Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Slippyblade on September 08, 2012, 01:56:49 pm
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This was mentioned in another thread but I thought it was interesting enough to break out into a separate thread of it's own. With the advances in E-ink displays why not use the tech for marquees? It seems that with the bi-stable nature of E-ink displays a marquee of this stuff would be very power conscious and since E-ink can do color now they should look good if front lit.
I looked around a bit on the internet though and found very little info on experimenting or hacking E-ink displays. I'm shocked at how little info there seems to be. Anybody have any links or info they can share?
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Wouldn't you want the marquee to be illuminated? Considering what one would need to do to get the E-ink displays illuminated somehow, I'm not sure how effective such a device would be in that application.
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I was thinking of front lighting. Maybe just a series of white LED's under a rim shining on the front. Primitive, I know, but effective.
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LCDs... more effective.
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While LCD might be overall better, from what I've seen E-ink is a lot cheaper and might be more hackable. There seems to be a bit of an issue finding LCD's in the proper format for a marque that doesn't cost $2000. I'm just looking at experimental possibilities.
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Wouldn't you want the marquee to be illuminated? Considering what one would need to do to get the E-ink displays illuminated somehow, I'm not sure how effective such a device would be in that application.
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While I think E-ink has distinct possibilities, if it can't be backlit in a proper marquee, then I wouldn't want it for a marquee. The purpose of a marquee is to grab your eyes from across a room. Front lighting is nowhere as effective as backlit.
There are other arcade possibilities though. Dynamic instruction cards in the bezel or dynamic art or instructions under the control panel is certainly one of them. However, any e-ink solution would have to be just as easy to apply as an equivalent sized monitor and have serious advantages over the monitor solution to justify any increases in cost.
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E-ink can be backlit, there is a new reader out there that is backlit. I think it boils down to how they come off the line, if they come out as 4x6 screens, we can forget about sizes that we want, but if they come out of the manufacturing process as a long strip that is cut to length, we might have a chance.
I do think it that a 16:4 backlit color e-ink marquee would be perfect, as marquees are mostly static, only changing when the game changes.
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What about E-Ink bezels. That'd be awesome and you don't need to worry about the backlight problem. Getting them with a custom sized square-ish hole is far fetched but running one down the side to display game data and controls would be choice.
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I've looked into this idea myself, but at the moment the color displays from E-Ink Corp. seem to have washed-out colors (http://www.eink.com/press_releases/e_ink_toppan_color_investment_053001.html), at least from the photos and videos I've seen. Then again, other companies seem to have prototypes with extremely vivid colors (http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim//2010/05/07/Picture_30_610x455.png). I'm sure E-Ink Corp is working on more vivid colors too. And like you said, we would need much bigger displays than what current e-readers currently offer.
For smaller desktop cabinets, there is somewhat low-costs LCD displays that are easily available, such as these:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/2012-New-10-2-LCD-Car-Rear-View-Rearview-Mirror-Monitor-DVD-Hitachi-Dispaly-/261045837015?pt=US_Rear_View_Monitors_Cams_Kits&hash=item3cc78b5cd7#ht_500wt_971 (http://www.ebay.ca/itm/2012-New-10-2-LCD-Car-Rear-View-Rearview-Mirror-Monitor-DVD-Hitachi-Dispaly-/261045837015?pt=US_Rear_View_Monitors_Cams_Kits&hash=item3cc78b5cd7#ht_500wt_971)
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/BLACK-PAIR-12-2-TFT-LCD-SCREEN-UNIVERSAL-FIT-CAR-SUN-VISOR-MONITOR-W-REMOTES-/170902687032?pt=US_Car_Monitors_w_o_Player&hash=item27ca980d38#ht_3434wt_1189 (http://www.ebay.ca/itm/BLACK-PAIR-12-2-TFT-LCD-SCREEN-UNIVERSAL-FIT-CAR-SUN-VISOR-MONITOR-W-REMOTES-/170902687032?pt=US_Car_Monitors_w_o_Player&hash=item27ca980d38#ht_3434wt_1189)
There's a lot of these ultra-wide, "car mirror" LCD displays available. The popular models keep changing every few months, so you have to keep looking to see if something of your desired size is available. The bad thing is their RCA composite inputs, but I'm sure a VGA/DVI controller could be found, once the LCD panel is removed from the display and identified. The dimensions listed vs their supposed resolution seems to indicate rectangular pixels (i.e. larger than taller) so the artwork would have to be resized in consequence, but it's a very small technical detail that would be worth the results.