Building an E-Ink Laptop

Hey folks, I&#x27;ve recently had the idea of building an e-ink laptop from the devices I had at home. I decided to document the process and share each step of the way:<p>Some of the posts planned for the series are: Dasung Paperlike HD-FT teardown, Thinkpad T480 teardown, Creating the prototype, Installing and configuring NixOS, M-x e-ink-laptop-mode<p>If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out.

Has anybody tried to retrofit a transflector into a laptop LCD screen? I&#x27;ve got no idea if this is even possible but I&#x27;d love to be able to just trigger a brightness=0 and see a smartwatch-type display that doesn&#x27;t strain my eyes.

You can use Parabola-rM[1] with a reMarkable 1 tablet as an all-in-one solution, and like the T480 can be totally freedom-respecting using only libre software.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.davisr.me&#x2F;projects&#x2F;parabola-rm&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.davisr.me&#x2F;projects&#x2F;parabola-rm&#x2F;</a>

Lenovo had a dual screen botebook with e-ink<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;lenovo-thinkbook-plus-gen-2-i-e-ink-screen-laptop-170048754.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;lenovo-thinkbook-plus-gen-2-i-e-ink...</a>

I would love an e-ink laptop because the screen backlight is one of the biggest battery drains.<p>It&#x27;d be interesting to see what the battery life of an e-ink laptop actually is. A laptop with the battery life of a kindle seems like an impossible dream

Ha, this is a good write-up on a very interesting topic I’ve been thinking about a lot myself recently.<p>The setup I’ve been thinking of putting together is similar, except I’ve been wanting to pair an e-ink monitor with something like a Raspberry Pi 400 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.raspberrypi.org&#x2F;products&#x2F;raspberry-pi-400" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.raspberrypi.org&#x2F;products&#x2F;raspberry-pi-400</a>) for a kind of deliberately-slow, ultra-low-wattage dev and writing environment. End result would be extremely goofy I imagine, but that’s also part of the reason I want to do it!<p>Anyways, excited to see the rest of your posts on the project :)

$1000 for the screen. These E-ink patents can’t expire soon enough.

The backlight on the Dasung HD-FT in the picture from the blog post seems to be way too bright, makes it appear to be lower contrast than it probably is..<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;alexsoto.dev&#x2F;static&#x2F;building-an-e-ink-laptop&#x2F;eink-t480.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;alexsoto.dev&#x2F;static&#x2F;building-an-e-ink-laptop&#x2F;eink-t4...</a>

I wish I had a large e-ink display for coding. I imagine a large screen would be prohibitively expensive, and the latency will be terrible. Too bad. It would be nice for my eyes.

I haven&#x27;t used e-ink for a while, but the last one I did had a refresh rate of something like 1Hz. Is this still an issue with modern technology?

Great effort. I compromised and bought a Boox e-reader with a 10&quot; screen, it runs Android so pared with a BT keyboard it is quite the productivity machine for when I need to write an essay or similar offline no distraction activities.

What you didn&#x27;t say is that Dasung displays cost thousands of dollars. It&#x27;s just too expensive to play with.

Very interesting - wasn’t familiar with these e-ink screens. I wonder if the power draw is low enough at you could power the screen and a Rpi4 off a USB battery bank.<p>You could make a rear “shield” that connects to the monitor via VESA. The shield could hold the the Rpi, batteries, and an adjustable kick stand. You’d connect a keyboard via USB.<p>The upcoming Quartz64 [0] mentioned in the article might simplify this, thanks to the included ePD connector. Unfortunately I haven’t been super impressed with my PineBook Pro. Mostly the suspend bug is annoying.<p>Maybe a luggable form factor and e-ink display would help, since there’s no lid to close and the low-draw display can stay on longer without killing the battery. [0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.makeuseof.com&#x2F;quartz64-e-ink-sbc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.makeuseof.com&#x2F;quartz64-e-ink-sbc&#x2F;</a>

There used to be Siemens-Fujitsu laptops with transflective displays for working in direct sunlight quite a few years ago. They were extremely expensive. I had a search running on eBay for several years but not a single unit turned up. They must be woefully outdated by now.

I think the right way to bring this to market is a snap-on macbook pro display:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;jtdaugh&#x2F;status&#x2F;1348719574481592324?s=20" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;jtdaugh&#x2F;status&#x2F;1348719574481592324?s=20</a>

A very different eInk laptop recently was at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hackaday.io&#x2F;project&#x2F;177716-the-open-source-autarkic-laptop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hackaday.io&#x2F;project&#x2F;177716-the-open-source-autarkic-...</a><p>Also note my tech EDC&#x2F;emergency kit at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;xmRmYSn" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;xmRmYSn</a> which also uses a Dasung device, the 7.8&quot; not-eReader as an external monitor to an also 7&quot; laptop.<p>Also note Dasung within the next few months intends to start shipping in China at least a 25.3&quot; eInk monitor.

Crazy idea: Add some form of laser dot for the mouse pointer...

I did try to hack something simmilar to this by the way of Onyx Boox e-reader running Android and supporting my bluetooth keyboard and it was more of a novelty than anything else :D<p>But it was fun to write in direct sunlight, in just a slightly less of a hipster fashion than using i.e. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getfreewrite.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getfreewrite.com&#x2F;</a> :D

Interestingly this will benefit from terminal apps that were optimized for slow TTY lines, which will require less screen updates.

I&#x27;ve been thinking of something similar: a super lightweight (n)vim machine using Raspberry Pi (originally RaspPi Zero but performance went through the floor with my number of vim plugins, so likely a beefier one).<p>I think the lack of syntax highlighting is going to be the major hindrance for me moving forwards.

Very cool! I once ran an E-ink display as an external monitor on a laptop to that I could work outside. I recall the latency was pretty much unworkable for typing, but that may have been the way the driver was setup. Curious to hear how usable this is for work - would love to see a video of this thing in use.

Follow-up post: Dasung Paperlike HD-FT Teardown<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26270995#26271790" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26270995#26271790</a>

As there are now several eReaders on the market which have a 10 inch eInk screen, it would be so great, if there was one which implements displaylink and could just be plugged via USB into any computer. This would immediately enable a lot of usages.

would go hand in hand with this project: DIY E-Ink Monitor<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;eink&#x2F;comments&#x2F;le6852&#x2F;diy_eink_monitor&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;eink&#x2F;comments&#x2F;le6852&#x2F;diy_eink_monit...</a>

Did you record the difference in battery life before&#x2F;after the eink monitor?

Finally a nice hacking project that doesn&#x27;t use a Raspberry Pi at its core! Every Pi article on HN has the same comments about how old repurposed laptops or nucs&#x2F;usffs are better for the current usecase, its nice to actually see a project that takes that to heart.

I accept viewed from the 7billion people problem olpc achieved only millions. None the less, olpc did achieve the scale of millions. It says quite a lot that 3 millions is failure. I guess it depends how your goal is measured.<p>(I never worked on it, no skin in the game)

My life would improve dramatically if I could work outside..