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Comment on E Ink's color ePaper tech gets supersized for outdoor displays

kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Hi! Former E Ink employee here. The technology behind color e ink displays is an intricate nightmare of juggling different ink particles through a gel medium (which is actually derived from pig fat btw). It’s a miracle it even works in the first place, and unfortunately higher color accuracy comes at the cost of refresh rate due to all the steps involved. Not sure how in-depth I can go without violating my NDA though lol.

While the color tech is advancing, it’s still got a long way to go.

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jdeath@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
oh wow haha didn’t realize e-ink isn’t vegan compatible! TIL, thanks

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Yprum@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I loved reading your insights on the tech! E ink is such a fascinating tech… Pity about the NDA though, I would love to hear a lot more!

The title is mentioning e-paper though and if I have understood correctly that could imply a different tech is being used here. So here’s what (I think) I know, e-paper is a broader category that includes other tech that is not e-ink but very low power screens, such as the screen used by the old smart watches Pebble, which had a color memory LCD that could achieve something like 20 fps or something like that? Just enough to create nice animations and fluid UI. Of course changing the screen meant higher consumption, but the LCD could keep the image by using a very low but non-zero energy.

Although it seems that e-paper and e-ink are commonly just mixed as if they would be the same, while to me e-ink is a type of e-paper. Do you feel my understanding is correct on how the tech is categorised and maybe the screen from the article could be memory LCD or something else that is not e-ink?

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- kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  The article itself mentions E Ink’s Kaleido 3 technology. I’m not really sure on the semantics of “e-ink” vs “e-paper”, but your take sounds good enough to me. I do know that E Ink makes a product internally (maybe also externally? idk) refered to as “ACeP”, which stands for “Advanced Color e-Paper”, so e-ink definitely classifies as a type of e-paper.
  
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MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Far as i know color e-ink is just e-ink with LCD filters?

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- kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  One of their older color products is a traditional B/W screen with an RGB filter over the top. The problem with this is the filter tends to make everything way darker and muted than it should be.
  
  They are also working on newer ACeP screens that use multiple colored dye and pigment particles in the same capsule. By swapping the colors around with specific electric waveforms, they can control what the color looks like from the front. The downside is that this color swapping often takes several seconds to produce the correct color ((also the color gamut has a lot of holes))
  
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