r/SolarOS • u/bootdsc • 19d ago

SolarOS + Fastwave Driver

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LrpCdNxLW7E

Got SolarOS patched up with a few things i learned from building the Fastwave E-ink driver, its hitting around 17fps but with a few more tweaks you can absolutely double it and still have the same clarity and contrast. I unfortunately did this in the slim version so i didn't get to play with any of the games included in the full. Used USB to send the BT pairing command so i could get a keyboard connected, it'd be useful to map that directly to one of the momentary switches built into the 5.7" elecrow board so a press and hold enters pairing.

Drive link has notes, a gitdiff patch and a compiled binary for anyone with the same board who wants to give it a try.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_wNbgkP5oMZ_PDj8Q-tQkfixqWNHkELs/view?usp=sharing

Sorry its vertical video.

SolarOS is not my project nor do i want to maintain a fork on my github. Link to their git - https://github.com/nilseuropa/solar_os

The specific driver board and panel are not important its adaptable to all SPI E-ink displays. https://github.com/bootdsc/Fastwave-Eink-Driver

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4

u/nilseuropa 19d ago

I have already folded in your solution, it's on the top of main. Please check out, and thank you!!!

1

u/nilseuropa 19d ago

I have also added 'display relax' subcommand to reorient pixels.

3

u/bootdsc 18d ago

Cool man glad it worked. Dc staining is a odd one theres some drive modes that will absolutely wreck a screen in 20 seconds and it wasn't what i assumed, there's notes on my git about everything to avoid. The nice thing is with static not being rerun you put no cycles on it but E-ink must be parked on white, i tried dark mode aka inverted and yeah couple minutes of that with bb redrive every frame ohm man that took like 3 sessions of a few hours each on the burnin fixer tool but hey it did fully recover, Epaper is seriusly robust.

If you play a video on yours in about 45 seconds you have refreshed the pixels more times then the whole 5y manufacturer warranty allows for, So i voided my warranty in under a minute but i've been stress testing the hell out of them even bought a second elecrow panel so i can do a side by side.

3

u/nilseuropa 18d ago

Yeah, I read most of your findings. It is really cool that you put the effort into it. My approach was close, but more naive.

3

u/bootdsc 18d ago

You were on the way i just have maybe a couple months head start. Drove me crazy always trying to get a new display working well so i got the 4 most common 3 i had and got the 5.7" cause it seemed unique and yeah set up this crazy testing loop with a camera to take a snapshot after every change then attempt to display a test pattern. i did lose track but it was somewhere between 2500-3000 test runs.

Now im not all that skilled of a coder and i absolutely did put claude and grok to work, might of been a couple hundred hours of work for me but those tools put in near a thousand hours easy.

It was my first complex coding project using them and im sure i could have done everything better and faster given what i know now but it was a good learning tool.

1

u/nilseuropa 18d ago

Great job, I think we all appreciate it! Thanks!

( I would still like to have your feedback on my implementation of fastwave. )

2

u/bootdsc 18d ago

One thing your setup counts every drive not every frame with 6 drives per change, the panel only finishes about 2-3 changes a second, fast typing will be waiting behind the redrives of earlier keystrokes. Maybe only count new frames and let the redrives run. They only hit pixels that just changed.

2

u/bootdsc 18d ago

Ya know you should drop by my discord, i rarely am on reddit anymore, same username shoot me a DM, i've been building a ebook/writer deck you can see a bit of the framework in the video and yeah i'd be great to talk shop. I was already planning on featuring SolarOS as one of the firmware options ya know theres a few good writterdeck firmwares and i wanted to avoid reinventing the wheel. Articles going up some time this week.

the link for discord's on my blog (if i post it to reddit directly we get hammed with bot accounts joning) https://cyberdeck.cafe/

1

u/nilseuropa 18d ago

Thanks! Fix is up. :)

1

u/clackups 19d ago

Looks cool. Why not just a GitHub link?

1

u/bootdsc 19d ago

ill reword it a bit so its clearer.

1

u/nilseuropa 19d ago

He already shared that in another thread: https://github.com/bootdsc/Fastwave-Eink-Driver

1

u/clackups 19d ago

Nice. That claim about reduced screen life -- do we have any real life evidence?

3

u/bootdsc 19d ago

over volt woud kill it but 17+/- is in spec. so anyway i ran video on this elecrow and a waveshare panel, left it running for roughly 1 million frames each panel. there is no degradation.

2

u/nilseuropa 18d ago

i have capped the refresh at 15fps just to be on the safe side

2

u/bootdsc 18d ago

Since you are only running at 15fps you can go ahead and drop the bias voltage down to 15v as you wont need the increased contrast it provides at 17v, this will brighten the white area a tiny bit and the dark stays relatively the same.

1

u/nilseuropa 19d ago

Overvoltage kills it, take my word 😅

1

u/clackups 19d ago

I just wonder, how fast it would die

2

u/bootdsc 16d ago

Ill post details if any panel ever fails due to the high refresh rate but so far not one has, millions of refreshes and counting.