Modos Prepares to Launch Its Paper Monitor and AMD-Powered ePaper Driver Board
Company preps for crowdfunding color and grayscale variants, while also promising a kit with its FPGA-driven display driver board too.
Modos, a company that aims to deliver devices built around ePaper electrophoretic displays, has announced that it is gearing up to open orders for the Modos Paper Monitor — along with a developer's kit that includes a display controller and a choice of 6" or 13.3" ePaper display.
"I'm excited to announce the pre-launch page of the Modos Paper Monitor on Crowd Supply," says Modos founder Alexander Soto. "The Modos Paper Monitor is an open-hardware 13.3-inch, 1600×1200 monochrome or color E Ink monitor with a fast 60Hz refresh rate, low latency, multiple image modes and dithering options, and flexible screen update control. It can be connected using HDMI and USB-C and works on Linux, macOS, and Windows."
Modos originally launched with the mission to create an ePaper-based laptop, though in the two years since has refocused on delivering a standalone display — compatible with anything that can output a 1600×1200 video signal via HDMI or USB Type-C connections, in a shift from the originally-unveiled prototype's use of a DisplayPort 1.2 connection with micro-USB power.
The idea behind the Modos Paper Monitor — and the Modos Paper Laptop which may follow — is to provide a more eye-friendly display than the backlit LCD panels commonly in use. The display uses an unspecified model of ePaper panel, which offers a greyscale or limited-color image drawing power only when it actively refreshes. Normally found on electronic book readers, ePaper displays suffer from slow refresh rates — but the company claims it has a dual-mode update system which can update a black-and-white image at 60Hz.
The monitor is driven by a custom display driver board, which Modos will also be selling separately to developers interested in experimenting with parallel ePaper displays from E Ink, SiPix, and DES. This is based around an AMD Spartan-6 LX16 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) running the company's in-house Caster gateware with a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller to handle USB communication and firmware update tasks.
While Modos has published a page on Crowd Supply ahead of a planned crowdfunding campaign for the Modos Paper Monitor and Modos Development Kit, though, the company has not yet disclosed pricing; its hardware designs are, however, available on GitHub under the Strongly Reciprocal version of the CERN Open Hardware License Version 2.