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▲ ex1fm3ta 5 hours ago

Project like this make me excited with AI. You can pretty much custom firmware, tailored for your specific needs. Thanks for this repo. Quick question to the community : why does nobody makes afordable huge e-ink displays ?

▲hansihe 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is exactly one manufacturer of large EPDs, E Ink Corporation.

A few have tried to compete over the years, none have really managed to ramp up production and compete from my understanding. I believe there are some chinese firms making smaller panels now, mainly used in electronic shelf labels for stores.

From my understanding most of the patents for the foundational tech have expired at this point. I believe the panels are just generally very difficult to make, with difficulty ramping up further as panel size goes up, presumably the yield is fairly low.

▲seamus_c 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That was part of the motivation here: If I can think it up, can AI actually build it, even when it's outside my day-to-day experience? (and can it do it without frying the hardware somehow)

▲j45 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The last time I checked, patents.

▲otherme123 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Key eink patents are expired since c. 2017. But they bought potential competitors and keep innovating (and patenting), so the monopoly stays strong. If someone entered the market right now, with 2000 eink tech, and pricing at very low margin prices, they will go bankrupt: would you buy a 20" screen, no touch, ~70 ppp, refresh around 2 seconds for maybe $300? Also, patents might have expired, but key tech, such as precise micro-sphere manufacturing, is not under patent protection, but under trade secrecy: on top of old tech, it would be unreliable. Some like Zhiwei specialize in epaper for tags using old tech, but only for b2b and barely below Eink prices.

Competition explores completely different technologies: Daylight DC-1, Reinkstone, ChLCD e.g. from Iris... but either the tech isn't good enough to generalize or be cheap (the later), or the niche economics don't allow the inventors to keep investing (the two first).

▲Palomides 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

there's no secret, they're just expensive to manufacture