The Modos Paper Monitor is a monitor with a 13.3 inch, 1600 x 1200 pixel E Ink display with support for screen refresh rates up to 60 Hz for smooth scrolling and animation. But like most ePaper displays, you have to sacrifice image quality to get high refresh rates.
One thing that makes the Modos Paper Monitor interesting is that has a custom display controller optimized to balance image quality refresh rates. Another thing is that it’s an open hardware device: documentation for the hardware and firmware are all available at GitHub. Modos has been developing the Paper Monitor for a few years, and now the team is preparing to launch a Crowd Supply crowdfunding campaign for the display.
Modos hasn’t announced how much the display will cost during crowdfunding (or after), but if other E Ink monitors are anything to go by, I wouldn’t expect the Modos Paper Display to be cheap. E Ink screens are low-power, high-contrast displays that many people find to be easier-on-the-eyes than LCD or OLED displays, but they tend to be expensive.
While we wait for pricing information though, the developers are sharing some details about hardware and functionality on the Modos Blog and the Crowd Supply preview page.
In a nutshell, the screen is a small electronic paper display with HDMI and USB-C inputs and support for Windows, Mac and Linux. It features a Driver Board with a Xilinx Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA that runs the Caster display controller software, plus a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller for USB communication and firmware updates.
The Caster FPGA Gateware enables four different display modes:
- Binary (Black and White) Mode: This mode supports a 60 Hz screen refresh rate, but no support for any grayscale, which means pictures look pretty lousy.
- Bayer Dithering Mode: In this mode, there’s some basic support for grayscale, but text and images look a bit less sharp.
- 4-level Grayscale Mode: Designed for typing, among other things, this mode offers quick refresh rate with support for 4 shades of gray, but images and videos won’t look very good.
- Hybrid Automatic Binary/16-level Grayscale Mode: This mode offers the best of both worlds… kind of. You can scroll through web pages or other content at 60 frames per second. But as soon as the motion stops, the screen will perform a full refresh to make text and images look sharp and clear, while removing any ghosts of images that were previously on the screen. In other words, you won’t see the screen go black while you’re scrolling, but it will do that for a moment as soon as you stop.
Since this is all powered by open source code running on an FPGA, it’s possible Modos (or users) could develop additional display modes in the future.
In addition to the 13.3 inch Modos Paper Monitor, the team plans to offer a Modos Development Kit that features the same display controller, but pairs it with either a 6 inch or 13.3 inch monochrome or color E Ink display. But since this is meant for developers, there’s no enclosure for the display.
Modos says its Caster gateware should also work with other types of electronic paper displays including DES Slurry screens.
via Tom’s Hardware
