Digital Ink hits the masses

[PhotonWrangler]

If you're interested in seeing how E-Ink looks in person, boogie down to a bookstore and look for the special version of Esquire Magazine's 75th anniversary (October 2008) edition. There's an area on the cover of the magazine that changes, based on a hidden CPU card, battery pack and a flexible E-Ink display. There's also an ad for a Ford vehicle on the inside cover, also using an E-Ink display that's powered by the same circuit board sandwiched in the front cover.

I bought a copy, not for the magazine but for the E-Ink display. I got it home and carefully extracted the electronics from the cover page. This is going to be fun to play with, and it might even be hackable, as there appears to be an area of the circuit board intended for a programming input. BTW, there are some dissection photos shown in an article here.


This could be the future of newspapers. E-Ink retains it's data even when power is removed, so it's possible to produce a downlaodable, flexible newspaper that can be carried around after it's been loaded with the day's news, then it can be reprogrammed the next day. Or with a WiFi connection, it can be refreshed in real time.

This could be a big deal if they can get the production costs down a little more. It could even help to save a dying newspaper industry, as well as being an exceptionally green technology that will keep untold mounds of used fishwrap out of the landfill.

Anyway, check out the cover of the magazine and calibrate your eyes.

 

[B@rt]

E-ink is great, I have the sony reader and love it.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Yep, that's the same technology!

 

[raggie33]

i want one of them mags not sure what its about but i want it i know they will be worth a lot some day and in 2 years all mags and newsapper will have it or should i say be it

 

[PhotonWrangler]

It's a men's magazine - styles, gadgets, opinions. Not one of my normal reads but I bought it for the E-Ink electronics. I'm such a geek. :laughing:

 

[raggie33]

waa u got one?i didnt even know it was out to October is it real cool in person?

 

[PhotonWrangler]

It's on newsstands now. They only made 100,000 of them so I think they're concentrating on bookstores with a periodicals section. I found it at Borders Books. I'm betting that Barnes & Noble and other chain bookstores will have it also.

Yes, it's very cool in person, although there's not a great deal going on in the display. The front cover is built around a 12-segment display (12 large "pixels" that are turned on and off in various sequences) and the inside cover has a 3-segment display, arranged in a left-center-right order, and it blinks from right-to-left. It's used for an ad for a Ford vehicle, but they made a really poor choice of colored overlay for the inside ad and the overall effect is extremely muted. It's nowhere near as good as the effect on the outside cover.

The circuit board has a 4-pin PIC CPU, two display driver chips, miscellaneous SMT resistors and 6 3-volt button cells, so the display runs on 18 volts.

Interesting side note: I held an AM radio next to the display to see if I heard a continuous CPU clock, but instead of the usual whine, I only heard a steady fwip---fwip---fwip. So it's apparently running at a really slow clock speed to save battery power, and/or it only needs to refresh the display every few seconds. The sound occurred at about twice the rate of the changes in pixels from on to off.

There is also a set of 4 pads at the upper left of the board that appears to be for programming the PIC CPU. :huh:

 

[raggie33]

sweet i love new tech i saw when they was talking about it on the today show or some morning show.cant wait 2 what we see in a few years in new tech i say 5 more years cars will drive em selfs