Modos had earlier announced it is working on an E Ink monitor which they are calling the Paper Monitor. The company now has some more bits to share on the stand-alone monitor which is going to be part of a series of E Ink devices the company is working on. Modos said its devices are designed to promote healthy living even for busy professionals who have to read and write a lot off a display.
As per what Modos shared in a blog post, the Paper Monitor will have a 13.3-inch E Ink panel having 1600 x 1200 resolution and no front lighting. The monitor will have a Micro USB power input and a DisplayPort 1.2 input at up to 224MP/s. The monitor will be able to support a 2200 x 1650 resolution panel at 60Hz. The company said future versions will have a single USB Type-C connection that would support charging as well as connectivity between the PC and the monitor. There are going to be suitable adapters provided to connect with devices that lack USB Type-C connections.
Modos further added the Paper Monitor has a 60Hz refresh rate, which it said will allow for a delay of 0 – 17 ms on a PC. Also, the controller is designed to buffer only a few pixels before processing. This ensures the processing delay is reduced to almost zero. Another unique aspect of the monitor is that each pixel has its own update timer. This way, updating the first letter would be independent of the other and won’t block the second letter.
Apart from these the device also supports early abortion of a pixel update request. What this means is if the input pixel is changed while it is still being processed, the current update process would get canceled automatically while the timer too would be reset to make it receptive to the next input value. Modos is claiming all of these features have ensured the Paper Monitor controller is able to deliver a consistent latency of less than 120ms which it claimed is less than half of the almost 270ms latency of competing E Ink monitors.
When it comes to the grayscale effect, Modos said they opted for a rather simple solution for typing. That includes refreshing the display to 1-bit mode before driving to 2-bit / 4-level greyscale. This is allowed to happen post a pre-set time which can be like 200ms. Also, with all of it happening in a non-flashing manner, typing is smooth while ensuring greyscale antialiasing for texts on the screen.
Modos said there are plans to offer a 16-level greyscale mode which will follow the same working principle but will have a flashing effect. This again can be a distraction while typing but can be great for reading. That is not all as Modos further added they are evaluating dithering processes like patterned dithering. This will lead to generating an image of questionable quality but could still be useful and be distraction-free during desktop use.
When it comes to a color E Ink monitor, Modos said that sure is part of their future plans but is subject to the availability of suitable and practical color E Ink display technology. Unfortunately, as Modos has put it, none of the current color E-Paper display tech is suited for deployment on an E Ink monitor, which means such plans remain on the back burner for now at least.
Apart from the Paper Monitor, Modos is also into developing the Paper Laptop as well as a Development Board. However, future progress with either of these will depend on the funding they receive as it is a minimum of 50,000 buyers for its products are needed for the project to be feasible. More details are available on the company blog.
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