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Hacking Esquire's E-ink Cover
ptorrone writes "I picked up the Esquire E-inked cover today and took a bunch of high res photos, for the makers out there. It has a programming header, 5-pin ISP, a Microchip PIC 12f629 which is flash programmable, 8 pin, 6 lithium coin cell CR2016s, 3 volts each. Two E-ink screens with flex connections — looks like it was made to be reprogrammed and different screens. The top screen has 11 segments, the bottom has 3. It was designed 2008-06-04. The PCB was made by Forewin, half thickness, 2 layer board (FR4). I think someone out there will likely reflash the PIC and make the segments go on / off at different times and perhaps put other displays on it, there's a little bit of hacking to be had but not that much really."
So, they go through all of this work and expense and come up a cover that is LAME? Wow. Somebody needs to get fired over that cover. Boring.
I don't respond to AC's.
Really expect to get your cake and hack it into something awesome too?
Knows everything about nothing and nothing about everything.
if someone went and re-flashed all the controllers in the Esquire mags to display porn (first thing that comes to mind is Goatse) instead of the original content?
proud caffeine whore
Most of these magazines are going to end up in landfills with all the toxic materials that are in the display, batteries, chips, and PCBs. Thank you Esquire.
wonder just how much you can make it do...
I really need to stop mentally pronouncing it "E-squire".
looks like it was made to be reprogrammed and different screens
I just tried to upload my pr0n but unfortunately it wouldn't fit in the 1K x 14 of FLASH.
who cares! until the magazine can read to me while I'm on the toilet, and answer my questions, or rebuttal my comments, I don't care how much technology goes into the cover.
Then again if Playboy gets a digital cover that talks dirty to me then I have the option of recanting my previous statement.
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
http://www.esquire.com/features/recycle-e-ink-cover
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Why are e-ink based e-books so expensive, while Esquire can afford to use it as a cover for their magazine? Something's missing here.
Does it run...? Imagine...oh never mind.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Again, why does e-ink work that way? As it is, I can't afford regular ink, its so expensive.
Can't e-ink at least be affordable?
It reminds me of the e-books (spdf files) from Harvard Business school. So expensive, and dies after 6 months.
slashdot rocks
I was very excited when I first heard about it but after doing some research it appeared to be a very limited run. I haven't seen any locally.. Anyone know where I could order one online?
So how do I watch this video in Linux? After enabling all 186 layers of javascript hell I only get a gray box with the text "Choose from the players listed below.", and nothing listed below.
c++;
Great. The <blink> tag made it to real life!
Why?? Whyyyyyyyy........??? ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Why are e-ink based e-books so expensive, while Esquire can afford to use it as a cover for their magazine? Something's missing here.
11 very large segments versus 480,000 very small segments. PIC programed to go "turn on segment 1, then 2, then 3. Pause. Switch all them off. Repeat"...versus "fully fledged operating system and electronic document presentation system."
Oh yes, and Equire printed roughly 233,300 of them (one in three of their circulation of 700,000) in one go. That's roughly equal to the 240,000 Kindle units Amazon has supposedly sold in about 10 months.
Still, the biggie is the simplicity...
Please help metamoderate.
Same reason the original blink made it to HTML - because the can. Reminds you a lot of the Jurassic Park line..."they> were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Putting this cover together really started seven years ago, when deputy editor Peter Griffin..."
"Hey Lois, Look I'm flashing an Esquire, he he he hehe"
Stewie: "Oh, good going fat man way to show it to the 21st century"
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
Is this entire thing about how there really isn't any point at all in hacking this thing?
Gee, thanks for telling us!
Even the summary has lost interest by the time it reaches the last sentence.
To learn more about the E-Ink cover, as well as how to recycle and potentially even hack the issue, we invite you to visit the links below. -FTFA well i'll be damned. corporate media uses the term hack in the correct manner. And its esquire...
ugh, lame. and as if you needed anymore reason not to support this: how it was made
The video on Esquire site never loads for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EWb1zHIx38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKS12PMdJ6w
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=esquire+e-ink+cover&search_type=&aq=f
*sigh*
All these comments and you all missed this beauty from the last story.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Just bought one. There is a PIC - 12F629 for logic, and 2 8-bit shift registers. There are 6 3-V batteries, whose combined voltage of 18V is used to change eInk state. The e-ink displays show greyscale quite well, if you do not take the full specced time to get them to change state.
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
Don't forget to tear the coin cells open with pliers and drop the foil into water to make hydrogen bubbles. Or pass them along to your friendly neighborhood meth cook.
Yes this first feeble attempt is fairly lame, a few segments that will burn out in a couple of months and took a fair investment in hardware to pull off. But it won't end here.
Soon they will put solar collectors on the things to keep it going indefinately, add more segments, etc. Hell, it won't be a generation before they are printing complex enough circuits on the damned things that they will be doing full motion video. On cereal boxes. Or having generic advertising, think shopping carts, seatbacks, etc updating their ad copy over slow radio links. And they already know how to make flat paper speakers so they damned things will be talking whenever somebody is in range.
Democrat delenda est
When I read this, I immediately ran down to Borders to take a look, since the video link on Esquire's site seemed to be broken. It is not very impressive at all. It's very small, maybe 2" by 4" at the most, and it just flashes. It's kind of a neon light sign effect - you can still read the text even when the segment isn't on.
All of it can be recycled through your local municipal waste program in the same manner as you dispose of household batteries.
I don't know about anyone else, but my town had an entire shed at the local transfer station for putting batteries.
Ie, you can't "just" throw them out, even into the recycle bin at the end of your driveway...at least, not in most municpalities. You're not supposed to dispose of batteries as part of regular trash, regardless of whether they're lead-acid car batteries, lithium, alkaline, etc.
I don't doubt them on the display, though. It really is just polarized particles that are white on one pole and black on the other, in a suspension, with electrodes...
Please help metamoderate.
To paraphrase Vince Lombardi: next time you make it to the future, act like you've been there before.
Wouldn't it have been cooler had they done something badass? Or even interesting? Christ, I want to find a quick way to hack these and run around fucking them up on news racks!
It's sooooo frickin juvenile to have an obnoxious blinking thing saying "Welcome to the 21st Century".
Really?
I'm sorry you missed out on the last eight years. You're gonna be absolutely fucking horrified to see what has happened since.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Assuming you can still find a bookstore, who on earth would still have this one in stock?
Print materials have always had too much substance and not enough flash...it's about time they stepped into the 21st century.
An LCD clock costing a few $ can run for over a year on one or two watch batteries, so how is using e-ink better if it can only last a few months with 6?
Does the larger area use that much more power? Is it cheaper than LCD? Safer? More durable? Or just more buzzwordy?
BTW, is this magazine a cheap way to get 6 2016 batteries?
You just summerized "high-tech" advertising for the next 50 years! May I ask, where did you get your crystal ball?
write a comic where a guy reads slashdot and then the next panel slashdot comment is acted out. for instance
"The same reason we recycle our electronics through free programs instead of burying them in the backyard (well technically the fee is paid at point-of-sale)."
theres a panel with that comment on the screen and then the next panel has a guy burying pcs in the yard and he says, hey lou! your doing it wrong!
-
Well, for centuries brave men and women were trained in the arcane arts. Each spend decades learning how to fight the evils that lay beneat. But then there was a budget cut...
Their website says they'd be interested to see what people do hacking it, and if you do something cool, please let them know. They say that it wasn't particularly designed to be easy to hack, and they don't know how, so you'll have to figure it out for yourself, but have fun.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I was able to get the video working.
This looks about as cool finding one of those floppy records designed for a needle turntable inside a computer magazine. No. Wait. I actually remember being pretty darn jazzed about that, since that was a period when you had to key programs in by hand and the magazines published miles of BASIC code. It was novel AND useful.
Sorry, big, slick magazine publisher. Nice try, but perhaps you should have waited until your 80th anniversary.
-FL
When I first read the Engadget post about the magazine being available I knew I would be driving around all day to find a copy that I could hack. I finally got a few copies and ripped one to shreds as soon as I got home.
Firstly, they did not use the active matrix version of the E-Ink display. It is a segmented version. This means that you can not make it do kindle like things. You must use the existing segments. The magazine contains two of these 2x5" displays. The cover display has 11 segments while the inside display has 3. They are both black and 'white' (aka grey) displays although several shades seem possible by varying the switch voltage timing. The color areas are created with a transparent overlay that, of course, is always present.
(Note: These probably do not match the CN1 and CN2 pin outs)
COVER DISPLAY SEGMENTS
1. "THE 21ST CENTURY"
2. "BEGINS"
3. 1st box after "BEGINS"
4. 2nd box after "BEGINS"
5. 3rd box after "BEGINS"
6. Both boxes (left and right) of "NOW"
7. "NOW"
8. The circle arrow
9. Bottom box 1
10. Bottom box 2
12. Bottom box 3
INNER DISPLAY SEGMENTS
1. Left side + 2 of 6 'wheel' segments on both 'wheels'
2. Middle + 2 of 6 'wheel' segments on both 'wheels'
3. Right side + 2 of 6 'wheel' segments on both 'wheels'
The cover display uses a 12 line ribbon connector while the inner display uses a 6 line ribbon with only 4 lines that are completed. One line on each display is a common connection while the others are simple on/off lines.
THE ELECTRONICS
The circuit board is very simple with only a few components. There are six CR2016 3V batteries, 2 connectors, 2 HEF4094BT 8 stage shift-and-store bus register chips, 1 12F629 Flash based 8bit CMOS microcontroller, 26 resistors, 2 capacitors and 3 transistors. The 12F629 controls 3 transistors that drive the STROBE, DATA and CLOCK pins, at 15v, of the HEF4094BTs. The HEF4094BTs are connected in a cascade fashion to provide 16 latching registers that directly drive the EInk displays.
WHAT DOES IT ALL DO?
The Batteries:
5 of the 6 batteries (B1-B5) are connected in series to provide the 15v driver voltage that is used to change the segments from black to white and back. The other battery (B6) supplies the 3 volts needed to run the microcontroller. The B1-B5 series and B6 both share a common ground.
The PIC
U1 is the Microcontroller. This device controls the sequence of the changes.
Pin 1 is Vdd (+3vdc).
C1 is used as a noise filter for the power.
Pin 2 is not used.
Pin 3 is not used.
Pin 4 is used for initial programming only.
Pin 5 drives Q3 through R5.
This drives the U3 and U3 STROBE (STR) lines causing the shift register data to be stored in the storage register.
Pin 6 drives Q2 through R3.
This drives the U2 and U3 CLOCK (CP) lines which allows serial programming of each register bit prior to storage.
Pin 7 drives Q1 through R1.
This drives the U2 DATA (S) line. U3 Data is connected to the O's (PIN 10) of U2 which is a serial output.
pin 8 is Vss(GND).
The Transistors
Q1 drives the DATA (D) line of U2 and is driven by U1 Pin 7.
Q2 drives the CLOCK (CP) lines of U2 and U3 and is driven by U1 Pin 6.
Q3 drives the STROBE (STR) lines of U2 and U3 and is driven by U1 pin 5.
Q1-Q3 base pins are connected to common ground.
R1,3,5 are used for current limiting to protect U1 outputs.
R2,4,6 are pull-up resistors for Q1-3 causing
the output to be 15V when off and ground when on. C3 is a noise filter for the pull-up power rail.
The Shift Registers
U1 and U2 drive the displays. They are programmed by U1 via a serial bus. The parallel outputs we'll look at from the perspective of the CN1 and CN2 connectors. These work as a marching train of bits. When the clock goes HI all bits are shifted right and the first one is set the whatever DA
"Read"? "Article"? This is Slashdot! Blasphemy!
Two questions:
1) Is the magazine available in Australia yet?
2) Is the e-ink film separable from the segmented driver circuitry, presumably printed on a flexible PCB? If it is then you could slap the film on your own PCB with your own circuit and have seven segment, bar graphs...basically make your own e-ink equivalent of an LCD display like the ones used in home weather stations and the like.
In Soviet Russia, magazines take YOU apart!
I live near two little restaurants in Portland Oregon USA (the recycling capital of the USA). Every morning there are SIX loud 'big green trucks' that pull up next to my apartment between 5 and 7AM every single day to pick up the recycling. Three trucks for each restaurant: one for glass, one for paper, one for compost. Each loud truck with huge diesels shake the buildings of the entire apartment complex. We complain, but as typical of white-working-class people, the garbage drivers and managers just don't care. Pure redneck 'get 'er done, get 'er done...loud and proud' mentality is a true pain for really-productive people.
Recycling sucks. It is a sop to the upper-middle-class. The energy expended by driving all the extra 'big green trucks' around to pick up this stuff exceeds the energy saved by having the garbage go to different sections of the landfill. Recycling was a bold idea in the 1970s, it's obsolete now.
Recycling will only start to make sense in the era of $4.50/gallon diesel when people start bringing empty containers to the food store and refilling them with food. Things like thick, double-ply sugar bags and soy-sauce containers could be reused ten times
...then how about just putting "T'Pol & 7 of 9 in naked shaving foam waterbed romp inside" in black ink on the cover.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
No wi-fi. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
the 12f629 has a bigger brother. 12f675. For 8 pins these things are awesome little computers, and can do quite a bit. It's funny how much you can get out of one when even Microchip's website says you should 'go bigger'. I love Microchip products, although I want to try some other vendors. The thing is, Microchip products are so well documented, I actually taught myself to program microcontrollers just reading their documentation. Ah, I could go on and on. I have about 30 of em sitting up stairs for my next engine computer... Ah..
I can't wait till encyclopedias implement this! The article on Schroedinger's cat could use a "is <blink>not</blink> dead".
(heh, captcha for this post was 'spooky')