E-paper hacking: fastest possible refresh rate

What people said

guitarbill · 2018-09 · Strong recommendation

Ben Krasnow (Applied Science on YouTube) did some research into driving e-Ink displays, and he made some similar observations: > All of the lookup table information has been removed from this datasheet, because the industry thrives on secrecy or something Highly recommended, as usual for him it's a great video/write-up: * [VIDEO] * [LINK]

Read the original HN comment ↗

progman32 · 2021-01 · Recommendation

It's possible to refresh e-ink without a global flash if you are careful and have a clever controller. I don't think this video directly addresses this but it gives a good overview on the problem space [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

sparker72678 · 2020-07 · Recommendation

Turns out that e-ink displays typically don't mix colors this way. In order to get multiple colors in a single display, they use sort of colored-balls of various densities suspended in a fluid. Then, using the known viscosities of the fluid in the capsules, they can vary the charge of the electrodes very quickly to sort of _drag_ a color up to the top. But when you do this, you're dragging a _single_ color. _All_ the colors are in the capsule, but you can only truly pull a single one at a time, a true pigment-like mixing isn't possible. If you pull the Cyan up, you're necessarily losing the Magenta, for example. If you had a high enough resolution addressable grid, you might be able to put the pixels close enough that you couldn't tell, but you'd still be basically doing sub-pixel color at that point, not truly mixing the various colors at the base level. Maybe there are other e-ink displays doing something else, but all the ones I've seen are doing some form of this approach. Here's a fascinating video on how these displays work, and how you can modify the firmware of the driver to get faster refresh rates (with an increased risk of burn-in). [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗