Most parts of the stack are conceptually figured out:
A Pine64 SOPINE module (comparable to the Raspi CM, but cheaper), a Linux DRM driver based on tinydrm (https://github.com/notro/tinydrm) or gud (https://github.com/notro/gud/), as panel driver either vroland's ESP32 based EPDiy (https://hackaday.io/project/168193-epdiy-976-e-paper-control...) or a custom FPGA solution.
What's really missing and I just can't figure out is how to get a touch input layer on there. Because the format is so weird there's just nothing available off the shelf at a fitting size. Cutting a larger one to size doesn't seem feasible (or is it?), perhaps the most DIYable would be an infrared solution like early kindles and old larger touch screens have, but on that topic there's a distinct lack of information (best I could find is this EEVblog video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnZ9KfJNjRQ).
A button-only navigation would really suck, since even KOReader (the absolute minimum application to run, preferable would be a full Wayland desktop) doesn't seem to be compatible with that.
I figure this is the best place to ask: Does anyone have an idea how this could be solved? Also, would anyone be interested in E-reader kits like that?
If you want an 8" device there's a fairly good market around 300€ already, with my favorite being the Kobo Forma and the Kindle Oasis also being worth a look (along with some others). Both have fairly small bezels on 3 sides and a thick one on one for holding.
My dream would look about like those devices, but yeah - the touch panel issue. I can't imagine a decent UX just based on buttons yet. One possible way forward is finding/making/retrofitting a reader app that is buttom navigable and maybe having a thinkpad nib as a fallback, but I'm not too sure about that since it'd compromise the UX fairly significantly, I'd say.
[1] https://needgap.com/problems/43-affordable-e-ink-large-exter... (Disclaimer : It's my platform).
I wanted to use it to display room temperature and electrical information like home power consumption, solar panel power generation and stuff like that, and expected a refresh rate of around 1 update per second.
Having it blink and do stuff for around 7 seconds just to redraw the next frame made me send it back and replace it with a small LCD touchscreen [2].
[1] Waveshare 1.54 Inch E-Paper Raw Display Panel(B) V2,200x200 Resolution,3.3v [ https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B074P32F9B ]
[2] ELEGOO Display 3.5" Zoll TFT LCD Touch Screen Monitor 480x320 für Raspberry Pi mit Allen Daten und Touch Pen (SPI Schnittstelle) [ https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01JRUH0CY ]
Edit:
Look at all that needs to happen just to update the minute counter as well as the temperature and humidity. It certainly is faster than the colored display I bought, but still, do you really want such a flashing display? https://youtu.be/v9sNzmtMSXo?t=164
How close would a hand-crank mechanism be to driving an e-ink tablet for a useful amount of time? A quick look at a clockwork crank-wind-up torch shows it has 300mAh battery and 30hrs of blinking SOS LED on a full charge, and they claim 1min of winding gives it 2hrs of blinking LED, so roughly 20mAh per minute of winding. How much computing can one do in 20mAh?
"Clockwork radio" and no-battery crystal radios must be quite low power, and one approach for e-ink screens is to only update a small changed area of screen at once. The FireBeetle ESP32 can deep-sleep on 0.011mA [1] and reference is at 39mA. Maybe 1min of clowkwork winding could drive it at reference power for 30 mins, and half-power for an hour?
What kind of computing UX/UI/OS could there be with primarily audio feedback[2] using a low power earphone, e-Ink style screen updated only on demand?
I carried on this thought to "treadle powered computer" thinking of a flywheel, and found someone has built one: https://scoraigwind.co.uk/2010/07/treadle-powered-computer/ which seems to be generating around 6 Watts and running a laptop.
[1] https://diyi0t.com/reduce-the-esp32-power-consumption/
[2] http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ - EMACSPEAK computing interface for the blind. Also ref the classic `ed` editor which doesn't print unless you ask, because it was from the days of printing on paper
My main use case: when I'm following a recipe, my devices go to sleep in a minute or two and it's a huge pain in the ass to wake it up and type in passwords while covered in sauce or flour or raw meat or whatever. I've started printing (or writing) recipes on blank paper just so I can move them around the kitchen and not worry about things going to sleep on me.
The press would eat it up with snark (Silicon Valley invents recipe cards. ha ha ha ha ha so clever!), but I don't want a rolodex full of cardboard that I have to stick in a drawer somewhere and sort/manage.
I know individual apps can turn off sleep. The browsers ought to also be better at recognizing that you're looking at a recipe, and keep the phone from falling asleep.
Most of the device is Open Source and the compliance section gives you the root password of the device that has ssh via usb enabled by default.
There are also initial (unpolished) solutions for encrypting files with gocryptfs.
Update: oh holy shit, John Gilmore was a Pixel Qi investor, bought the patents to help the company close cleanly rather than go bankrupt, and licenses the patents with an generally-available Defensive Patent License[1]! What a story!!! Thanks John! Pixel Qi is from ~2010, so he's better than halved the time it took to get this amazing technology legally accessible to the world. The gotcha is that it's a somewhat "copy-left" gnu like license, so anyone unwilling to open some of their own patents for use (or not holding patents) is going to have to go to John to get these built, until these patents expire.
Just a quick word on the Pixel Qi screen, it's a LCD screen with a normal transflective mode, but it can also switch into a reflective black and white mode that works great outdoors. 10" 1024x600 screens go for a bit over $100 today.
[1] https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and...
The whites are still quite bad I can see already, it has no special high whiteness polariser.
I'd love to have one too, I live in Spain and it would really help with outdoor use in the sun.
We have two working groups. One's creating an e-ink laptop, and the other is using a low-power CPU/MCU with an e-ink display.
If interested, check us out at the EI-2030 forum or join our Discord channel.
https://forum.ei2030.org/c/working-groups/26 https://discord.com/invite/nnxKnxh
In case anyone is interested: https://mindfulbytes.io/
Without the Lena photo the side would be even cooler ;). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-018-0337-2
You can get for that money 7,5” e-paper hat for Raspberry Pi. It goes for 71,99€ on German Amazon.
I would suspect the boox actually has more capable hardware because it needs to run android 10. I don't care enough to check though.
You are right that $185 might be a more realistic pricing, but that's a 68% increase over the price of the $110 Kindle so I wouldn't say that they are similarly priced.
Last time it was on HN: [2]
[1] https://github.com/e-radionicacom/Inkplate-6-hardware/issues...
I think they are Waveshare's supplier, you might even get cheaper/more specific stuff: https://www.good-display.com/product/6/
I think there's a great niche for "embedded" devices around the home -- weather readout panels, lighting controls, music player, intercom, etc. -- but glowing rectangles mounted to the wall are just too... glowing. E-ink panels is where it's at, and a Raspberry Pi powering it is perfect.
Unfortunately, the only real general-purpose e-ink tablet I'm aware of is the Boox, but their models are all $400-800, which is way too expensive (when similar tech in a Kindle is $80).
All I want is a relatively low-power, low-memory, low-storage touchscreen e-paper tablet (i.e. specs of an old Kindle) that I can run Linux and a WebKit browser on.
And I want them to be cheap enough in bulk so that other companies and startups can build home devices on top of them to resell.