New Finnish-Chinese Project Aims to Develop Solar Powered eReader
Earlier today I showed you how to read under 300 feet of water. Now let me show you how to read on a distant mountain top.
Two Finnish universities and a Shanghai based research group have formed a partnership last month. They plan to cooperate in the development of a new class of gadgets designed to solve a problems afflicting parts of rural areas of China. Not only do some areas lack reliable power, they also lack reliable communications. The new ebook reader will address this.
The Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Aalto University and the National Engineering Center of Digital Television (NERC-DTV) plan to make a low-power, reception only device based on an E-ink screen. The screen and general hardware design are expected to cheap and require minimal power, and that should make it possible to power the ereader completely from a solar panel.
“The solution of combining the broadcasting technology with the e-paper technology will greatly reduce the cost of paper distribution,” says Wang Yao, vice-president of NERC-DTV. “The digitised paper will be compressed and broadcast wirelessly, and received and displayed by cost-efficient e-paper technology-based terminals. The system will not only be an economic solution but a green one as well. This is a kind of revolutionary system. We believe this green and efficient solution will be the trend of the future.”
click to enlarge
But since it will have an E-ink screen, there’s a chance that it might look like the device at right. This is a concept design developed by Holly Gates back in 2008. It’s called SNIPPY (Solar Networked Integrated Information Propagating Paper-like displaY), and it fills most of the requirements of the project discussed above. The concept unit had Bluetooth, not the TV connection that is planned for the Finnish-Chinese project device, but that’s a minor nitpick.
Of course, it’s been about 2 weeks since the Finnish story was published in the Helsinki Times, so there’s a very good chance that at least 1 Chinese gadget maker has already read the article, developed the ereader and started shipping it.
Comments
Meet the World’s One and Only 10″ E-ink E-reader – A51 – The Digital Reader September 14, 2011 um 4:24 pm
[…] · No Comments · Blast from the Past // click to enlargeI was working on the solar powered ebook reader post earlier and I came across a fascinating historical artifact. Every so often I like to post on […]
plutokid October 9, 2011 um 12:00 pm
The corporation is not only about designing and manufacturing a gadget, but also a e-newspaper business model for the rural chinese population.
The business model of sucessful online newspaper like financial times with free content and paid content ( sophisticated investment analysis) are not reusable for this project.
One has also solve the problem of a purchase model – maybe with deferred payment – for the population.