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Tearing Down a $1000 E-ink Monitor

Most ereaders, tablets, and other gadgets eventually make it through the FCC, giving us a look inside, but the Dasung Paperlike has kept its secrets.

Until now.

A few days back Kevin Zettler posted the results of his teardown of the Paperlike Pro. He bought one with the intention of building an E-ink laptop, and he posted photos of the teardown so that we could all benefit.

This is a follow up to my previous Dasung Paperlike Pro Review post. For visitors landing here, a quick recap. The Dasung Paperlike Pro is billed as “The worlds first HDMI e-ink monitor” It is high performance for a e-ink display and renders at about 40fps. Check the review post for more info.

I Bought the Dasung with intentions to tear it down for ‘research’ purposes. Mainly to confirm what e-ink display module they were using. This research was for the goal of building an e-ink laptop. In this post I will walk through my experience dismantling the Dasung and discuss its internal components. Hopefully readers will find this useful in their own e-ink hardware projects, or in the chance they need to repair a Dasung.

The post is short on specifics (he hasn’t identified the component chips yet) but we do know that the Pro was relatively easy to take apart. Once  Kevin pried the front bezel off, he found that the screen was secured to the rear shell with screws. Once those were removed, disassembling the Pro was about as simple as unplugging the screen and then removing the screws that hold the one circuit board in place.

Speaking of which, Dasung hid a joke on the circuit board:

Gotta love that sense of humor, don’t you?

Kevin Zettler via Hackaday

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Comments


Lesnikus February 15, 2018 um 7:18 am

40 fps?!?!? Where did he get this from? I never heard such promises from Dasung. It is known that Dasung Paperlike Pro and Onyx Boox Max 2 have the same frequency of 6 fps.

It’s very interesting to know what’s inside. I must read at my leisure. Finally, the exact model of the display became known. This will allow us to find out which maximum frame rate it supports and the reason why the frame rate is 6, not 8. Only need somewhere to find where to download free datasheet for this model

Nate Hoffelder February 15, 2018 um 7:25 am

Yes, I had planned to bring that up with him. It’s not even close to being true.


david September 7, 2018 um 3:43 pm

"Oops you have lost the warranty". It’s very ironical because actually Dasung provides no warranty.
Definitively nothing makes this company be ashamed.


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