E Ink Surf

E Ink Holdings announced a strategic investment in Plastic Logic HK, a newly formed fabless flexible e-paper display developer and producer based on Plastic Logic's own OTFT driver technology.

Plastic Logic, originally spun out of Cambridge University, has years of experience with e-paper and OTFT technologies, and is currently owned by Russia's RusNano fund. Plastic Logic HK will work closely with E Ink and utilize EIH's supply chain and module facility to improve the cost structure of Plastic Logic's organic ePaper display modules.

Digi-Key, a global electronic components distributor signed a global distribution agreement with E Ink that allows Digi-Key to offer E-Ink's innovative, standard segmented displays to their worldwide customer base.

Here's a summary of my visit to E Ink's booth at SID 2012. E Ink had a very large booth, showing dozens of E-readers and other devices that sport E Ink panels. Lot's of these used Ink-In-Motion, E Ink's segmented displays (rather then the active-matrix ones used in e-readers for example).

The largest display at the booth, and one of the most interesting ones was the hybrid EPD/LED traffic light concept. It uses a large circular e-paper panel, color filters and LEDs (in an outer ring). The hybrid traffic light provides higher visibility in direct sunlight than regular traffic lights (who need to "overpower" the sunlight). E Ink's concept uses 24 LEDs vs 200 in a regular traffic light. Great idea. Just below the traffic light E Ink built a small E Ink crosswalk - showing a nice usage of rugged shatterproof panels.

The Eton Rukus Solar is now shipping for $150. The Rukus Solar is a portable Bluetooth sound system with solar panels and a SURF (segmented) E Ink display. This is an outdoor sound system - hence the Solar and E Ink display makes sense...

 

Here's a great 17-minutes interview with E Ink's Sriram Peruvembra showing the latest E Ink devices and discussing their "E Ink on every smart surface" vision:

Update: The giveaway rules have changed a bit - in addition to liking the OLED-Info page, you'll need to like the giveaway post on facebook as well... The random winner will be chosen from all the people who like the post and are an OLED-Info fan as well. Good luck!

Our sister-site OLED-Info is running an holiday giveaway - with a chance to win a free copy of The OLED Handbook, and two phosphor world-time E Ink watches (which were kindly provided by E Ink). These three cool prizes will be randomly given to three lucky fans of OLED-Info's facebook page on January 1st. To participate, click like on the OLED-Info page, and also like the giveaway post.

The Phosphor world-time E Ink watch has a SURF (segmented) E Ink display that offers 24 time zones and several displays modes. It's a large watch, and it takes some time to get used to, but it looks good and draws a lot of attention... Here's our hands review of this watch. This watch costs $125 at Amazon.com (although it's currently out-of-stock).

E Ink announced a new sweepstakes in which they give away four Phosphor watches - one each week. You simply need to like E Ink's facebook page and then apply to the giveaway.

Here's our hands-on review of the Phosphor E Ink watch, and the Phosphor world time watch. Both use a SURF (segmented) E Ink display.

E Ink is showing some nice segmented dispaly (SURF) prototypes. I really like the surfboard concept:

E Ink released a couple of very interesting videos. The first shows a SURF (segmented) E Ink display printed on cloth. E Ink are obviously thinking about wearable displays here:

The second video shows an E Ink display on a Tyvex cloth - which is a very durable cloth (used as insulation on houses and for shipping envelopes):

E Ink launched a new and interesting product today. It's a monochrome SURF E Ink display that is laminated behind color overlays. E Ink is launching the new product together with Sino Pac Bank and the Miramar department store, which will use these as flashing point-of-purchase displays in the food courts of Maramar department stores (in Taipei, Taiwan).

Those SURF displays can be made in a wide range of sizes: from a few inches to a few meters for billboards.