E-paper hacking: fastest possible refresh rate on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2018–2021.
tutorial · intermediate · evergreen
Ben Krasnow of Applied Science explains how electrophoretic e-paper displays work and how he modified the driver firmware and waveform lookup tables of a 4.2-inch panel to reach roughly 3Hz partial refresh. It covers the tweakable constants in the refresh process and touches on colored e-ink microcapsules.
Whenever e-ink refresh speed or driving waveforms come up, HN points to this as the clearest hands-on explanation of how these displays work and how to hack them.
“Here's a fascinating video on how these displays work, and how you can modify the firmware of the driver to get faster refresh rates”
12 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Ben Krasnow (Applied Science on YouTube) did some research into driving e-Ink displays, and he made some similar observations: > All of the lookup table information has been removed from this datasheet, because the industry thrives on secrecy or something Highly recommended, as usual for him it's a great video/write-up: * ▶ this video * [link]
in “E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret” · View on HN
It's possible to refresh e-ink without a global flash if you are careful and have a clever controller. I don't think this video directly addresses this but it gives a good overview on the problem space ▶ this video
in “Show HN: Low-power Kindle-based dashboard” · View on HN
Turns out that e-ink displays typically don't mix colors this way. In order to get multiple colors in a single display, they use sort of colored-balls of various densities suspended in a fluid. Then, using the known viscosities of the fluid in the capsules, they can vary the charge of the electrodes very quickly to sort of _drag_ a color up to the top. But when you do this, you're dragging a _single_ color. _All_ the colors are in the capsule, but you can only truly pull a single one at a time, a true pigment-like mixing isn't possible. If you pull the Cyan up, you're necessarily losing the Magenta, for example. If you had a high enough resolution addressable grid, you might be able to put the pixels close enough that you couldn't tell, but you'd still be basically doing sub-pixel color at that point, not truly mixing the various colors at the base level. Maybe there are other e-ink displays doing something else, but all the ones I've seen are doing some form of this approach. Here's a fascinating video on how these displays work, and how you can modify the firmware of the driver to get faster refresh rates (with an increased risk of burn-in). ▶ this video
in “Reasonably priced color e-ink display” · View on HN
Great video on these sorts of displays, what they're capable of, and perhaps some inspiration for any hobby projects: ▶ this video
in “Reasonably priced color e-ink display” · View on HN
yeah I believe that was the only option for older / cheaper displays. I recently got a kindle for a present and notice that when it can, it will try to refresh the screen as little as possible. For example, when you press the top of the screen to bring up the settings, only the top cycles, and then the same when you tap below to get rid of the settings. To that end, I would be interested in watching some high-speed camera footage of the displays just to see the gears turn. I’ll have a look round and edit this comment if I find any. e: found one. [link] also a video from an engineering channel that normally gives good insight into these things, I have watched it yet so it may not be great, but Applied Engineering normally brings some interesting material. ▶ this video
in “Hacking Together an E-ink Dashboard” · View on HN
For single or double-color displays, you can do pretty decently. This Applied Sciences video on YT goes over what's possible. ▶ this video
in “Reasonably priced color e-ink display” · View on HN
Colored e-ink displays are discussed at around 8:00 in this video; there are probably better sources, but this is the one I'm familiar with, so I figured I'd link it: ▶ this video The microcapsules are not individually wired up to anything, so I don't think it's feasible to make each color channel independently addressable. Instead, a grid of wires behind the capsules are either positively or negatively charged, in order to attract or repel the charged colored particles in each capsule. There are only 2 charges, but by using different sizes of particles for different colors, you can finagle it so that the color you want ends up on top. If they could address capsules individually, that would also increase the possible resolution of a black-and-white display; they'd do it if they could. But since the mechanism is about attracting and repelling charged particles, there's probably a pretty hard limit on how much you can increase the resolution before there is interference between neighboring pixels.
in “Reasonably priced color e-ink display” · View on HN
I didn't design these things, so all I know is that the datasheet says the lifetime will be reduced if you update it more than once every five minutes. A clock with a minutes display exceeds that by 5x. (And indeed, the display I used did break! I have no idea why, but it just stopped updating one day.) Ben explains some of the constants that can be tweaked here: ▶ this video
in “UpNext – an ePaper digital calendar for your desk” · View on HN
My understanding of electronic paper displays is almost entirely founded in the great Applied Science[0] video about it. I have to assume that the way that a full color electronic paper display is done would be vastly different than the method that the 3 color displays work. Anyone have any insight into this? [0] ▶ this video
in “13.3" full color ePaper display” · View on HN
I don't think they are incapable, they are actively hiding information. Ben Krasnow had to reverse engineer a screen to figure out how to better refresh it. ▶ this video Eink could have changed the world, yet the only eink display I and many people have it our kindle.
in “New 10.3″ Waveshare E Ink Monitor” · View on HN
I don't think so. It's easy to "paint" over white because that's the base color of the medium, but "painting" over another color means you have to clear it first. ▶ this video
in “E Ink just unveiled a new type of color e-paper” · View on HN
I built an e-ink clock recently. E-ink has two downsides; the datasheet says that the display will be damaged if it's refreshed more than every 3 minutes (I ignore that and refresh it every minute, so we'll see if it lasts) and the black/white/black refresh cycle is very visually distracting. Having that thing in the field of view just doesn't work. Both of these issues can be gotten around with a different refresh algorithm, but of course the datasheet doesn't include any of them. The vendors regard their refresh logic as proprietary and so you have to spend months trying to figure out what will work, like this: ▶ this video
in “PineTime Is a $25 Smartwatch / Companion for PinePhone Linux Phone” · View on HN