Regal technology (less "ghosting") on Mini/Touch/Glo

[MarekGibek]

Aura uses "regal technology" that allows for faster page turning and eliminates “ghosting”. You can read here http://goodereader.com/blog/electron...egal-and-carta that:

Good e-Reader also found out that Regal is compatible with both Pearl and Carta (...)

We have Pearl screen in Kobo Mini / Touch and Glo. It maybe be possible that to enable regal technology on any Pearl screen we need eInk driver changes (they are here https://github.com/kobolabs/Kobo-Rea...hw/imx507-aura) and probably second waveform data from Aura's SD card.

I don't have time to play with it now (maybe later) and I don't have the Aura's waveform data. Anyone wants to try? Do you think it is worth an effort? Is the screen refreshing of Aura much butter?

[MarekGibek]

Here you can see the difference (look at 11 minute):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMu1PY1NDCw

I like it. Can somebody post here first 16MB of new Aura's internal SD card, please?

[giorgio130]

A little problem: Aura doesn't have an internal SD card. This could be secondary, however I've read that a problem of "regal" is that it needs extensive calibration at factory. So I don't think this is feasible...

[MarekGibek]

Thanks for reply!

A little problem: Aura doesn't have an internal SD card.

Oh, I see. But it is still possible to read flash memory if only the telnet can be enabled (does the trick with KoboRoot.tgz work?). By executing following "dd" command:

dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=output.raw bs=1024 count=16384

(note that the name of the device may be different) and then retrieving the file through ftp.

This could be secondary, however I've read that a problem of "regal" is that it needs extensive calibration at factory. So I don't think this is feasible...

That's interesting. But If I had waveform data from a few people:

• I could tell which bytes differ and need to be twicked in the callibration process - making it possible to play with them yourself (with a hex editor) - I don't dare to say "write our own callibration program" but people here are so creative that everything can happen
• Even without callibration - having a few different samples makes it possible to try all of them and choose the one that works best for you

[Lucas Malor]

I'm interested in this, but I know nothing about hardware stuff and I think this technology is furthermore undocumented. Do you know if the old waveform technology is documented somewhere?

EDIT: this is the only articles / documents I've found about the new technology that are a bit more detailed:
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/...oretic-bar.php

When a signal changes the state of a portion of the display from black to white, or from one gray level to another, the pigmented particles are accelerated to their new positions. Although the particles have very little mass, they must still be actively decelerated to maintain precise levels and sharp character edges. Regal is a new, more complicated waveform for doing this more precisely.

http://elinux.org/images/2/25/E_paper_Displays.pdf - page 11

Software Issues. E-paper's Challenges:
[..]

• Temperature sensitive waveforms

If I've understood well, the wave is used to stop the vibration of the eink particles, and this of course depends on temperature. Indeed I noticed that Glo is much more slow at higher ambient temperatures. Do you know if there's a thermostat on Aura and not one on Glo? If so, I think it's not possible to use this technology on the other devices.

[MarekGibek]

Hi Lucas! Thank you for interesting readings. I don't know the answers as the technology is not publicly documented. I hate this.

I hope that in a few years max we will all have fully responsive color great contrast paper imitating technology in our e-book readers and we will be sentimentally remembering current e-ink devices

[Lucas Malor]

A little correction: since I know nothing about the signals that stops the eink particles, maybe the new technology can improve the refresh speed even if there's no temperature sensor (not thermostat ) for the screen in previous Kobo products. My previous post is only a speculation based on nothing.

PS: my dream is eink TV and desktop monitors