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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."
Really expect to get your cake and hack it into something awesome too?
Knows everything about nothing and nothing about everything.
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.
They did it on purpose. They'd have put the usual hot chick on the cover if they wanted to encourage nerds to do their usual jerk off all over the raster.
p.s. Esquire mag FTW. Dubious Achievement awards FTW. Maxim and Stuff-reading douchebags -- FAIL.
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'
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?
Um, then it would display goatse.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
http://www.esquire.com/features/recycle-e-ink-cover
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't get it. What do YOU think will happen?
All I can see is a company gets a black eye, blames the whole thing on 'those evil hackers', and sends a potentially cool technology away forever.
And if the first thing you think of when you think of porn is 'Goatse', man, I'm sorry.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
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/
Is goatse porn? man it never occured to me...
you just ruined my day
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
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
As awful as goatse is, lemonparty would have people vomiting in the streets and Rustina would have a very small subset of geek in tears laughing.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's impossible. These E-ink displays aren't pixel displays (which could show any image), they are segment based (like a cheap calculator, watch, or old LCD game). They can only display what they have been designed to show. Your only choices are for each segment to be dark or light.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Yikes. You need to relax. Go kick back with some Goatse and a beer and mellow out!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I could be wrong, but from looking at the video, it appears that the image is static, but the background changes colour. So there is basically 10 or so "pixels" that flash in the background. Changing the image would be impossible, but you could make it flash faster.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
>wonder just how much you can make it do...
With so many posts saying "it's impossible to make it do anything interesting", I'm just waiting...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Not possible. While e-ink is sometimes used for general purpose displays (Amazon Kindle), for specialized applications its much cheaper if the e-ink can only represent compositions of static images in fixed positions, toggled on or off. Kind of like the difference between a modern LCD monitor and the LCD on a Nintendo Game & Watch-type game.
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
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?
The next cover would have some sort of program encryption.
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.
Then a bunch of artsy fashionistas would parade around saying that gaping anus is the new black.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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.
That's not an eye...
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
I think you are misunderstanding the technology. Review: http://www.eink.com/technology/howitworks.html They are very much pixels, dots, or "e-ink microcapsules" which means you should be able to draw any image you want. In the howitworks they seem to have 3 shades: white, black, and grey. When you say you can only show what it was designed to that sounds like if it has an "1" you only get 2 bars like on a calculator. That is really misunderstanding what is actually going on here.
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.
I choked a little reading that. That's too fucking funny.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Doesn't mean this one has the contacts laid out for addressable pixels.
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.
A pixel is just a very small, very square segment. I believe what the grandparent poster is trying to say is that this particular e-ink display is heavily segment based, and proposition supported by how it is being used in the cover and how cheap it is to make.
The cheap calculator displays are mostly LCD, which power both high end pixel-driven displays and the videogames that come free with your Happy Meal. This particular implementation of the technology appears to fall to the latter.
Hence, it would be nearly impossible to display anything other than what is currently on the cover without rebuilding the e-ink sheet. In this particular case, we're all winners.
The ______ Agenda
Very true but the following suggests it just might:
1. Esquire is inviting people to play with it infers it might be. It may not be the cheapest of the cheap and in fact they offset the cost with the other e-ink screen (the ford advertisement for the flex).
2. As the article states they opted for better "flex connections (these are pricey connections). It looks like it was made to be reprogrammed and different screens."
It's all very possible. I'm hopefull.
The same thing that would happen if someone went through and pasted nudie pix onto the covers of plain paper copies of Esquire. Eventually someone working at the store would notice, and they'd have the option to either pay for the vandalized copies or talk to the friendly local police officer.
It's not like these things are on a wireless network, it'd still require someone setting up shop to change the covers, which may or may not be obvious at first, eventually somebody would probably notice as they went from copy to copy hooking it up to a laptop or cutting the covers open to make changes....
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
I understand what you're saying. I don't think it's analogous to LCD. Just the way I am reading it perhaps. My understanding is the screen doesn't need to be fundamentally changed to produced an active matrix display at the level of a pixel.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007371.html
link above is reading the esquire article the same as me. Could take the display and turn it into something else like "a dirt cheap e-book reader."
1995 called - they want their tag back.
and vice versa!
> In the howitworks they seem to have 3 shades: white, black, and grey.
Unlike e-books, which apparently also have 3 shades: light grey, dark grey, and grey.
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?
If the internet has done one thing for me, it has killed whatever curiosity I had to go look at new shock images.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
You just summerized "high-tech" advertising for the next 50 years! May I ask, where did you get your crystal ball?
...Could take the display and turn it into something else like "a dirt cheap e-book reader."
Not possible without dismantling the panel. What you need to remember about this screen is that it doesn't have the control matrix laid out in a grid (with each line 1px wide) like an ebook reader does. Instead, the matrix is composed of discrete sections. These sections cannot be changed without physically dismantling the screen and replacing the active layer, which can't easily be done without destroying the screen.
Forget world peace, bring on -1 pointless
Essentially, the paper itself could display individual pixels, in almost exactly the same way that sections of electroluminescent tape could individually light up, but they would need to be wired for it. The difference between running one magnetic inducing plane to the back of a specially-cut region of the paper and running hundreds of wires all crisscrossing them is significnat. And that, of course, is what separates 2 dollar a foot electroluminescent tape from hundred dollar per 3-inch electroluminescent displays. At the point where you've fabricated electromagnetic matrices to interact with the e-paper, you're far into the cost of a real ebook reader.
The writer there isn't thinking about the tools at hand in any realistic fashion. Realistic tech writers aren't interesting, hence only the fantastic (and ignorant) survive.
The ______ Agenda
This is probably a little cynical, but they probably got the reprogrammable covers so they could re-use them when they don't sell. Newsstand owners send back the front covers of unsold magazines, newspapers, and other items, and just recycle the rest of the item. Here, the newsstand owners send back a programmable cover, and Esquire's publisher can re-use the cover for a later stunt.
freeflux-powered open-source blog
Back is black.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
from what I saw, they were mentioning "hacking" powering the device when the batteries go dead. And with such large segments, there's just so much you can do with it. Can't even do a power bar unless 1/3, 2/3, 3/3 is of interest.
What would be interesting is if you could put a homemade backing on it to energize the e-ink and draw custom things inside those segment areas.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I think a can of beer would just about fit...
You can't display Goatse on these things. Each letter is one segment, even from the summary that's clear "The top screen has 11 segments, the bottom has 3".
I.e. it's not a matrix display.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It's $6. How much does a 2016 go for?
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
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...
Next on: Four horsemen of the apocalypse spotted above New York.
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
Most likely what would usually be a matrix able to address individual capsules is setup to turn on several of them at once in the wiring. This is the only explanation I can find for the low number of pins in what is normally a matrix display with many driver ICs attached directly before going to a controlling device such as the PIC here.
Instead what we have here is a very low pin count going directly to a shift register controlled by the pic.
So it's unfortunately obvious from the pictures that no more can be done with the display here. I am, however, interested in reusing the boards for things like fun little robots.
...sideways?
They'd die of old age?
Trust me to get the abnormal girlfriend..
which is totally what she said
Do not look at goatse with remaining eye...
"They'd have put the usual hot chick on the cover if they wanted to encourage nerds to do their usual jerk off all over the raster."
That would result in a short circuit, electrocuting the nerd. Esquire will be held responsible and go bankrupt.
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.
What's cynical about that? Is there some expectation that a company would throw money away for fun that's being violated here? Such a mindset would be overly idealistic.
It's also not black...
there are multiple e-ink microcapsules in a pixel. because in a matrix display each pixel is a segment. but these aren't matrix displays.
the technology to drive eink is nearly identical to lcd. there is a backplane that is attached to the display material that allows you to drive an area of the display with an electrical charge. you can make that area any shape you want really. (just like an LCD)
you usually can't replace the backplane without destroying the display (usually bonded together). if you can take it of then you could then use your own thin film transistor manufacturing prowess and apply it to the eink material and now you've hacked the display into something useful. Enjoy making those TFTs at home.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No wi-fi. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
I suspect that would be a lemma of Rule 34:
any image depicting any part of a (not necessarily human) body is arousing for somebody.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."- Winston Churchill
Tell me AC, where do you live? *lock-n'-load*
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
It isn't??? I've made a huge mistake.