Valve Open-Sources Steam Machine's E-Ink Display (gamingonlinux.com) 45
Valve has open-sourced the design for a customizable e-ink front panel for the Steam Machine, dubbed the "Inkterface." "All of it is available on their GitLab under the MIT license, which goes over everything you need to make your own and stick it on the front of your fancy new Steam Machine," reports GamingOnLinux. From the report:
They're now calling it the "Inkterface" and there's a good few things you'll need to make it including:
1 x Adafruit ESP32 Feather with 2MB PSRAM.
1 x Adafruit eInk Breakout Friend.
1 x Adafruit 5.83" Monochrome eInk Panel.
13 x M2.5 x 5mm Pan Head Machine Screws.
4 x 1/4" x 1/4" x 3/16" Stepped Magnet SB443-OUT.
Valve even provided a video on the GitLab showing it being put together [...].
1 x Adafruit ESP32 Feather with 2MB PSRAM.
1 x Adafruit eInk Breakout Friend.
1 x Adafruit 5.83" Monochrome eInk Panel.
13 x M2.5 x 5mm Pan Head Machine Screws.
4 x 1/4" x 1/4" x 3/16" Stepped Magnet SB443-OUT.
Valve even provided a video on the GitLab showing it being put together [...].
Valve (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why Valve is one of the few tech companies around that people actually like. They seem genuinely interested in helping customers.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes and no. They talk a good game, but sometimes that's all it is. For example the Steamdeck is listed as having excellent repairability by iFixit. Valve have provided an official OEM guide on how to replace literally any component.
However try actually getting those components. Even iFixIt's own guides given a nice disclaimer that you effectively need a donour Steam Deck to do something like repair a left button: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/S... [ifixit.com]
In this case it's a little different since this is a project r
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It isn't Valve's job or responsibility to make replacement parts available, especially if they aren't being directly made by Valve.
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It isn't Valve's job or responsibility to make replacement parts available, especially if they aren't being directly made by Valve.
The Steamdeck is a Valve device, it's not a combination of aftermarket off the shelf parts. But that's beside the point. I'm just talking about the fact that talk and action are two different things.
I was one of the people who praised the Steamdeck repairability and Valve releasing full set of repair instructions, right until I actually had to repair my unit.
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The Steamdeck is a Valve device
So what? Valve doesn't manufacture individuals parts by themselves. It's on the manufacturers of the various parts and components for their availability.
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That's horseshit, components are made to order under contract, the contractual terms are determined by the purchaser. The ball is 100% in Valve's court for this. Microsoft doesn't manufacture the Surface Pro either, and Apple doesn't manufacture the iPhone, yet both provide 1st party availability of parts for their devices.
To be clear I'm not saying that Valve needs to do this. I'm saying that talk and action are two different things. We ran an article here praising the Steamdeck's repairability and valve o
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yet both provide 1st party availability of parts for their devices.
And some companies, like Nintendo and Valve, farm out that job out to iFixit. IIRC, iFixit has partly blamed the part shortages on eBay people.
The OP said Valve is genuinely interested in helping customers, whereas their actions show that they very much aren't.
I think they are. Just up to a point. Maybe Valve has some spare parts laying around. But I doubt it. Or, rather, I doubt they have them in any way that a support person might know about or can grab from.
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iFixit has partly blamed the part shortages on eBay people.
iFixIt blames some part shortages on eBay people, but not for the SteamDeck. There are no parts supplies. None. Not ebay, not Amazon, not iFixIt.
I think they are. Just up to a point. Maybe Valve has some spare parts laying around.
So they aren't. Throwing a nickel you don't want to have in your pocket to a homeless person does not make you a humanitarian. Accidental or incidental right to repair is not a repair policy.
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but not for the SteamDeck
Yes, they do/did.
There are no parts supplies. None. Not ebay, not Amazon, not iFixIt.
I mean, I don't know what part(s) you needed, but iFixit currently has plenty of various Steam Deck parts in stock.
Anyway, with how fast and how many times the Steam Deck has sold out, I imagine that a large amount of the part manufacturing that Valve can order goes into making new Steam Decks. Any excess parts Valve has on-site are probably dedicated to the RMA process - which definitely has higher priority than DIY repair. Valve has no process (or desire) to sell individual parts, and I d
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It would cost them many millions of dollars to make parts available, because they don't manufacture the devices in-house and don't have possession of the parts. And getting access to that included in manufacturing contracts vastly increases prices.
Customers, however, can often source compatible parts. But listing compatible parts can create liability. So customers should create user groups for that, if there is demand.
They don't have any "wants to go yet," you've just got stupid expectations.
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It would cost them many millions of dollars to make parts available, because they don't manufacture the devices in-house and don't have possession of the parts. And getting access to that included in manufacturing contracts vastly increases prices.
True. If only Gabe bought one less yacht they can make it happen.
But the point remains talk is cheap when it can't be converted into action. The Steamdeck has a repairability score of 9/10. The Surface Pro 4 had a repairability score of 1/10. Why was I able to fix the Surface Pro but not the Steamdeck?
Praising repairability needs to take into account part availability. We all praised Valve for releasing the OEM repair instructions here, but it turns out they are completely fucking useless since the parts ar
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If only you had bought one less computer, not only would I not have to read your comment, but you could have given the money to a homeless person so they could eat.
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not only would I not have to read your comment
And there we have it, another Slashdotter proving once again they aren't here to have a meaningful discussion but instead be a worthless troll. Buddy, surely you have something better to do with your Saturday evening like fucking yourself?
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It's open source. Fork the design and change it to suit your particular set of unique desires.
They killed dbrand's companion cube cover (Score:2)
they're dead to me!
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Well this explains what happened: https://www.reddit.com/r/dbran... [reddit.com]
It sounds like Valve was in the right here.
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How did you get me confused with someone who cares whether they had the legal right to stop it?
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Valve had to defend. Otherwise they lose all rights to that product for good.
Dbrand could have easily asked for a license. They've even admitted they messed up.
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I'm pretty sure that if they signed a license agreement after the making a youtube video they still would have protected it.
There isn't any "youtube" clause in the law.
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Valve had to defend. Otherwise they lose all rights to that product for good.
Nonsense. You don't have to defend your copyright to retain it.
At worst, they can lose the Trademark, if it no longer identifies the original owner in common usage (which makes sense, because of the purpose of the Trademark). They still retain the copyright and all other relevant intellectual property.
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Valve had to defend. Otherwise they lose all rights to that product for good.
Dbrand could have easily asked for a license.
You're confusing trademark and copyright. Companion Cubes aren't trademarked by valve, and there's no requirement to defend a copyright, it's entirely your choice as to who you pursue for copyright claims.
Re:They killed dbrand's companion cube cover (Score:4, Informative)
The link you provided has the maker of the device agreeing that Valve didn't do anything wrong. Not just legally, but in any way. As they said, "That’s basically the whole story. We made something a lot of people were excited about, then incinerated our shot at bringing it to market. It’s a hard lesson to learn publicly."
They were stupid in public and learned an embarrassing lesson.
You, however, learned nothing and remain an idiot.
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They could have allowed it and they didn't. They and you are assholes.
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Yes, they could have. But business is rarely done along the "it is easier to ask forgiveness later than seek permission now" principle.
You don't build a Mickey Mouse watch first, advertise the heck out of it, then come to Disney expecting to get a license agreement hammered out after spending all that money. In fact, Disney is more likely to screw you over knowing you spent all that money in the first place,
What you do is ask Valve first
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Plus one to that comment.
Custom eReaders? (Score:3)
Does this mean I can ditch my Kindle and build my own E-Ink reader?
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Re:Custom eReaders? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure.
Want a video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This one looks pretty nice:
https://diptyx.dev/ [diptyx.dev]
They haven't released the source files yet but it's not exactly rocket science to put one together. E-ink screens are readily available, as are microcontrollers.
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Nice
How to make an e-Ink display (Score:3, Funny)
First, buy an e-Ink display..
WTF? We all know that once you have the panel you just make a frame and hook up a compute device and HDMI or whatever to it. I thought the article was going to explain how to DIY make an e-Ink panel from scratch using a matrix of chewing gum, cat piss, and squid ink or whatever.
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That's not how this works. There are a few ways to send an image to the bare display, but HDMI isn't one of them. If you actually look up the item list from TFS you will see that.
You didn't expect them to actually explain how you could manufacture an e-ink panel starting with sand and some chemicals in your kitchen, did you?
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Valve, no. The Internet, yes.
https://hackaday.com/2017/04/1... [hackaday.com]
This isn't e-ink, but it's not actually completely different, and this guy tells you exactly how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Judging by their typical comment quality, they probably shouldn't give up their day job for their day job, either.
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There's lots of documents from quality sources about how an e-ink panel works under the hood that you could use to DIY it, but unfortunately for you they're engineering documents. Unlikely to be readable by people who think technology is made of bubble gum and cat urine.
Also it would take years and you'd need a pretty fancy prototyping lab in your garage to pull off a decent build.
It's a hardware performance monitor (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that the article bothered to say, but scanning the docs shows that the purpose of this is to display hardware performance graphs and maybe some other statistics. Maybe that's obvious to people who are in the loop regarding Steam Machine news, but I'm not and it wasn't.
eInk seems like an odd choice for this, since it's meant more for static displays than constantly updating ones. If you don't want to play with the eInk hardware I expect someone will eventually re-implement it as a tablet or phone app.
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eInk seems like an odd choice for this, since it's meant more for static displays than constantly updating ones.
eInk is meant as a display tech, nothing more. Static vs constantly updating is a function of limitations of a particular piece of hardware. Your view is a bit outdated. Modos has e-ink displays that update at 75Hz, higher refresh rates than most laptops.
And while Adafruit's display is not one of those, it does support flicker free partial update meaning you absolutely can use it for real-time graphs, though you need to periodically do a full refresh.
Hmmmm (Score:2)
I wonder if I could use on of my old Kindle displays ? Not that I have or am going to have a steam machine but the concept is really cool. I use my old Gal.Tab3 with their desktop emu now to handle messenger and email when I am gaming.