Comments on: Esquire’s hackable e-paper display

By: paddlegal

paddlegal — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:50:33 +0000

I have 4 of these available. contact me at email. paypal only.

By: varne

varne — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:31:56 +0000

I think that we need to have a few serious hardware hackers take a look at it and see what the possibilities are. There is a pretty good write up over in the slashdot comments where someone actual started mapping out the pins and has all the board info
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=957583&cid=24930139
I bought one, for when my skills are up to it (ok so I’m dreaming a bit), or someone starts making really neat projects for it.

By: just mike

just mike — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:33:55 +0000

I picked this up on Friday. Here it is disassembled:

http://flickr.com/photos/just_mike/sets/72157607133868125/

I think you’re all going to be pretty dissapointed, as it seems fairly certain the individual “pixels” are not addressable.

By: chaos theory

chaos theory — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:32:59 +0000

nr 10 could you send one to belgium? contact me at: yonsje (at) gmail (dot) com

By: dakaling

dakaling — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:45:18 +0000

I wonder how hard it would be to turn one of these into an ebook reader. surely someone here could design something better than the Kindle.

By: tek

tek — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:26:53 +0000

if only electronic ink could correct grammar somehow….

By: hak8or

hak8or — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:17:19 +0000

Would it be possible to just change the eeprom or what ever chip they use to store the pictures? Or maybe even somehow stream the picture or text from a sd card? :S

By: Jax184

Jax184 — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:27:01 +0000

For those of you who jump to conclusions…

E-paper doesn’t use Any power to display an image, only to CHANGE what’s being displayed. So once you make it display a picture/text/etc, it will continue to show it for a few gazillion years, powered or not, unless something powers it up and tells it to change the image. It also doesn’t have a backlight. All this means it takes only a teeny tiny trickle of power to run the animated cover on that magazine. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it lasted a few months on some coin cells.

Anyone know if these will be sold in Canada?

By: BitMage

BitMage — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:47:17 +0000

That’s great until the battery runs out, then you’ll be like “I can’t read my magazine cuz print was too low-tech for them.”

Also, you know what they’ll make next? “Please deposit 25 cents for an additional 15 minutes of reading.” Also, the articles will change to ads while you’re reading them.

By: epicelite

epicelite — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:58:40 +0000

Sweet, my mom works at a Barns & Nobel’s.

I will get every copy they have and STRAIGHT to e-bay!

By: sitwon

sitwon — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:04:28 +0000

How do you figure? E-paper is supposed to use a very tiny amount of power. The electronics themselves don’t necessarily need a lot of power either. Unlike LCDs, I don’t think “pre-cut segments” would save a significant amount of power.

By: will

will — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:48:38 +0000

@ #13
Damn. I just bought a year’s subscription for $7 from amazon. Not the worst waste of money ever but hopefully my B&N will get it and it won’t disappear before I can get my greasy mits on it.

By: bWare

bWare — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:32:21 +0000

Thinking about this some more, it is unlikely to be a matrix display. They will probably just flash pre-cut segments.

Ignoring the e-paper, the accompanying electronics to display a pixel based animation at an acceptable resolution (i.e. good enough to recognise the logos) wouldn't run continuously for 90 days.

Anyone know enough about e-paper (specifically e-Ink's) to comment on whether re-laminating the e-ink layer onto your own matrix of electrodes might work?

Still anyone willing to ship one to England please contact me at bware, iware, co, uk with more traditional punctuation.

By: aoeu

aoeu — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:19:43 +0000

Description at boingboing matches "ink-in-motion" described here: http://www.eink.com/products/ink_in_motion.html It's a segmented display, not dot-matrix.

I have a TFT on glass active matrix from an ancient laptop, and I wonder if I manage to separate electrodes from the e-ink film.

By: Sniperman

Sniperman — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:58:53 +0000

i was able to contact someone at esquire regarding availability and here is a direct quote.

“The E-Ink issues will be available only at Borders, Barnes & Noble and select newsstands. Only 100,000 of them will existâit is simply too expensive to create more of them. Thanks for your interest. “