"... With only 7 colors and a refresh time of about a minute ..."
Ouch, even worse than expected. The project is interesting, but I'm totally unimpressed by these numbers; I wouldn't pay a premium for a sub par display that is slow as a dead sloth. A traditional LED screen plus some tricks to save power would make a much better picture frame IMO. I would for example use a PIR/microwave sensor (they're cheap!) to detect when someone is approaching or stationing near the picture frame to bring the CPU back from sleep and turn on the display and backlight. It would never reach the same almost zero current draw of a epaper screen, but the quality gain paired with the lower cost would probably make it a viable alternative.
It seems the state of the art for color e-ink is at the level LCDs were in the eighties, perhaps nineties for b&w e-ink.
You'd think the company holding the patents has little incentives to push the tech forward at a faster pace, given the slow advances seen in the last decade and a half.
> You'd think the company holding the patents has little incentives to push the tech forward at a faster pace, given the slow advances seen in the last decade and a half.
Laws of physics don't change. Patents aren't the problem.
Ouch, even worse than expected. The project is interesting, but I'm totally unimpressed by these numbers; I wouldn't pay a premium for a sub par display that is slow as a dead sloth. A traditional LED screen plus some tricks to save power would make a much better picture frame IMO. I would for example use a PIR/microwave sensor (they're cheap!) to detect when someone is approaching or stationing near the picture frame to bring the CPU back from sleep and turn on the display and backlight. It would never reach the same almost zero current draw of a epaper screen, but the quality gain paired with the lower cost would probably make it a viable alternative.