Using e-ink tablet as monitor for Linux (alavi.me)

So it is vim on the eink screen, mostly?

When writing a lot of LaTeX I wished I had an eink monitor. LaTeX already takes a moment to compile. I’d probably want vim on a conventional monitor.

I’d really like a Linux laptop with an e-ink screen. I’m well aware of the downsides.

It seems Android tablet with a keyboard or Windows laptop with double screen exist but to live with the limitations of such a screen, nothing would top having full control of the OS interface.

Any suggested eink tablet with higher refresh that this would work better for?

The main thing I'd miss with this, versus using an actual e-ink monitor, is the ability to refresh/clear ghosting from a keyboard hotkey.

How long will the display last like this?

I backed this project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-paper-monitor on Crowd Supply to see how close they can come to a "monitor" experience with an e-paper display.

I see btop in the video, I'd like to see a video of btop on that screen.

There are directly ekink monitors now.

Dasung 13k color is workable-ish even on MacOS with no tweaks.

Reading this on my eink Bigme Hibreak pro :).

Dasung 253 is a 25.3 inch eink display.

https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-p...

I bought it two years ago for over $1800, and I have to say, it was worth every single dollar.

I can read on it, work on it, (kind of) watch youtube videos on it, play (some) RTS game on it. And mine only had 33hz refresh rate, not the latest 60hz.

I've tried this setup (and a different setup using a capture card) with a BOOX Note Max but the input latency is just too high to be usable, even for simple cli work.

Are the dedicated eink monitors (like Dasung) better in this regard?

I don't really want an e-ink "monitor" as that does not really play into the advantages of an e-ink display. By the time the e-ink display is uprated enough to act as a monitor It feels like a lot of the advantages of e-ink are lost and the display server does not really downrate enough to utilize e-ink's strength.

But an e-ink "terminal" would be nice, not an actual tty but something more like a tablet form factor that has a few buttons, little to no internal smarts and you can push images to it.

What's the cheapest eInk display one can get, like phone sized or tablet sized? I mean just for experimentation.

I wonder if xpra can be used for this, seems to work really nice on thin clients

I love when a blog post starts with demonstration of end result.

Since Boox runs android, you can also run a shell on it using termius and simply ssh to a host device instead of setting up vnc, if you have a terminal based workflow.

Benefits aside, but the latency / refresh rate makes it not usable for practical purpose, ergonomics nightmare.

This is basically impossible due to **** animations everywhere.

I hacked together a HDMI e-ink monitor https://barwap.com/projects/okmonitor/

I wanted an e-ink screen I could just plug-in. Versatile, big and cheap. Connection is via a VGA or HDMI. Works like an appliance. All automated. Wireless.

Specifications: 1024x768, 6fps, lag: ~1.2s, Connection: VGA or HDMI Specifications Single Screen: 1024x768, 5fps, lag: ~1.2s, Connection: VGA or HDMI

What I really want is an A3 e-ink display that is designed to have a pdf loaded onto it, then can be disconnected and taken around a machine shop. No WiFi or Bluetooth etc

Using white text on a pink background? No wonder you need an e-ink tablet

That’s pretty neat! I’ve been looking at ESL e-ink displays for a while as a more static status display, but the lack of standards and open source software is a problem.

As much as I like e-ink, it has terrible refresh rates. I'd love a larger version of the Sharp Memory display technology that could support at least 80 characters wide, and perhaps 8 bit greyscale. The current ones support 60hz refresh and sip power but are limited to black and white only.

I have trouble sleeping, and it gets particularly bad in the winter. I have figured out that at least one of the triggers for poor sleep has been evening screen time. Redshift style apps help a little but barely. I can get away with some light usage of my phone on the dimmer settings, but if I sit down at my multi-monitor desk setup I will be wide awake all night and feel terrible in the morning. And this is with redshift and screens set to their lowest brightness levels.

So I spent a fair amount of time looking into e-ink options as a potential solution. I eventually settled on a refurbished Lenovo Thinkbook Plus G4, which has a flip-able screen with e-ink on one side. I paid around $800 which was less than a dedicated e-ink monitor, and only slightly more than some of the higher end large tablets/e-readers. So it was a hard deal to pass up.

I am happy to report that using the e-ink in the evenings has helped quite a bit on the sleep front. And while the laptop is pretty nice, e-ink in general requires a fair bit of compromise and the laptop in particular has some rough edges. You definitely need to spend some time on your display settings to make things work (high contrast, cursor and pointer visibility, font color in IDE and terminal apps, etc...), but for the most part I can make it work. And while I don't work in sunlight often, e-ink can really shine if you are outdoors (I have the sun shining on my screen right now as I type this and it is super readable.)

Anyways, I guess what I am trying to say is that I really hope more investment gets put into e-ink. I think it is a pretty awesome technology and would love to expand my usage of it. But at least for now it is mostly something that I am tolerating for the sake of sleep.

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