Show HN: From Hacking a T480 to the Fastest Open-Hardware 75 Hz E-Ink Display

7 points

10 months ago

Three years ago, I posted here about hacking together a fast e-ink laptop from a T480 because I was tired of spending all day on LCDs. I liked e-ink’s comfort, but it was too slow for day-to-day use.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26245563

That post drew in people, which grew into a community experimenting with ways to make e-ink usable for everyday computing. That project later turned into a company and a multi-year project to make e-ink fast and open.

We built our own FPGA-based controller, Caster, and went through multiple iterations to push past e-ink’s usual limits, slow refresh, ghosting, and proprietary controllers.

Now, after three years, we’ve launched the Modos Paper Developer Kit and Monitor: the fastest open-hardware e-ink display, with 75 Hz refresh and sub-100 ms latency.

It works with 6" to 13.3" mono or color panels over HDMI or USB-C, supports multiple grayscale modes, and has a C API for low-level control.

The hardware, firmware, and schematics are on our GitHub.

https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider

Our goal is to make e-ink fast and open enough that anyone can build on it, for hacking, research, or daily use.

Thanks, HN, for being part of the journey.