Modos
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2024
0:46 · 18K views · Jun 22, 2022
A short demo of typing on the Modos Paper Monitor, an open e-ink monitor, using 4-level grayscale to show low latency.
Pointed to as evidence that open e-ink controllers can reach usable latency for real computer use.
3 comments from Hacker News
The mainboards are swappable at $400-1000 which means that if you like the chassis, your next upgrade would be considerably cheaper (and because the CAD files are available, you can easily buy or 3D print a case to use the old mainboard as a NUC). Although personally, the Framework doesn't seem so outside the pricing for the laptops I've been comparing it to anyway, tbt (in my case: ultrabooks that are Linux friendly with decent displays and that can get to 64GB of RAM) - the Slimbook Executive 14, Tuxedo Pulse 15 Gen2, Star Labs Starbook 14, are all around the same ballpark price. The HP Dev One is a bit cheaper, but on the flip side, the HP Elitebook 845 Gen9 is double the price. As for the marketplace, the keyboard, trackpad, case components, battery, and displays are also easily replaceable/repairable, which certainly matters a lot to me and I'd imagine would matter a lot to people who are looking at being able to upgrade or keep using the laptop longer term, or that are concerned about value/TCO. I think their are enough people that would be sold just on the "repairability" angle, but the modding culture stuff is cool too. I'm a big fan of some of the stuff happening, like this Eink display mod: this video
I'm skeptical not of the claims but of the usability long-term, tablets like the BOOX Tab Ultra C look great but they commit to violating the GPL rather than giving users a chance to mess with the internals. I've been loosely following the works of Wenting Zhang and their modos.tech which have a fully open hardware controller that can run at 60FPS[1] with 1bit BW and still seem pretty decent latency-wise with grayscale on[2]. Sadly most of their public activity nowadays seem to be on building a DIY MILC camera so don't know if we're ever going to see a full version of this. 1. [LINK] 2. this video
Have you seen this video [1] - which appears to show just that. A Modos prototype in a framework 13 shell. [1]: this video