Alexander Turcic
04-06-2005, 07:51 AM
Today Gyricon LLC (http://www.gyriconmedia.com/index.asp), a spin-off of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, announced the SyncroSign Messenger (http://www.gyriconmedia.com/messenger.asp), a 9.4x12.3 device that displays signs (such as fonts, logos and b&w art) transmitted over a wireless (802.11b) or wired network. Perhaps what is more interesting to us, the Messenger incorporates SmartPaper, Gyricon's own electronic paper technology. Like E-Ink and all of its variants, SmartPaper is a bistable monochromatic display that requires power only when the display changes its content.
Gyricon sells the Messenger as a "dynamic information display" potentially used in corporate, educational, hospitality and government facilities to display electronic signs (such as daily agendas, seminar schedules, etc.) throughout a large venue via a wireless or wired network.
Gyricon's SmartPaper consists of a sheet of flexible, polymeric material that includes millions of tiny embedded beads. Black on one side and white on the other, each bead sits in its own cavity, surrounded by silicone oil that allows free rotation. Because the beads are electronically charged - the black side is positively charged, the white side negatively - the beads turn under the influence of an electric field. Thus, one side always faces forward. To make a sign, Gyricon laminates the sheet to a backplane, which can generate electric field patterns causing a programmed message to display on the sheet. Because the beads are only 90 microns in size - half the diameter of a human hair - a person viewing the sign sees only the aggregate effect of many beads of white or black, rather than each individual bead.
I could be wrong but SmartPaper sounds very much like E-Ink!
[Official announcement (http://www.gyriconmedia.com/pr_0405051.asp)]
Gyricon sells the Messenger as a "dynamic information display" potentially used in corporate, educational, hospitality and government facilities to display electronic signs (such as daily agendas, seminar schedules, etc.) throughout a large venue via a wireless or wired network.
Gyricon's SmartPaper consists of a sheet of flexible, polymeric material that includes millions of tiny embedded beads. Black on one side and white on the other, each bead sits in its own cavity, surrounded by silicone oil that allows free rotation. Because the beads are electronically charged - the black side is positively charged, the white side negatively - the beads turn under the influence of an electric field. Thus, one side always faces forward. To make a sign, Gyricon laminates the sheet to a backplane, which can generate electric field patterns causing a programmed message to display on the sheet. Because the beads are only 90 microns in size - half the diameter of a human hair - a person viewing the sign sees only the aggregate effect of many beads of white or black, rather than each individual bead.
I could be wrong but SmartPaper sounds very much like E-Ink!
[Official announcement (http://www.gyriconmedia.com/pr_0405051.asp)]