alt Hacker NewsI love my eInk displays, I love my bike head unit.
But I don't see how they both fit together honestly.
The pros of eInk:
- low energy usage -> don't matter, current GPS units have +30 hours of battery life already
- low eye strain -> don't matter, you don't look at the screen for hours at a time
- visibility -> don't matter, current GPS units adapt to ambient light
- angle visibility -> don't matter, the screen is right in front of you
The cons of eInk:
- refresh rate -> yeah, I don't want the map display to be laggy
- visibility in the dark -> tunnels, tree cover... I don't want to my GPS to be invisible
- lack of color -> colors provide lots of information on the map display
Replies
This device has a backlight enabled by a physical button, and navi refresh rate doesn't matter because you're riding and not staring at it. 1Hz is fine for a reference.
Not sure why needing less battery or having better at-a-glance visibility would be such a bad thing.
One need not love a device, that's ok. But digging to invent a reason to hate it also doesn't seem necessary.
refresh rate is sort of a non issue. i can push the refresh rate to up to 20Hz, it is largely unnecessary for this project.
it has a nice backlight (basically identical to a kindle display)
color is fair, but i dont miss it.
i do absolutely love how readable it is in direct sunlight (when im mostly riding)
IMO at least a better one to do would be a transflective LCD like the original pebble watches used.
I agree. But this could be a fun and cheap project to do with kids for their bikes :)
Well said. I don't understand who this would be for.
For others, some of those advantages do matter. Different strokes for different folks! Cheers mate.