It’s not simply individuals working in tech who spend most of their day sitting in entrance of a pc anymore. Lately, nearly all of individuals spend massive parts of their day gazing a monitor for one purpose or one other. We might attempt to decide displays with ultra-high decision or super-fast refresh charges, besides, after some time it’s laborious on our eyes.
Alireza Alavi had an ideal thought that might assist us with this downside. The identical E Ink shows that give our eyes a break once we learn e-books might additionally come to our help once we are utilizing our computer systems. However E Ink displays should not precisely one thing you’ll find at your native big-box electronics retailer. So to make this dream a actuality, Alavi turned an previous E Ink pill into a pc monitor.
The motivation for the mission got here after an exhausting day of studying dense authorized paperwork whereas researching software program licenses. After practically fourteen hours of gazing a standard LCD display screen, Alavi determined there needed to be a greater method. His resolution was to repurpose an Android-based Onyx BOOX Air 2 E Ink pill as a secondary show for his Linux desktop, dramatically lowering eye pressure throughout lengthy studying and writing periods.
Relatively than bodily modifying the pill or counting on specialised {hardware}, the setup works completely over the community utilizing VNC (Digital Community Computing). On the pc facet, Alavi runs Linux with the i3 window supervisor underneath X11. He makes use of TigerVNC to reflect a particular area of his desktop to the pill. The pill, in the meantime, runs a light-weight Android VNC shopper that receives the video stream and sends enter again to the pc.
Whereas VNC usually will get a nasty repute for latency, Alavi discovered the efficiency greater than acceptable for his meant use. The first bottleneck is just not the community connection however the refresh fee and rendering pace of the older E Ink {hardware}. For duties like studying documentation, reviewing textual content, or writing easy prose, the expertise is clean and cozy. Extra demanding actions similar to net searching or coding are much less sensible, however that was by no means the aim.
An added bonus is that VNC permits the pill to behave as an enter machine. Alavi can decide up the pill, stroll across the workplace, scroll by means of paperwork, make small edits, and even sketch diagrams straight into purposes like GIMP. In displays or discussions with coworkers, the pill doubles as a wi-fi drawing floor.
Whereas trendy, high-refresh-rate E Ink displays are on the horizon, Alavi’s method exhibits that with a little bit of configuration and open-source software program, anybody can experiment with a extra eye-friendly desktop right this moment.
