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GameBoy on E-Paper ESP32 at 30FPS [video]

111 points • by pizzaiolo • today at 3:21 AM • 30 comments • view on HN

Comments

Lerc • today at 5:21 AM

This is insane. Almost everything done here to make things fast were things that I had assummed that e-ink displays aready did, because they are so slow, I figured their behaviour was the best that could be achieved after trying all these kind of tricks.

It makes me what other things could be much better if they received some attention from someone who cares about it.

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hiisukun • today at 10:32 AM

I've been reading on an X3 (small eink display driven by esp32), and although I don't need better display performance, it would be cool! I wonder how long until these sort of driver improvements for e-ink filter down to other devices.

Great stuff.

aix1 • today at 5:26 AM

Great work. I loved the technical innovations.

For the grayscale, I'm guessing each physical display would need to be individually calibrated? I also wonder whether the calibration is sensitive to environmental factors, i.e. gets out of whack if the display is too hot or too cold.

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y1n0 • today at 5:22 AM

I don’t know if this particular display is magnetic particles or not, but epaper is not synonymous with eink. Something can be called epaper and still be lcd based. So I feel the video is misleading by declaring epaper is particle based.

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novia • today at 7:18 AM

I know e-ink has a whole lot of limitations, which is what makes this video impressive, but, what were the limitations on the hardware used in the original gameboy screens that prevented them from remaining popular? Wikipedia says that they were STN LCD.

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RossBencina • today at 8:06 AM

Awesome work. I wonder whether the four grey-level calibration could have been fully automated rather than keeping human in the loop.

landgenoot • today at 8:32 AM

Why didn't the manufacturer invent this themselves?

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larodi • today at 5:51 AM

Dither and LUTs - my best friends on ESP32 and paper. Great work also!

somat • today at 6:25 AM

Perhaps a stupid question, But I always thought the whole point of e-ink displays was to have non-volatile display, that is, a mostly static display that persists when the power is out. These projects that focus on driving them at high speed, Is there any actual advantage in using e-ink tech at that point?

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tomtomistaken • today at 5:14 AM

Amazing project, thank you! Keep us updated!

hobo123 • today at 5:59 AM

Amazing. Now I want my Kindle to use this driver and run stock Android.