I didn't even know there are decent e-ink colour displays available. I have to admit that I've been wanting to do something similar for a while, but I've always been too lazy to start, so kudos from me for that project!
I love e-ink in general, it's a shame that it's still so rarely used. My fossil hybrid hr watch uses it, for example, but though the watch itself is incredible, the app is pure garbage. If that weren't the case, I'd recommend it to everyone.
I wonder if there aren't a lot more cases like that, where it seems like costumers don't like the technology, even though they mainly resent the paired implementation of the big players who thought that the technology alone was enough of a selling point, and therefore neglected the software.
> I didn't even know there are decent e-ink colour displays available.
There's a few gotchas here. A lot of those color e-ink displays don't work like a LCD does, where you have R/G/B subpixels per pixel and get to mix final colors out of different intensities. Instead, a "7 color display" really means each pixel can only be one of 7 pixels.
Another gotcha is that in some implementations, the screen refresh will go color by color, so for multi-color content, the refresh time is quite long (as in, you don't have a pixel flipping to blue and another flipping to red concurrently).
This is just to manage expectations -- the result is still very cool.
Panels like this have been available on Waveshare for a while. They are fairly inexpensive (sub $100 range) but the refresh time is super slow. For example:
You can also order many of the same panels directly from the online store of the E-ink company BTW. Not that the prices there are very nice. But it's useful to look up parts and then search for other distributors.
I love e-ink in general, it's a shame that it's still so rarely used. My fossil hybrid hr watch uses it, for example, but though the watch itself is incredible, the app is pure garbage. If that weren't the case, I'd recommend it to everyone.
I wonder if there aren't a lot more cases like that, where it seems like costumers don't like the technology, even though they mainly resent the paired implementation of the big players who thought that the technology alone was enough of a selling point, and therefore neglected the software.