or an inefficiency in the networking code in my application.
By the way I suspect compressing multiple pixels into one is unnecessary - just quantise them and let the compression deal with it.
Also zlib is not designed for image compression. I'm sure there is something more suitable, e.g. QOI.
In fact, given that you're mostly compressing mono text I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of dynamic sprite atlas kind of system was better, like in JBIG2.
Anyway if it is network latency that seems like good news because you should be able to get it to near 0. What is the ping to the reader?
If you wish you could copy your comment verbatim as an issue over here, so we can discuss it further: https://github.com/everydayanchovies/eink-vnc/issues
I will have a chance to test the ping tonight, possibly.
https://sarata.com/manpages/bb.1.html
Here videoed off an emissive display: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=WubDqdV2r9k
And what seems to be a direct screen capture: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=JFFJYJ6QkME
I'm also curious as to what display damage high-speed refresh causes, and what reasonable guidelines at avoiding this might be. I have an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, whose display is excellent, and do very occasionally watch video. (More often I'll simply play the audio via mpv in Termux.)
The particles in a pixel could deform/burst or clamp together over time, as they move around. Both scenarios lead to decreased contrast.
The less they move the longer the screen will last. I've no experience with the manufacture of those displays but I reason with physics.
Note that even electrical displays can suffer burn-in, with CRT, LCD, and LED screens all exhibiting this. (I'm unsure about plasma displays, as I don't understand that technology.)
Also take into account the difference in refreshes between reading a book (0.05 HZ) and writing (30 HZ). That is, using the display as a general purpose monitor necessitates 600 times as many partial refreshes. I approximate full screen refreshes occur 6000 times more often.
If degradation goes linearly with usage then the lifespan of the display would decrease significantly if used as a monitor. It would be good if someone in the industry could comment on this.
I've pursued that eInk life style for about a decade now :) My best setup is with a Dasung Paperlike, but in practice the ergonomics keeps me from using it often (too many things to carry outside and setup). What I hope to see one day is a Linux friendly laptop with an eInk display (frontlit for extra bonus [1]). I wouldn't use it as a replacement, but for quickly grabbing when spending a few hours outside. Maybe Framework or MNT Reform could do it?
[1] the Dasung has multiple settings for the backlight and it's an absolute necessity for using it indoors.
EDIT: backlit -> frontlit, silly me.
ADD: PineNote is also promising as it support BLE and thus could be used with remote keyboard/mouse.
https://shop.boox.com/products/maxlumi
https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hk7d5v/onyx_is_v...
I just heard about them recently and am curious how the final result will look like.
Thanks, that could be just the thing.
Basic color support for syntax highlighting is what I've been waiting for...
It says it runs Android, and thus the above makes the difference on whether I one rely on 2 years of updates or 20 years of updates.
Try experimenting with font weight, italics, and combinations. I find that less distracting.
Also, I did not know eink degradation due to normal use - as opposed to sitting on your beloved device :( - was a thing, even at high fps.
Yes, the 30 fps rate is for small updates. A full screen update (scrolling) is commonly less than ~200 ms, and there are still ways to bring that number down.
I agree, the Libra 2 is great :) Try koreader, it's noticeably faster than the stock reader application.
I'm trying to reconnect with my sister with whom I lost contact while we were kids. I link to this page containing both our names and a way to contact me, for search engines and archives to index: https://zmarshall.nl/static/orian-marshall.html .
Orian (Oriyan / Oryan, Marshall), if you're reading this, please get in touch.
Max
@Max, have you considered hiring a private investigator? I have no idea if that works in real life like it does in fiction but maybe it's a possible route?
Another thing you might be able to try is to access public records starting from the time when you were children and working forward through time to today. In some cases the public records might be accessible through legal requests (whatever is the Israeli equivalent of FOIA or something like that), or if you are willing to do whatever it takes you could try asking favors of government workers or even try to get someone who's a gray hat to try to obtain the records on your behalf. If your sister wants to reconnect then a gray hat method of obtaining records should in my view still be considered the right & moral thing to do. If anything, part of what I believe the private investigators do (at least the good ones) is provide plausible deniability by using gray methods or hiring those who do, for you, without ever saying so.
If you're really dedicated, you could even apply for a job at the relevant government agency and look up the records yourself once you work in that job.
That is going to get you fired at the least and serious criminal charges at the worst, pretty almost everywhere.
Do not ever, I repeat ever, abuse any kind of database access you have for personal stuff unless approved by whomever you are reporting to and allowed by law.
Is there some common source for Kobo-compatable rust code that you both drew from, or was plato the original source?
EDIT: Nevermind, should have looked closer, you already called out that you drew from plato
> The code responsible for rendering to the eInk display is written by baskerville and taken from https://github.com/baskerville/plato