Design Article
Under the Hood: Esquire puts e-ink on the cover
David Carey
10/7/2008 10:42 AM EDT
The October cover includes an electronic assembly that operates an outward-facing panel. The panel is visible when the magazine is closed. Finally, a second display is integrated with an advertisement on the cover's inside face.
 |
| For a full archive of articles and related On-Demand seminars, click here |
 |
| Esquire's October 2008 electronic cover |
The image sequence shown provides a static idea of the display states, but various YouTube videos show the cover in action. The inside cover panel is used as a backdrop animation for a car ad, with display images manipulated to achieve a sense of motion behind the car and in its wheels.
 |
Also, called E-Paper, E Ink's technology relies on the use of an electric field to bring forward to viewers tiny absorptive (black) or reflective (white) particles suspended in microspheres. The two particle "colors" have opposite charges, meaning the application of a positive or negative field across the microsphere(s) brings the opposite-charged black and white particles to the viewing plane, respectively.
The technology is completely passive, using only reflected light. Nevertheless, the end result is a high-contrast, surprisingly visible black-and-white image.
E Ink's Web site has some visuals on how it all works, and various e-book readers from Sony, Amazon and others have used more complex forms of E Ink's panels to create an electronic substitute for paper in text applications. EPD technology is bistable, meaning once power is pulled from the panel, the last state of the display is maintained indefinitely.
Opening the front cover card stock, readers find all the electronics neatly taped in place. EPD panels align to the transparent graphics cutouts and a single circuit board which serves both panels lies in between.
The board is dominated by the six CR2016 3-volt Lithium coin-cell batteries which power everything. It appears that five of the six cells are strung together in a series to create a 15-volt rail used as the power supply for EPD panel drivers. While extremely low-power consumption is a hallmark of EPD, the boosted rail voltage is needed to generate sufficient electric fields for affecting particle movement in the E Ink microspheres.
|
|
|
|
|
Bibliognost
10/9/2008 8:38 AM EDT
I saw one of these at a computer society meeting in
September (it was a door prize). Cool doesn't begin to
describe it.
I rushed down to the biggest bookstore in town, and they had
the October Esquire on the racks: but it had a completely
different, low-tech cover.
My question for the author is, can you actually buy one of
these things, or is it PR only?
Embedded designer in Dayton
Sign in to Reply
r3son8tr
10/15/2008 2:48 PM EDT
They have come a long way in just a few years. I had the opportunity to visit the E-Ink offices about six years ago, when all they were able to do was large display signage of segmented characters and numbers. True dot-matrix displays were not yet possible, and they were still operating at about 90VDC on the displays to generate the E-field. At the time, they were confident they could get down to 45VDC!
I purchased the Amazon Kindle ebook about a year ago, based partially on my familiarity with E-Ink and also it's wireless download capability. The screen really is very easy on the eyes, and the resolution is quite good.
Sign in to Reply
jcup2306
11/13/2008 10:35 AM EST
You can also see here how a enterprising soul replaced the PIC with an MSP430 from TI and hacked the cover into an E-ink digital clock that will last months Making" target="_blank" style="">href="http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/how-to/how-to-make-a-great-diy-clock-from-esquires-epaper-cover-066488">Making a Clock from Esquire's E-paper Cover.
Sign in to Reply