Sol Reader - e-Ink reading headset

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

A couple of hardware refreshes ago at work, any mobilread animated gif avatar would kick the Xeon CPU to 100% and the fan started to howl.

Originally Posted by rcentros

That's even weirder. I wonder what causes (caused) that?

My best guess is the open source nvidia driver (which was otherwise less troublesome than thr proprietary nvidia driver).

[Dr. Drib]

It looks kinda kinky.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

My best guess is the open source nvidia driver (which was otherwise less troublesome than thr proprietary nvidia driver).

In my case I just use the built-in Intel video chip. I've never had this happen on this computer before.

[andyh2000]

Alexa, how can I kill someone with photosensitive epilepsy?

[Renate]

Huh? This does not appear to be eInk. It's some form of reflective LCD.
It says here "circular polarizers". That's French for "I'm not eInk".

My little clock display is a 128 x 64 yellow OLED.
The resolution is adequate to display "Wednesday" across a line (if you don't mind the jaggies).
256 x 256 does not even come in question.
As a data display if you could still see through would be useful.
I wouldn't mind having a voltmeter where you could take readings while holding two probes.

$50 would be ok for fun, $350 is ridiculous.

OTOH, head mounted displays that aren't too thick have somewhat of a future for something. Maybe.

[jmurphy]

Originally Posted by Renate

Huh? This does not appear to be eInk. It's some form of reflective LCD.
It says here "circular polarizers". That's French for "I'm not eInk".

It also says there: "E Ink 1.3” displays"

Polarizers have been used with LCDs, but they aren't restricted to LCDs.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by jmurphy

It also says there: "E Ink 1.3” displays".

Oops.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jmurphy

It also says there: "E Ink 1.3” displays"

Polarizers have been used with LCDs, but they aren't restricted to LCDs.

LCDs don't work at all without polarisers, but they are linear polarisers, because the liquid crystals are rod like and thus the light passing the cell (reflected or backlight) has to be polarised. The changing polarisation angle of the pixel vs the light makes it darker or clearer. I can't think why eink googles would use circular polarisers. The eink can't use backlights, only a front illumination. Polarisation would be irrelevant.

Left and right circular polarised (one for each eye) is only used in displays with passive glasses viewing a separate cinema screen. The stereoscopic TVs work best using double frame rate and active LCD shutter glasses, one eye then the other. This works for more people. The passive so-called 3D glasses (red & green from 1950s) or polarised are also simply stereoscopic, not 3D. Real animated 3D video displays are very small and specialised and not 3D like a real view or a hologram, but unlike fake stereoscopic 3D you can move your head and look around things and have true depth. Some stereoscopic goggles track eye and head movement and redraw the computer generated scene to give a real 3D illusion. Pre-recorded video is only flat stereoscopic.

Any display other than an LCD rarely has a polariser, unless it part of some privacy system.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

Huh? This does not appear to be eInk. It's some form of reflective LCD.
It says here "circular polarizers". That's French for "I'm not eInk".

I wonder is it eink? An eink display is only of value for an ambient lit screen at normal reading distance at high resolution (150 dpi to 300 dpi). It's a worse solution than LCD or OLED for VR, AR or reading goggles as it's harder to light and more expensive. Anyone using eink for reading googles is bonkers.

But I can't think why LCD or OLED would use circular polarisers. All LCD MUST have linear polarised light to work at all. OLED googles don't need any polarisers of any kind.

A polariser reduces the brightness.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I wonder is it eink?

The Eink ET013TT1 seems to be a match.
It is interesting that it is quoted (page 4) as being only a 1 bit device.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any use case where you could use it as a data readout when you can't see what's in front of you.

[Quoth]

2016, so seriously obsolete as you'd expect from the low 256 x 256.

Also a stupid choice for:
Anything other than a product label.
Any new product / retail label tag as there are far better ones.

Absolutely the worst eink panel I've seen as only 1bit (black or white) and only 256x 256. Only good to show QR codes.

This is a toy at about x20 the price you'd expect to pay for it. OLED is the 1st choice for opaque goggle panels and LCD if you don't care about the extra depth needed or want translucent view, but AR really needs projection and clear "glasses".

Also 512 x 512 with greyscale to anti-alias would be a bare minimum resolution, but 600 x 800 would be better. I'd go for a minimum of 1920 px wide and 1440 high using OLED if I was designing immersive reading goggles. I'd design it with micro HDMI in, USB-C with Video, Miracast/screencast, 3.5mm stereo jack in (with option for composite video), composite & Y/C, firewire in and earphones. Electronics in a small box with the power cell and all I/O with spring loaded cable to display/earphones for movement and to make headset as light as possible. You'd be able to use it then as a display/earphones on a phone, tablet, setbox, computer, portable DVD player, VHS, camera, camcorder (analogue or digital). Handy for long airplane flights. You'd want sound to be mix in ambient, noise cancelling or regular. Displays to simply duplicate if no stereoscopic source. Maybe option for 2x webcams (add a 2nd USB) to do simple AR.


Edit:
The last complete do everything gadget I designed was in 2007. The bench version had 1024 x 768 touch screen and the true portable demo used 2 x LiPoly and only 320 x 240 touch screen. But that was FIFTEEN years ago. The year the first iPhone launched. A year before Android. Also it was only an internal "proof of concept" for an early 4G system. It even used a PCMCIA card slot for a prototype modem made for a laptop. Debian, Ice Window Manager OR QT phone Edition GUI. VOIP with geographic number, Thunderbird, Firefox, media player. Separate USB host (A) & client (mini-USB), full size SD card slot, stereo headphone, built in mono speaker, stereo line in and mic in (3 x 3.5mm jacks). Coax plug to charge for the 15 minute run time. It was never ever intended as a product but to demo what the mobile network could do. It used a 4G system you probably never heard of because LTE and Qualcomm didn't just kill Wimax 4G, but all the other post 3G mobile systems.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

2016, so seriously obsolete as you'd expect from the low 256 x 256.

I agree. It is tantalizing if any HUD/AR/VR is useful.
I'm sure that VR would make me puke as a merry-go-round does that too.
Is there any conceivable head reading thing that would be positive or would head movement without your visual field changing cause nausea too.
Full color HDMI AR for teleprompter/data readout would be the only thing for me.

[Quoth]

It's the visual field not quite synchronised that causes the nausea. No problem if it doesn't change at all (Hold big magazine that fills field of view at reading distance) or if it's perfect.

Takes awesome computing and GPU to seamlessly vary view with head and eye movement. Some systems can sense eye focus to only have distance you are looking at sharp on a stereoscopic view.

However immersive VR is far more challenging than AR. With AR you see the real world view normally but it's like a car windscreen or fighter aircraft with a HUD (head up display). Basic AR needs only a fraction of computer resources, field of view and resolution of VR. It can use regular recorded video. True VR simulated 3D looks like 3D (because display POV is "instantly" changed according to eye and head movement. You also need equivalent to an 8K 45" panel at reading distance, but you only need full resolution at the centre of your view.
Non-AR, non-VR but immersive viewing is a 3rd category. You need a display about twice as big at least in effective viewing area as say an 16" page or ereader at normal viewing distance in portrait mode. Then you can have two pages side by side. If you wanted "immersive" and it was equivalent to an 8" 300 dpi view in the goggles you'd have have that only in about centre 1/3rd of the view, so one solution would be a static illuminated film or simply you'd have a blank area.
So really the idea of an immersive set of reading or video goggles is like as if you have a ski mask with cut outs only large enough to see the page or video screen. You can't read or watch video except in a the centre of your field of vision. You can try a couple sheets of card with square holes to view a print out about 5" x 5" with 256 x 256 pixels and only 100% black text with no aliasing to see what a stupid product this is.

VR is really either for examining objects by remote video (cameras need to move with your head), or 3D CAD/CAE visualisation or computer games. It's a useless technology for reading or viewing recorded video.

AR other than a simple HUD (like speed, altitude. pitch) is needing either a remote human text tagging objects (target to shoot at on a battle field) or massive pattern matching so-called AI. It doesn't need as much GPU as VR, but the amount of CPU depends on the application. Applications could be complex surgery (with additional humans adding content), production line rework (superimposing correct part), maintenance (taging parts). Any non-trivial AR is going to be domain specific and expensive subscription and computer power, but likely the users would be then "locked into" that supplier. That's why Facebook/Meta has abandoned Metaverse (it's an expensive toy) and the big companies are all promoting AR rather than VR as VR is really games only that are very expensive to develope. Also real VR needs more than sound and vision (which is challenging to do fast enough) but needs a haptic full bodysuit with full movement sensing, probably in a tank.