E-ink Displays

[dflatline]

I've got a personal hardware project I've been thinking about a lot recently and one of the most important factors is power consumption so for the display I've been considering e-ink. However I'm not familiar with it or have even used a kindle or similar and was wondering how well it handles movement, specifically scrolling text?

Essentially I need to be able to display a shell/console using the lowest possible power in the smallest possible readable space (i have very good eyesight too). Colour is not necessary but if the power difference is negligible it would be nice.

 

[FBnil]

The problem with the old e-ink displays is ghosting. Thus, to refresh a page, you need to reset the whole display, which, if you play a game on in, will look like a flicker. if you have the DOS DIR command, then while scrolling it is unreadable, until it stops (scroll lock key). Being in a shell, you can pause your typing before pressing enter. The display is good, just not when refreshing.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7v8hrsrHujY?feature=oembed

 

[dflatline]

It definitely won't have to run anything refresh intensive as a game that isnt a roguelike or even anything thats animated beyond what youd get in most console programs. I dont have the data allowance to risk watching that video but is the ghosting bad enough to make using eink for a console unfeasible or annoying to look at? I'm pulling numbers out of my arse here but I think I could get away with a 300-500 millisecond refresh rate

 

[WizardStan]

If you can figure out where to buy e-ink displays with enough documentation to interface with a personal project I'll be happy to hear about it, please. All I can find are replacement screens for existing product.

 

[dflatline]

If you can figure out where to buy e-ink displays with enough documentation to interface with a personal project I'll be happy to hear about it, please. All I can find are replacement screens for existing product.

When I last looked I found some well documented ones from "pervasive displays" aimed towards raspberry pi and arduino projects with an SPI interface. repaper.org had the details. They cost around €20 for a 2.5 inch display.

 

[Granitehead]

Pity those are so small. I was rather searching for something >5".

 

[elwing]

Pity those are so small. I was rather searching for something >5".

Then look for Pervasive, they have some nice 4.41", 7.4" and 10.2" e-ink display kit...

like: http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/products/74#tab3

that you can buy from digitec here:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SW074AS182/SW074AS182-ND/4898789

 

[WizardStan]

The 7.4" is a outside what I was willing to pay, but the 4.4" lands in the right value. I'd tried looking through digikey before and didn't find anything. Glad to see I was either looking wrong or they've recently become available.