Using e-ink tablet as monitor for Linux(alavi.me) |
Using e-ink tablet as monitor for Linux(alavi.me) |
There are a couple of things to be aware of - everything is shipped to the US and then distributed from there (using Mouser US).
From the project point of view this means, depending on where things are manufactured) tariffs can come into play. The terms of shipping to mouser are delivery duty paid - so it’s the shipper who pays.
For backers it does mean people outside of US can pay quite high shipping costs.
The other thing from a project point of view is that mouser is a distributor. They want a reasonable (around 40%) margin on the things they ship.
With CrowdSupply there are two sets of orders:
Orders placed during the campaign - the project gets the full money (minus fees etc…)
Orders placed after the campaign and any additional bulk orders - the project gets the wholesale price.
I wrote a fairly detailed write up of it here: https://www.atomic14.com/2025/07/21/crowd-funding-retro
https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-p...
I bought it two years ago for over $1800, and I have to say, it was worth every single dollar.
I can read on it, work on it, (kind of) watch youtube videos on it, play (some) RTS game on it. And mine only had 33hz refresh rate, not the latest 60hz.
There was no manual, and it had a closed source application to time or force refresh. Of course, being closed source it wouldn't work on a Pi (arm64), nor did I feel comfortable about unknown code, or it working in a few years on a newer version of Linux.
It was all exceptionally poorly done. Amazon says it was a Dasung E-Ink Paperlike 3 HD Front-Light and Touch 13.3" Monitor.
If the app had been OSS, or it had an open API via the cable, I could have scripted an auto-refresh upon scrolling in vi or some such. Or just hacked into something seeing change scope under X. Point is, I could have made it work for me.
The default modes were terrible.
I hope things are better, but no way will I install some weird closed source client.
I have a fairly new tablet, and it handles refresh incredibly well, but I'm sure that's with strong integration into the display stack. Which is fine, of course, but that doesn't help me with coding.
EDIT: one of the things which makes some of these e-ink tablets incredible for refresh, is partial, very well done sectional refresh. So if a small part of the screen changes, BAM!, it's refreshed instantly for ghosting.
Again, I suspect this is tied into the display stack. The monitors I've seen don't seem anywhere as good. I'd love to to be wrong on newer models.
> Only Support Mac, Windows > Linux is not supported
You can just leave the display on forever and you never have to wait for the screen to wake up again. I use amphetamine on macOS and just set a session forever. I'm more comfortable this way since eink displays don't emit light and thus should consume less power.
For reading and work, I actually prefer this experience. The contrast for text is way better and more crisp than regular LED/LCD/OLED displays, unless you turn the regular display's brightness way up, until which point my eyes hurt from all that light emitted. This was my primary reason for buying such a display -- I love my Kindle and want to use it more, but I couldn't.
Now for entertainment you are obviously limited. For informational Youtube videos you could be getting by alright -- you don't really need to see colors for those. Games is tricky since you could only do non-demanding ones. Shopping gets tricky since you can't see colors. Sometimes I find myself hopping on my iPhone to check before placing orders.
You actually get used to the monochrome thing. I've adjusted my syntax highlighting to use more italic, underline, bold etc so you get by without the semantic coloring.
The color eink is way better though. Only downside is that it has less contrast than the purely monochrome one. Color makes up for it nicely, though. Plus the refresh rate on the Dasung is way higher, so you can actually use a mouse without going insane trying to predict cursor movement.
Where the monochrome monitor was more of a secondary display primarily used for coding, I'm now using the Color EInk one as my main display.
It seems Android tablet with a keyboard or Windows laptop with double screen exist but to live with the limitations of such a screen, nothing would top having full control of the OS interface.
The market might just not be big enough to warrant creating a product.
(Just be aware they're open GPL violators.)
Pretty cool, and you could use it as aregular display as well.
dunno how linux would react though.
I wanted an e-ink screen I could just plug-in. Versatile, big and cheap. Connection is via a VGA or HDMI. Works like an appliance. All automated. Wireless.
Specifications: 1024x768, 6fps, lag: ~1.2s, Connection: VGA or HDMI Specifications Single Screen: 1024x768, 5fps, lag: ~1.2s, Connection: VGA or HDMI
But an e-ink "terminal" would be nice, not an actual tty but something more like a tablet form factor that has a few buttons, little to no internal smarts and you can push images to it.
But now that they have a bigger version, with controls and a clear case...
I'm not sure that I should be thanking you for making me spend money!
see our demo here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qs7JeK11Cxc
Hold up, this could be good
So I spent a fair amount of time looking into e-ink options as a potential solution. I eventually settled on a refurbished Lenovo Thinkbook Plus G4, which has a flip-able screen with e-ink on one side. I paid around $800 which was less than a dedicated e-ink monitor, and only slightly more than some of the higher end large tablets/e-readers. So it was a hard deal to pass up.
I am happy to report that using the e-ink in the evenings has helped quite a bit on the sleep front. And while the laptop is pretty nice, e-ink in general requires a fair bit of compromise and the laptop in particular has some rough edges. You definitely need to spend some time on your display settings to make things work (high contrast, cursor and pointer visibility, font color in IDE and terminal apps, etc...), but for the most part I can make it work. And while I don't work in sunlight often, e-ink can really shine if you are outdoors (I have the sun shining on my screen right now as I type this and it is super readable.)
Anyways, I guess what I am trying to say is that I really hope more investment gets put into e-ink. I think it is a pretty awesome technology and would love to expand my usage of it. But at least for now it is mostly something that I am tolerating for the sake of sleep.
When writing a lot of LaTeX I wished I had an eink monitor. LaTeX already takes a moment to compile. I’d probably want vim on a conventional monitor.
Most of my work is reading rather than writing so when I want to read something I use the E-ink screen.
Are the dedicated eink monitors (like Dasung) better in this regard?
One huge plus is that it isn't *just a monitor*. because of the VNC connection, I just pick up my tablet and roam around the office while reading something, even making tiny edits, It can be also used as a great drawpad. I use it to explain things to my coworkers, since drawing freehand diagrams, shapes and text isn't very easy with a mouse.
At least with vnc, you could create a private network between the boox and your linux box, and it'd be sharing the screen. Still an issue, but passwords and hidden fields would be typed on the keyboard on the Linux box, not the boox.
I rooted mine, and installed afwall, and still won't ever used it for anything security conscious.
Dasung 13k color is workable-ish even on MacOS with no tweaks.
And this is more than a monitor. the VNC provides you with an interface. you can use your tablet as the input device. and it's also portable.
https://www.mydeepguide.com/daf-tool
Be aware that Boox runs Android apps. Many other brands do not.
As soon as they make larger, better 60hz panels I will 100% switch all my monitors over. I think making videos look worse is a positive. We don't need doomscrolling. We don't need 60fps react buttons with smooth gradients. We don't need to HDR the entire web. I primarily use text based sites anyways, so eink is perfect for me.
It is as crisp and clear as the day I got it.
Admittedly, I'm not trying to run video on it constantly and it doesn't get hot. But eInk seems remarkably durable.
From what I gather, at book-reading speeds, newer e-ink displays may never wear out in a human lifetime.
But at usable computer display speeds I rather suspect many of these panels have a lifetime one might measure in months.
But being serious, I personally have not seen a degraded e-ink display.
they seem pretty durable to me.
HDMI is not always plug and play. I unfortunately encountered a situation where a Phillips HDMI display only worked with Windows, but not Linux due to EDID/Nvidia driver issues
Presumably the contract doesn't allow you to sell product directly if you wanted too. The other thing I'm curious about is that CrowdSupply does continue to list "buying options" long after the creator has gone away. Which makes me wonder if they have some sort of rights to tooling etc post campaign?
I need to check the exact wording in my contract - but post campaign you can sell through other channels if you want to (which would allow you to do it directly).
[1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/capable-robot-components/program...
We spent oodles of time on it, learned lots, build a fairly simple product but ended up selling it through some of the bigger RPi retailers. It was all an excellent learning experience, and ignoring our time we made about 50p out of the entire batch of a thousand. Factor in our time and it was a complete financial disaster, but we were young and carefree and had fun doing it!
https://github.com/CapableRobot/CapableRobot_USBHub_Driver/i...
It used-to be in the DOS and terminal days, and it wouldn't take much to get us back there. Shut off all the eye-candy transition effects. Make your web browser, PDF viewer, etc., always scroll a full page at a time, instead of scrolling 1mm when you click on the button or use the mouse wheel. Just those few changes and you'll have something that'll work pretty well.
It's a feature of course, but most people don't realize it.
The only thing is that you need to stick to Page Up/Page Down for scrolling.
so the old is not so old, and the new is not dramatically new.
This is that product. A 60 Hz eink monitor, for $340.
Here's a clip of it playing video: https://youtu.be/povlk3hKTVA