Posted by saeedesmaili 16 hours ago
Yes, please distribute this as an HA app. I can't wait to see that.
It could change a lot of things in the world, especially regarding the power consumption of most commonly used screens for a lot of signage everywhere. But not that much company looks like to be interested in developing the field.
I think that a few years a go, a lot of possible innovation were blocked by a few aggressive patents. I don't know if it is still the case.
There's something I don't get about common e-paper displays.
I have a Remarkable, and it's great. The battery life is also supposed to be great. It can last for months while the Remarkable is turned off.
If the Remarkable is on, it won't last. All the battery will drain away. You have to babysit it carefully, or this is what will happen, and the next time you want to use the Remarkable, it will be dead and you'll need to charge it first.
For some reason, if left idle, it will enter a "sleeping" mode. The screen shows whatever was on the screen, with a little bar overlaid telling you that it's sleeping.
Sleeping mode is actually just awake mode. It continues to draw power as if it was on. The only difference is that it stops responding to touches. If you press the power button, it wakes up instantly, because it was already on.
Off mode is different. In off mode, the Remarkable stops drawing power. Also, it erases the screen, instead displaying a full-screen message that the Remarkable is off. You have to manually put it in off mode whenever you stop using it, or all the battery will rapidly drain away. If you press the power button, nothing will happen; you have to press it and then hold it down for two seconds (I measured this) in order to get it to boot up.
To put it into off mode, you have to do the same thing, forcefully holding down the power button while you wait for it to admit that you want it to turn off. This takes four seconds. Then you have to confirm on the screen that yes, you held the power button down for four straight seconds on purpose.
The ergonomics of this are awful. Leaving your Remarkable idle means losing your entire charge; it will never transition from awake-but-pretending-to-sleep to off. Turning it off is a huge pain. It would solve so many problems to just leave whatever was on screen before idle on the screen, and actually turn off.
why is that crazy? the demand for big epaper isn't really there, but demand for AI has been pretty clear
AI is re-structuring entire industries.
Hence we need more resources for R&D to figure out the shortcomings. LCD didn't pop into existence randomly either. It's not a guaranteed win, but neither AI has proven any realized gains in the majority of industries that gambled on adopting it.
Starting an epaper business would involve actual work and risk.