Maybe it's just me, but why do the defaults for devices like this seem to now always require either a special app or reach out into the Internet? Whatever happened to simple USB mass storage where you can just plug it in and copy files back and forth? The hardware is certainly capable of it.
That said, I don't mind the presence of WiFi, but the default behaviour of requiring one to send files from a computer out far away to some server on the Internet, and then back to the tablet sitting only a few metres away seems rather silly and wasteful.
But, since you can SSH into the device, rsync works just fine on the Remarkable. :)
Personally I would be ok with my device disabling it's UI while it emulated a mass storage device when plugged into a host.
I'm fine with them choosing to solve those challenges instead of supporting USB mass storage.
USB mass storage requires exposing a block device with a filesystem, which is error-prone and complex.
The point is, USBMS is a solved problem. My MP3/MP4 players, my Android phone, my satnav, even my soldering iron[1] can do it. The Linux kernel, which reMarkable uses, already includes support for this[2]. It's conceptually very simple --- in its most basic form, if the device detects that it's plugged in, it unmounts its internal block device and lets the host control it, and vice-versa. More advanced functionality, such as found on Android and many MP3/MP4s, lets you choose whether the device or the host controls its storage, via a very obvious interface on the device itself (one position is "charge only", the other is "transfer files".)
[1]https://hackaday.com/2017/07/24/review-ts100-soldering-iron/
[2]https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/usb/mass-storage.tx...
Exposing files from a device's internal storage (which is ext4 in this case) over USBMS is very much not a solved issue. You'd have to copy the files back and forth or write a driver which emulates a FAT filesystem.
The alternative would be to use FAT internally and expose that block device, risking corruption (you have no control over what is done to your poor filesystem).
None of my Android phones can do that. In fact, Android used to expose the raw device in earlier releases and stopped doing it because it was too unreliable and the UX was bad since the filesystem had to be unmounted.
However, here's what Martin (the CTO) has been playing with:
I agree that it should definitely be an option because there are plenty of situations when using this device where you might not even have connectivity.
> the default behaviour of requiring one to send files from a computer out far away to some server on the Internet, and then back to the tablet sitting only a few metres away seems rather silly and wasteful.
It is definitely silly and wasteful but it's oh so simple when it works correctly. Instead of dealing with SMB shares, email, FTP, rsync, cables, mass storage devices, properly ejecting things, or any other technology; you instead just put a file in a designated folder and it's available on all of your devices in a matter of moments.
It was one of the first things I thought of, "I hope I can run rsync on this thing to sync notes".
My enthusiasm for this device instantly evaporated when I found out about the mandatory cloud integration. I already know from a customer support situation that Amazon has remote access to kindles, they can tell you what files you have on device, etc.
It's depressingly bad...
Bonus: this reMarkable website does not work without third party JS. It's completely blank. One of the 3rd parties is hotjar, which does all sorts of shady analytics like clickstream and keylogging.
From GP: "So if you don't like their cloud offering, you can turn of wifi and be sure your data is local"
By using a search engine on their web-site(!) one can find details about USB support: "NB: This functionality is currently experimental, as we haven't fully implemented it yet. We will work to improve how this works and looks in future software updates."
Maybe this is a great device which allows open access, but it's very difficult to figure this out from their website.
Isn't that par for the course for esoteric information only useful to highly advanced users in the consumer electronics[1] space? I'm yet to see an Android device that touts unlockable bootloaders on their websites.
1. Being "open" isn't the ReMarkable's tablet schtick/selling point. It's a consumer product that happens to be open. The minority users who want to take advantage of that know where to look/can find that out on HN.
This is a very basic feature, supported by everything except those spyware products which are selling customer information or those that reserve the right to do it in the future.
If reMarkable is not one of those, they should make it clear in their marketing.
If the underlying software is open source, that would also suggest that it if there is a large enough community, it will keep working for much longer than the company supports it. And it gives hope for better software fixes. For example, the writing-lag mentioned sounds like it should be solvable with better data structures under the hood.
The tablet also works fine without using the cloud service, it has a built-in webserver to upload documents to it that you can just access via WiFi or USB-LAN.
Really this device is a hacker's dream in terms of openness. The only last thing I'd wish for was open sourcing the main software application running on it.
In other words, what good is a custom reimplementation of it if you can't make it point at them without dns hacking?
Do you think one could hack it into a "screen" by streaming a black-and-white image data from a computer to it?
So the connected computer would do all the heavy lifting related to rendering, compress the result to something that is really easy to decompress, send it over, and tablet would just decompress a bitmap and blit it to the screen?
Given the low refresh rate of the panel, something like that should work just fine. Pretty sure I saw a YouTube video by someone who hacked it together using periodic screenshots.
Switching pages can still take a few seconds (the display is lightning fast, but the processor for generating the page is not).
Can take up to a few seconds, but really depends on what the device is rendering. For most arXiv papers and light graphics (e.g. clean charts) the page turns have been very tolerable.
Exactly. I have one and I think writing has really short latency. My friend says it's slightly slower than an iPad but I haven't tried that so I don't know, in any case it's still very good.
The only really bad thing about the reMarkable is that the software still sometimes crashes, leaving you for ~20 seconds with a notebook that you can't write on.
Interesting, in 3 months I haven't had a single crash
In practice, it's been perfectly usable (for me). The only nit I've found responsiveness-wise so far is the startup time. It's not convenient when I suddenly remember something and want to write it down and have to hold down the power button for three seconds and then wait another five or more for it to get to the main screen and then wait another two or so to get to my scratch pad.
Maybe it's just time for me to update? I bought this in 2014.
Could you explain how this works? I assumed that's what the HTTP interface setting was, but I couldn't see this documented anywhere. I really don't like the Windows and Android app so this would be a nice alternative.
When you connect a reMarkable into your computer it identifies as an ethernet adapter and assigns you an IP over DHCP, you can then access SSH on the device via that IP.
This is what the device shows you for gaining access (don't worry, that's not actually my password anymore and I've put SSH keys on it anyways): https://i.imgur.com/zbJUBOe.jpg
This screen is in Settings -> About, right below the GPL information.
Edit: If you were asking about the HTTP interface, that becomes available at the same IP but it is hidden behind a switch (Settings -> Storage -> Enable USB web interface)
* the company behind it is based in norway, so you can be pretty sure the techies got treated well
* they abide by the GPL very well
* by connecting via USB and flicking a switch in the options menu, you get SSH access, as well as a REST endpoint where you can upload your files via curl. So if you don't like their cloud offering, you can turn of wifi and be sure your data is local
* I really hope they start a good opensource community program. There are already efforts underway for hacking on this, and in theory making custom applications for this could be very fun
* last I saw, some of the developers are active on reddit and HN, so I hope they comment on the last point