Context upfront: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13771203" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13771203</a><p>I'd really like to have a decent (let's say >13") display to hang on a wall in my room and display weather, my todo list, etc. It doesn't necessarily have to be E-ink proper, but I like the idea of having something that doesn't emit its own light. More like an electronic whiteboard.<p>Alternatives include something like the Vestaboard, which is <i>not cheap</i>, and probably fairly noisy.<p>Are there products I'm missing here?
If you're interesting in building your own you can get a 12" one from waveshare: <a href="https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/12.48inch-e-paper-module.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/12.48inch...</a><p>This is the black/white one, they do a black/white/red one too. But beware, they take really long to refresh (the red color takes several refreshes to appear). And the one with red is on backorder till June.<p>It can be powered by a raspberry pi (or ESP32 or Arduino) and is (much) cheaper than the ereader options of the same size: Only about $170.<p>PS Beware: You can't simply start up a user interface like X-Windows on it. You have to write software to display on it. The display is addressed in 4 separate sections so it's not super easy.
The technology is there, but E Ink (the company) is steadfastly refusing to lower prices because they believe there's a market for this. Now go to Alibaba and find that you can get a flexible, full-color OLED sheet for the same price as a given size E Ink panel.<p>Go on eBay and buy an older NOOK device (they all ran Android) for $20, tape it to your wall, and point at your web page of choice.
Have you looked at <a href="https://remarkable.com/" rel="nofollow">https://remarkable.com/</a>? It's a little smaller, 12" diagonal.<p>Dasung sells a 13.3" e-ink monitor: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Paperlike-13-3-E-Ink-Monitor/dp/B00MWEPM3C" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Paperlike-13-3-E-Ink-Monitor/d...</a>
I've long wondered why electrophoretic displays (the generic term for E Ink, which is a proprietary name) continue to be exponentially more expensive at sizes larger than a Kindle while other technologies like OLED have become vastly more affordable in larger formats over a similar timeframe.<p>The best I can tell is that there just hasn't been an investment in scaling up fabrication anywhere near what the likes of LG (mostly LG, actually) has done with >40" OLED panels. Presumably the demand isn't there yet, and so larger-format electrophoretics remain the product of low-volume, high-cost manufacturing processes.
Large format E-ink displays are currently used primarily in digital signage scenarios (outdoor advertising, passenger information systems,...) - examples are Soofa (<a href="http://www.soofa.co/" rel="nofollow">http://www.soofa.co/</a>) and Mercury Innovation (<a href="https://www.mercuryinnovation.com.au/digital-bus-stop" rel="nofollow">https://www.mercuryinnovation.com.au/digital-bus-stop</a>).<p>The largest size currently available is 42" and it is used in outdoor and indoor scenarios. Indoor use is for education purposes as a digital whiteboard - see Quilla (<a href="https://www.engadget.com/2017-01-03-quirklogic-s-quilla-is-a-42-inch-e-ink-whiteboard.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.engadget.com/2017-01-03-quirklogic-s-quilla-is-a...</a>).<p>None of these are especially applicable for home use due to the price tag (just to be clear, the display itself is very expensive). What you could do is use Sonys larger format eInk tablet, use Remarkable EInk tablet or hack your own solution from an older Kobo reader.<p>We're offering solutions somewhere in the middle - traditionally we were focused on SME, where our devices are being used as universal digital signage (<a href="http://www.visionect.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.visionect.com</a>) or tailored for room booking (<a href="http://getjoan.com" rel="nofollow">http://getjoan.com</a>), so a bit pricy for home use. But we just launched a 6" device called Joan Home (<a href="https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home/" rel="nofollow">https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home/</a>) that syncs to your calendar and are looking to expand it with new functionality in the future. We're thing of integrations with home automation, pomodoro timer, IFTTT, etc...<p>Comments on the Joan Home are welcome - as we're actively thinking of developing this into a more feature rich product in next two months.
32" e-ink panels exist but are still too expensive to be practical for home use: <a href="https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2˝-monochrome-epaper-display-ed312tt2/" rel="nofollow">https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2˝-monochrome-epaper-di...</a><p>The only commercial product I know of that uses it is from Visionect but it's a meant for digital signage rather than as a computer display: <a href="https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/" rel="nofollow">https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/</a>. It's less expensive than their earlier system but still around $2500.
This isn't perfectly within your search criteria, but you may still find it interesting. Just today I researched the available solutions for driving a ED097OC1 (compatible) display, which was built into the Kindle DX, has a diagonale of 9,7" and can be obtained for about 30€ [0].<p>There are some projects dedicated to driving the screen with an ESP32, which already has WiFi built in, has good low power modes and is pretty cheap as well [1] [2].<p>There's also a project driving e-ink displays with an stm32 [3] and one to do it with an FPGA [4].<p>Beyond 13" things get really expensive and hard to find - best I can do is 12,48" for 150€ [5].<p>[0]: <a href="https://aliexpress.com/item/32983492389.html" rel="nofollow">https://aliexpress.com/item/32983492389.html</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/dqydj/PaperBack_EPaper_Display" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dqydj/PaperBack_EPaper_Display</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://hackaday.io/project/168193-976-e-paper-controller-kindle-screen/log/174926-v2-underway.A" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.io/project/168193-976-e-paper-controller-ki...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calendar" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.io/project/11537-nekocal-an-e-ink-calendar</a><p>[4]: <a href="https://github.com/vd-rd/project_rorschach" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/vd-rd/project_rorschach</a><p>[5]: <a href="https://aliexpress.com/i/32929629021.html" rel="nofollow">https://aliexpress.com/i/32929629021.html</a>
I suspect you would be interested in this:<p><a href="https://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/a-digital-canvas-thats-hard-to-spot/" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/a-digital-canvas-thats-hard-...</a><p>It matches the LCD lighting to the ambient light, so that it doesn’t have that “glowing screen” look, but instead looks like a flat picture.<p>Something else irrelevant to your question, but trés cool: <a href="https://hackaday.com/2019/08/17/great-artificial-daylight-via-broken-tvs/" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.com/2019/08/17/great-artificial-daylight-vi...</a>
In Shanghai they are used as timetables at bus stops.
Almost A2 size in some stops and smaller ones, about A4 (vertical) at others... The small ones had a clock which updated every minute (windowed mode) while the passenger data updated in longer intervals, probably hourly.
There is a need gap for 'Affordable E-Ink large external displays'[1].<p>Dasung, Onyx have been market leaders in this category and they are expensive. There are E-ink tablets from several other manufacturers as mentioned in other comments, but they rarely are external displays.<p>Then there are reliability issues with cheap DIY E-Ink displays, they don't last long and especially when displaying low refresh rate data like Weather, todo list; there will be ghosting issues quite soon.<p>I'm not exactly sure on whether manufacturing large E-ink external displays is just an unit-economics problem which will get resolved with improvement in technology or there is some underlying Intellectual Property issues from the likes of Amazon,Dasung,Onyx etc.<p>[1]<a href="https://needgap.com/problems/43-affordable-e-ink-large-external-displays-eink-displays" rel="nofollow">https://needgap.com/problems/43-affordable-e-ink-large-exter...</a>
Soooo surely someone here knows something about this... at the fancy Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios Hollywood, they have “living paintings” as part of the ambiance, which are very clearly digital. They are large and in color, TV-sized. But they <i>look</i> like they are not emitting their own light. My best guess is carefully controlled brightness and some special coating (they have a paint-like finish), but that’s just a guess. Anyone know more details?
I'm using the Dasung Paperlike HD and I really like it for writing code. 13 inches, but it's real nice.<p>I imagine in 5-10 years or so, we'll see what you're imagining.
<i>A Canvas Made of Pixels (claybavor.com)</i><p>The most interesting problem to tackle was “the blue glowing screen problem”.<p>One of the many ways that screens give themselves away as screens is by emitting light that is “out of character” with the surrounding environment. They can be too bright or too dark relative to the things around them, and indoors, displays often seem too blue.<p>I solved these problems with what I call “luminance matching”. The basic idea is to sample the light falling on the frame several times a second, and then adjust the display and image parameters so that what’s displayed is “correct” given the surrounding environment.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900439" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900439</a>
They exist. They still cost more than color displays. Larger sizes are still "call for quotation". The current sales pitch seems to be "you don't have to wire AC power to the sign", for bus stops and such.
Relevant article with many related updates and context: <a href="https://cloudconfusing.com/2020/02/07/e-ink-monitors-ready-for-prime-time/" rel="nofollow">https://cloudconfusing.com/2020/02/07/e-ink-monitors-ready-f...</a>
Since the demise of Pixel Qi, does anyone else have a credible laptop screen based on e-ink, that has a high enough refresh rate to be usable, and/or the ability to switch from transflective/zero-power e-ink mode to a normal screen?
Boox makes large e-readers. They're not cheap but they are good.<p><a href="https://shop.boox.com/products/boox-note-pro#custom-tab-1" rel="nofollow">https://shop.boox.com/products/boox-note-pro#custom-tab-1</a>
There’s an article on the front page right now about an individual who created an art project displaying a newspaper page with a 31.2” eInk display: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831323</a><p>Unfortunately it looks to be quite expensive, but the technology is there.<p>As others have already pointed out, the newly released Remarkable 2 sounds exactly like what you’re looking for. <a href="https://remarkable.com/" rel="nofollow">https://remarkable.com/</a>
Here is E-Ink's 13.3˝ ePaper Display:<p><a href="https://shopkits.eink.com/product/13-3%cb%9d-epaper-display-ed133ut2/" rel="nofollow">https://shopkits.eink.com/product/13-3%cb%9d-epaper-display-...</a><p>31.2˝ monochrome ePaper Display:<p><a href="https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-monochrome-epaper-display-ed312tt2/" rel="nofollow">https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-monochrome-epap...</a><p>And here is 42˝ monochrome ePaper Display:<p><a href="https://shopkits.eink.com/product/42%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper-display-ed420tt1/" rel="nofollow">https://shopkits.eink.com/product/42%cb%9d-monochrome-epaper...</a><p>Pricey, unfortunately. But does the work.
Good question, I wonder the same. I would say E-ink is still the best bet in terms of no-light emission property. Someone from ReMarkable could give really good insights as they are the hottest startup building a product within this space. Other than that possibly the cheapest option would be to tile old kindles and find a way to interface with them...<p>Sad that Amazon makes Kindle very closed to modification in terms of software. Therefore I am a huge fan of ReMarkable because an underdog may allow us to finally build e-ink apps: <a href="https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable</a>
> It doesn't necessarily have to be E-ink proper, but I like the idea of having something that doesn't emit its own light.<p>Such as an older LCD panel without a backlight? It doesn't sound like you're looking for anything special here.
I forgot to reply to the previous post on topic but is there someone looking for a single purpose typewriter laptop?<p>One that I know is Kingjim Pomera line. They have a few reflexive LCD models based on some rare Toshiba uC, an E Ink model that runs on good old ARM926EJ-S, IIRC, and a color backlit LCD model that just runs Android Linux stripped bare(no Android GUI at all). Some people are running X on the last one.<p>Those are only available in Japan with JP106 keyboard(think of ANSI with ISO return, ISO symbols and two extra keys next to spacebar) and I can’t assure hackability, but as an input...
Artec Design offers products for digital signage based on E Ink's 9.7", 13.3" and 32" panels:<p><a href="http://www.artecdesign.ee/products/e-paper-digital-signage-platform/" rel="nofollow">http://www.artecdesign.ee/products/e-paper-digital-signage-p...</a>
I use a DPT-RP1 13”. I use it everyday, however the pen has an adequate writing experience and the build quality isn’t great. I’ve used the ReMarkable before and it has a much better build quality and a better writing experience.<p>Foe just an electronic whiteboard there are Boogieboards.
QuirkLogic builds large 42" e-ink displays that double as whiteboards.<p>I would suspect they have smaller ones too.<p><a href="https://www.quirklogic.com/collections/all" rel="nofollow">https://www.quirklogic.com/collections/all</a>
I found this on Hacker News. does it count? <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b407822494" rel="nofollow">https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40...</a>
Check this out, a 32 inch reflective LCD:<p><a href="https://www.j-display.com/english/news/2016/20160520.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.j-display.com/english/news/2016/20160520.html</a>
There are some large E-ink display at bus stops in China<p><a href="http://einkcn.com/post/216.html" rel="nofollow">http://einkcn.com/post/216.html</a><p><a href="https://www.sohu.com/a/330365162_100238338" rel="nofollow">https://www.sohu.com/a/330365162_100238338</a><p>I think it's a waste of tax-payers money. Besides why it's not been stolen yet?<p>For consumer electronics I found modern e-ink tablets have very good refresh rate. Watching video is pretty smooth.
If you don't need refresh, a drawing board can be suitable. You can use this. <a href="https://m.aliexpress.com/item/4000550295706.html?pid=808_0000_0131" rel="nofollow">https://m.aliexpress.com/item/4000550295706.html?pid=808_000...</a>
OLED can work very well and I have used it for night reading over the eink display Kindle use. You may be interested in reflective LCDs like epaper too. A window outside is better for weather and writing a todo list is a better reminder.
If you change your goal from remembering to do things and knowing how the outdoors is, you'll see that a large eink screen is not at all a productive use of money nor will it be the most optimal for knowing the weather or reminding you to do things. Writing notes in class helps you remember more than typing it, which in turn is better than taking a picture of the whiteboard.
Famous tech enterprisers such as bill Gates and Steve jobs did not allow electronics to be used as learning tools for their children because they deemed them too distracting.