There was a really neat post here from November of last year about a person making an e-ink display for his mother with amnesia. It may be of interest if you like this stuff.
Looks like my post got a second chance. I'm not affiliated with the project, but I am an interested e-ink monitor enthusiast.
You may be interested to know that this project is a fully open project, all source code, verilog, algorithm documentation and hardware design files are on github:
Being Dutch I am proud to see NLNet and the EU financially supporting this project.
We deny ourselves so much progress by forcing smart individuals with a passion into conglomerates that are merely busy destroying competition. Small to medium sized organizations have the biggest potential for innovation, and look what two people even can do.
The devboard shipped with this kit has USB Type-C DisplayPort and DVI via microHDMI, both provided by off-the-shelf interface ICs. I would love to see a version that can take LVDS from a typical laptop motherboard to allow for modding a laptop (maybe a Framework 13)? The design appears to use a low-end FPGA with fairly modest resource usage, so I suspect it is technically feasible to interface video LVDS direct to the FPGA. I'm not sure about the power requirements however.
This would be absolutely amazing for a productivity device. I've rooted my Kindle Paperwhite and set it up with a terminal and used it to SSH into my laptop just to try it, but the latency makes it a bit irritating just to keep up with typing. To be able to use a fully graphical environment in e-paper, even in grayscale, would be amazing.
I built a cyberdeck that primarily uses a pair of XReal AR glasses as its display, but to have the option to use either those or this would be so awesome.
Soldered Inkplate is a solid option for anyone wanting a device with Wi-Fi, backlight, touch screen, battery, and runs arduino or micro python. Recently set one up as a display that updates if I'm in a meeting or free that I hang on my office door.
It's an interesting project, but I'm confused why they got funded with EU money. Their company is based in Boston and it looks as both of them are living in them US, which suggests neither of them is European citizen or pays taxes in the EU, which ultimately is where the money for these grants comes from. The funding requirements of NLNet state "it is a knock-out criterion for each project to have a "European dimension [...] where a significant contribution towards the vision of the Next Generation Internet initiative also qualifies".
I'm not trying to pick on this particular project, I just found out non-EU projects can apply at all. I hope the majority of NLNet money goes to projects that actually are executed in Europe and build expertise there.
Thank you for your kind words. I agree that small teams can achieve a lot.
We’re grateful to NLnet and the EU, whose support made this project possible and especially in overcoming complex challenges. We’ve made a point of attending conferences and sharing what we’ve learned. Now that the project is ready, we can focus on expanding that knowledge and collaborating with people everywhere.
There's a lot better being done by Boox, and even with colour e-ink in terms of ghosting. I think a lot of that is software end, though.
The one unfortunate thing is that this monitor seems to have a glossy screen, not matte, but maybe that's an additional layer over a dev kit?
If this truly is 'open', then it should be trivial to write special X11/Wayland drivers for it, to handle a lot of the ghosting issues at that end. I think Boox actually refreshes portions of screens, and a double or triple video buffer in X/Wayland could do the same.
(One problem with Boox is their relentless phone-home to servers in China, which cannot be disable by normal means.)
It looks amazing for e-ink. You'd probably don't want this for video anyway, besides it's not even in color. I'm impressed that it works at all. For a lot of work though it could be amazing, depending on your environment.
Say you'd want to pop outside in the nice weather to do some programming. You quickly find why that wasn't as glamorous as you expected. But if you had a laptop with such a screen I would expect it to work great.
I talked to my wife constantly about how badly I want an e-ink monitor, they’re just still so expensive for the specs I want haha. I’d take a solid 24”, maybe 21”, b&w 30hz at this point if the price was right (sub-$500).
I'm disappointed by how expensive these things still are. Smartphone size eink panels are so cheap that every supermarket has thousands of them as price display panels. but try and find epaper bigger than 10" and you'll be paying $350+ just for a panel that does nothing by itself.
The Type-C DP input appears to be using a DP to LVDS converter, so the FPGA is already accepting LVDS, it just doesn't expose a connector for it. But for interfacing with laptops, these days it's eDP that matters, not LVDS. So the issue is mostly the mismatch between an internal eDP connector vs the board's type-C connector.
Have you written about this anywhere? If not, I’d love to see a ShowHN post about your project and I bet I’m not the only one.
What’s your background? I ask because I really want something like a TRS-80 Model 100. Is interfacing a low end (power efficient) board to an LCD or eInk display something an electronics neophyte could reasonably take on?
A lot of homemade slab computers seem to rely on Raspberry Pi boards but those draw quite a lot of power and tend to run Linux. It’s not a combination that I’m going to be able to run for weeks at a time on 4 AA batteries (one of my goals).
When building your cyberdeck, were there any resources in particular that you found helpful?
Also shout out to https://usetrmnl.com/ which is much cheaper than OP if all you need is a display that updates every 5+ minutes. The founder is a really cool guy and cares a lot about this project
Even without the advantages of e-ink, a display which one can view _anywhere_ is a compelling thing, which opens up a lot of possibilities --- my favourite Windows device was a Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 w/ a transflective LCD, which I used as my main computer, e-book reader, notepad (writing/drawing/annotating with a stylus), and map display when traveling.
The transflective display eliminated issues regarding reflection or the display getting washed out by even full, bright, direct sunlight (I would use it for reference material for building sand castles at the beach).
Unfortunately, transflective LCDs do _not_ showroom well (dim) and no one seemed willing to make the investment to show their capabilities (build a daylight-equivalent light booth on the store floor).
I keep eyeing a Daylight Computer, but these days, I just use a Kindle Scribe for reading and note-taking/sketching/reference, and I limit my activities when in full sun to those things which it can do well, changing location/finding shade when I need to do other things.
Their big claim, at least it seems on quick glance, is in the controller, not the display. You can use any e-ink display with it. The display with glare that you're complaining about I think is just the cheap display they're including in the dev kit.
Yeah, to get a 24" e-ink monitor anywhere near that price, we’d need much higher production volumes. Right now, it just isn’t mass-produced enough to bring costs down to the sub-$500 range.
HannsNote2 looks amazing in the sunshine. But very slow processor and very low capacity battery. It’s a niche use case but great for a couple of hours of KOReader in the sun.
Oh really? I completely missed that. I thought what they were offering was an e-ink display with a latency that's low enough to use as computer screen.
Another problem with Boox is the disregard of the requirements of the GPL family of licences. I've been interested in some of their devices but won't touch them due to that (and now due to the issue you stated - though I was unaware there was un-disablable “telemetry”, I'd have to look into that if they ever did something about the lack of GPL compliance).
That turned into a community project and eventually into building our own FPGA-based e-ink display controller to improve refresh speed and reduce ghosting.
The result is a dev kit and monitor: open hardware, supports 6–13" monochrome and color e-ink panels over HDMI or USB-C, up to 75 Hz with sub-100 ms latency, and includes a C API.
Thanks! Yes, it does update quickly, and ghosting is still an issue, though I think there’s room for improvement on the OS/software side. I gave a talk at the Linux App Summit earlier this year where I shared some ideas for how this could work.
You have the option of a few greyscale levels, bold, pehaps italic, and depending on font maybe extra-bold and light. That should be enough for the essentials, though it will feel like a downgrade if you have got used to a richly colourful environment and rely on it for reasons other than liking it being pretty.
I built a colorscheme for Vim [0] that is close to monochrome when I was worried about blue light (I've since had kids and now this kind of worry doesn't rate at all), and I basically use bold and highlights (I hate underlining, italics, and squiggles, but I think you can do all that too in the GUI version). I found it surprisingly usable.
I don't require it myself but that's a concern, it's nice to have. Maybe someone can build an editor that uses different fonts within one file instead of different colors. Could be something out there for color blind folks already, though seeing no colors at all is unusual. But e-ink has grayscales so you could at least make comments a bit lighter, I think I'd be happy with that.
I'd do 3 greys, from lightest to darkest: comments, syntactical cruft like braces, semicolons, certain keywords, etc., and then 'actual' code, variable names and so on.
Much more variation than that with 256 colours is mostly just making it pretty rather than offering helpful distinction imo.
I want to try some monochrome UI, but that amber is definitely not my taste. Let me see if there is a "paper-like" theme, or maybe I can make one myself.
There's plenty of options available. A coworker of mine used to print out code for reviews. You can use italic, bold and underline as alternative to colors. Grayscale might work nicely for eInk too - for laser printers just thin/regular/bold probably works better.
Other fonts... I could see myself being distracted by changing fonts in a document, except maybe for comment blocks. But for those italic/thin seems to work well already.
Tried to find the tool... it's GNU enscript. Syntax highlighting for several languages, outputs to postscript.
I'm probably getting one for desktop use, but I'm also curious for other use cases, what's the power usage like? while idle or doing high frame rate video?
I think, if you look at Boox and how they have display options and config for each app, you could do this for X11 quite easily. Especially a custom backend video driver which flattens to greyscale, and distinguishes change on a per app basis.
An incredibly hacky thing, is that (as an example) Sawfish is an immensely extensible window manager. You can literally drop in lisp code linking actions by tagging on window names, application names, and so on.
So you could actually extend sawfish quite easily, and then do what Boox is doing. Change per-window methods of refresh, by interfacing with the backend video driver in X11, and so on.
I think a lot of people who don't use Linux, would "put up" with Linux if there was a way to use a framework with a display. So I think, strongly think, that the display of course and your work of course must be done, but that it relies very strongly on slapping together a more holistic environment.
Thank you for your thoughts and support. I agree, doing this in X11 is definitely doable. I’ve seen others achieve similar results by running a daemon that listens for damage regions. I hadn’t considered using a custom backend video driver; that’s something I’ll be looking into.
My focus has mostly been on Wayland, but possibly prototyping in X11 could be a starting point. Some people I've met are interested in using computer vision techniques at the hardware level, or making a camera rig.
What excites me most is getting this into people’s hands, seeing what they create with it, and working together to improve it and explore new use cases. One use case that I learned about recently:
E-Ink News: The mystery of cuttlefish disguise, scientists use E Ink technology to explore its secrets
Modos Paper Dev Kit includes nearly everything you need to create an open-hardware e-paper monitor with a fast 75 Hz refresh rate, low latency, various screen-update configurations, multiple image modes, and flexible dithering options. It can be connected through HDMI or USB, and it works on Linux, macOS, and Windows. We are offering 6-inch and 13-inch monochrome kits, both powered by the same display controller, which can also be used with other panels.
At the Cutting Edge of E-Paper
Twenty years ago, the release of the first e-paper devices marked a significant milestone in display technology, giving rise to e-readers and digital signage. Electrophoretic displays stand out for their unique qualities: they are easy on the eyes, mimic the aesthetics of paper, conserve power when idle, and offer high contrast with wide viewing angles even in direct sunlight.
In recent years, improvements in e-paper technology have expanded its applications beyond traditional e-readers. Despite these advancements, however, key challenges still hold back widespread adoption of e-paper devices:
Proprietary Hardware and Software: Most e-paper devices operate on closed, proprietary systems.
Lack of Standards: There is a shortage of best practices and guidelines for designing user interfaces optimized for e-paper.
High Costs: The expense of e-paper panels limits experimentation and broader adoption.
We built the Modos Developer Kit to allow engineers, product designers, programmers, and enthusiasts to re-purpose e-paper screens in creative ways. We’re also building a community that’s committed to establishing the standards, best practices, and guidelines needed to realize the full potential of e-paper technology. Join us on Discord and by following us on Mastodon, Bluesky, Matrix, and Twitter.
High Refresh Rate
Our Developer Kit leverages Caster, an open-source FPGA-based electrophoretic display controller engineered for low-latency performance and capable of driving e-paper screens at up to 60 Hz. By dividing the screen into multiple update regions, the Caster processes and displays new images or text instantly, without waiting for previous updates to complete. Each pixel is managed independently, and early cancellation techniques ensure that pixels update as soon as new data is available. The result is smooth, responsive performance with high frame rates and superior contrast, ideal for dynamic content and fluid interactions.
Compatible With a Variety of Screens
Got a spare e-paper screen gathering dust or looking to re-purpose a display for your project? Our Developer Kit makes it simple. Compatible with a wide range of screens—from 6-inch up to 13.3-inch, in both monochrome and color—the kit lets you easily connect and reuse unused displays. With our monitor enclosure design files, you can build a custom monitor housing that perfectly fits your project’s needs.
Explore our GitHub repository for a complete list of compatible screens.
Reuse. Experiment. Create.
Every kit includes the Glider Mega Adapter, giving you out-of-the-box support for a wide range of e-paper panels. With one adapter set, you can connect displays from 4.3" up to 13.3". The Glider Mega Adapter includes support for the following (which is not a comprehensive list, as some panels are untested but expected to work):
39-pin 0.3mm pitch: Certain 4.3", 5", and 13.3" screens (ED043WC1, ED043WC3, ED050SU3, ES133UTx, ED133UTx, EC133UJ1)
33-pin 0.5mm pitch: Most 9.7" screens (ED097OCx, ED097ODx, ED097TCx)
With these adapters, anyone interested in working with e-paper has much more flexibility to experiment by reusing e-paper panels from existing devices as well as trying out new ones.
User-Defined Modes & API
While commercial e-paper products rely on preset driving strategies (text, graphics, video modes) to cope with the technology’s limitations, our Developer Kit goes further. It offers full customization so you can tailor the display experience to your specific needs.
For example, the Hybrid Greyscale Mode allows the Caster to switch between a fast binary mode for quick updates and a slower, detailed greyscale mode for refined rendering. This minimizes latency and visual flashing by updating in binary first, then refining in greyscale as the image stabilizes.
With our C API, you gain direct control over screen and mode selection, letting you optimize the display for a wide range of applications. Our broader vision includes developing native e-paper applications and a protocol for seamless mode transitions based on content type.
USB Type-C DisplayPort Alt-Mode with on-board PTN3460 decoder
DVI (via microHDMI connector) video input with on-board ADV7611 decoder
E-paper power supply with up to 1 A peak current on the ±15 V rail to support large panel sizes.
VCOM kick-back voltage measurement support
On-board STM32H750 microcontroller for USB communication, firmware upgrades, and standalone applications. Processing rate up to 133 MP/s when error-diffusion dithering enabled and 200 MP/s when disabled
Caster FPGA Gateware Reference Design
Supports electrophoretic display panels with parallel interfaces (E Ink, OED, and DES)
Compatible with both monochrome and color-filter-array screens
Extremely low processing delay (<20 µs)
Supports binary, 4-level grayscale, and 16-level grayscale output modes
Latency-optimized binary and 4-level grayscale driving modes
Hybrid automatic binary and 16-level grayscale driving mode
Host software runtime controllable regional updates and mode switching
Hardware bayer dithering, blue-noise dithering, and error-diffusion dithering with no additional latency
The Modos Developer Kit is open hardwayore built using open-source software, with all design files and source code available on GitHub. Our documentation offers extensive information on electrophoretic displays, drawing from both public sources and our original research. This serves as a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to dive deeper into e-paper technology.
The Modos Developer Kit has passed pre-production revisions and undergone thorough validation and testing. We have established partnerships with contract manufacturers in China, our chosen partner will handle board manufacturing and assembly. The panels are sourced directly from E Ink Corporation. With the Caster completed and the design finalized, we now have a full Bill of Materials (BOM) and supplier quotes in place as we prepare for production. Once the campaign concludes, manufacturing will commence, and we’ll keep you updated via campaign emails.
Fulfillment & Logistics
After our production run is finished, we will package everything and send it to Crowd Supply’s fulfillment partner, Mouser Electronics, for distribution to backers worldwide. For more details about Crowd Supply’s fulfillment service, please refer to their guide under Ordering, Paying, and Shipping.
Risks & Challenges
The development of the Modos Developer Kit has been ongoing for over a year. Throughout this time, the core functionalities of our display controller board have proven stable, allowing us to focus on refining the hardware design and solving engineering challenges. We are confident in the robustness of our final product.
That said, as with any hardware project, the production process and supply-chain management present inherent risks. To mitigate these risks, we have built strong partnerships with our suppliers and manufacturers. In the event of any setbacks, we are committed to minimizing delays and will keep our backers informed with transparent, timely updates throughout the process.
Thank You to the NLnet Foundation and the NGI Zero Entrust Fund
Our team would like to acknowledge partial funding for development of Caster from the NGI0 Entrust Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet program.
"This project is the brainchild of Alexander Soto, who describes a journey starting in February 2021 to defeat the eyestrain that comes with daily extended use of standard displays."
Pre-assembled development kit for the 6-inch version of our low-latency, 1448 x 1072 e-paper display. Includes a screen, a mainboard, a ribbon cable, and a Glider Mega Adapter to support e-paper panels of various sizes. Comes with a USB Type-C cable.
Pre-assembled development kit for the 13-inch version of our low-latency, 1600 x 1200 e-paper display. Includes a screen, a mainboard, a ribbon cable, and a Glider Mega Adapter to support e-paper panels of various sizes. Comes with a USB Type-C cable.
