ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
sunlight conditions.

Why not use e-paper for the display?
This "low energy" display should be pretty useful.

Ok, only 16 shades of gray.
Ok, it could take up to a second to show an new tile.

Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?

Wolfgang Barth wrote:
> ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
> sunlight conditions.
>
> Why not use e-paper for the display?
> This "low energy" display should be pretty useful.
>
> Ok, only 16 shades of gray.
> Ok, it could take up to a second to show an new tile.
>
> Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?
>
I don't know what GPS you have but I don't have any problem reading the
screen on my 76CSx in the brightest sunlight.

"Don B" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:KlZNp.26823$_(E-Mail Removed)...
> Wolfgang Barth wrote:
>> ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
>> sunlight conditions.
>>
>> Why not use e-paper for the display?
>> This "low energy" display should be pretty useful.
>>
>> Ok, only 16 shades of gray.
>> Ok, it could take up to a second to show an new tile.
>>
>> Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?
>>
> I don't know what GPS you have but I don't have any problem reading the
> screen on my 76CSx in the brightest sunlight.

I have a 60CSx and can't ever remember having any difficulty reading it in
sunlight..
On the other hand I haven't a clue what e-paper is unless it is the screen
of e-readers.
Cheers,
Dan

Per Wolfgang Barth:
>ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
>sunlight conditions.

On my Garmin devices, there is a "Screen Contrast" setting.

Minimized, the screen is difficult to read in sunlight.

But if I turn it up enough, no problem.
--
PeteCresswell

On Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:01:57 +1000, Dan wrote:

> "Don B" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:KlZNp.26823$_(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Wolfgang Barth wrote:
>>> ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
>>> sunlight conditions.
>>>
>>> Why not use e-paper for the display?
>>> This "low energy" display should be pretty useful.
>>>
>>> Ok, only 16 shades of gray.
>>> Ok, it could take up to a second to show an new tile.
>>>
>>> Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?
>>>
>> I don't know what GPS you have but I don't have any problem reading the
>> screen on my 76CSx in the brightest sunlight.
>
> I have a 60CSx and can't ever remember having any difficulty reading it in
> sunlight..
> On the other hand I haven't a clue what e-paper is unless it is the screen
> of e-readers.
> Cheers,
> Dan

You *did* have a clue :-)

That's what it is, but I usually call it e-ink.

I prefer OLED. Higher res and color - works for me. I have read that
some new technologies work better in sunlight than my older OLED phone
does.

I just searched and found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

.... and discovered there's a lot more than I knew about :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Wolfgang Barth wrote:
> ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
> sunlight conditions.

"ALL" uses a big brush. There are several (if you pick your target)
that are quite readable in sunlight, but yes, I'll give you that one,
that *most* could do a LOT better.

Problem is, people don't buy GPS receivers, they buy numbers. They
compare a 4-shade greyscale, and 65,000 colours, and obviously go for
the colour unit. To heck with the tradeoffs. By the time they take
their outdoor device OUTDOORS, they realise it's unusable. But too late
by then, it's bought.

People want full colour because they *MIGHT* want to show photos of
their loved ones on their SatNav device. They might do it once, if
EVER, but that doesn't matter, it's bought now.

Manufacturers will use any feature to sell their box. They just
neglect to remember to mention the tradeoffs. :-)

> Why not use e-paper for the display?
> This "low energy" display should be pretty useful.

Current e-paper (or e-ink as it's known) is too slow, and monochrome to
boot. We've tried converting the colour maps we have now, to
monochrome, and found they're almost unreadable. So nice in theory, but
useless in practice.
So, the display will need be colour.
I'll need to qualify this by the fact that I live in australia, I've
NEVER been happy with ANY of the vector maps we have, and my raster maps
are REALLY usable, so I'm not giving them up any time soon. That and, I
have provision to make (create from new) raster maps very easily, where
vector maps are a WHOLE LOT more work. (and yes, I've done both).

> Ok, only 16 shades of gray.

The way things are going, the map CONTENT needs colour to assist in the
readability contrast. Yes, one of my receivers is mono now, and NO, it
is NOWHERE near as readable at a glance compared to my colour units.
I pick my tools here, I use the mono unit outdoors, where it's less
readable, but the sunlight makes it viable, and the colour unit in a
car, where I can take advantage of better readable maps where light
isn't so much an issue.

> Ok, it could take up to a second to show an new tile.

That's one of the major issues. Faster update is needed. That said,
some e-ink displays are quite reasonable.

> Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?

They don't exist outside of various prototypes now, but will hopefully
soon. The current technical tradeoffs make them not suitable for the
purpose.

However, technically, the new generation e-ink can do full colour, fast
enough to do video, and consume less power than conventional LCD
displays, AND be entirely readable outdoors.
Also technically, they cost the earth, and that's the problem. They're
still working on that. :-)
--
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. -Mark Twain

IMHO it would not be the best solution. Contrast and visibility in bright
sulight - yes, but e-ink uses energy for screen updates. AFAIK its energy
saving is because of the short periods when it needs to refresh screen. In
GPS case, if you moving constantly, the refreshments have to be almost
constant. Well, it could be every few seconds, but I doubt if a longer
battery life than we know today from the ordinary PGS devices would be
possible.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Wolfgang Barth <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
>sunlight conditions.
>
>Why not use e-paper for the display?
>This "low energy" display should be pretty useful.
>
>Ok, only 16 shades of gray.
>Ok, it could take up to a second to show an new tile.
>
>Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?
>

I have a Kindle e-reader which uses this type of display. It is best
suited for static images. Anything which requires scrolling and redraws
(which GPS displays do continuously) is a real disaster in e-paper. It is
slow, ghosting, and blurry while scrolling.

John Tserkezis wrote:
> Wolfgang Barth wrote:
>> ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
>> sunlight conditions.
>
>> Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?
>
> They don't exist outside of various prototypes now, but will hopefully
> soon. The current technical tradeoffs make them not suitable for the
> purpose.
>

Can you name any examples? Which company/companies might be working on this?

TIA

Philip Green.

Am 28.06.2011 04:14, schrieb John Tserkezis:
>> ALL GPS devices I know are barely readable at bright light or even
>> sunlight conditions.
>
> "ALL" uses a big brush. There are several (if you pick your target)
> that are quite readable in sunlight, but yes, I'll give you that one,
> that *most* could do a LOT better.
I wrote "all I know" ! :-)
>
> Current e-paper (or e-ink as it's known) is too slow, and monochrome to
> boot. We've tried converting the colour maps we have now, to
> monochrome, and found they're almost unreadable. So nice in theory, but
> useless in practice.
For a test I converted tiles from OSM into pdf and looked at them on my
kindle 3. For me they were quite readable. Thats the reason why I wrote
this post.

> So, the display will need be colour.
Would be fine, but not necessary in my eyes. I was pretty satiesfied
years ago with my Garmin GPS III plus several years ago.

> I'll need to qualify this by the fact that I live in australia, I've
> NEVER been happy with ANY of the vector maps we have, and my raster maps
> are REALLY usable, so I'm not giving them up any time soon. That and, I
> have provision to make (create from new) raster maps very easily, where
> vector maps are a WHOLE LOT more work. (and yes, I've done both).
I've done both also vector and raster. If you want to look at very good
rendered vector card look at the android-program "Mapdroyd".
>
>> Ok, only 16 shades of gray.
>
> The way things are going, the map CONTENT needs colour to assist in the
> readability contrast. Yes, one of my receivers is mono now, and NO, it
> is NOWHERE near as readable at a glance compared to my colour units.
> I pick my tools here, I use the mono unit outdoors, where it's less
> readable, but the sunlight makes it viable, and the colour unit in a
> car, where I can take advantage of better readable maps where light
> isn't so much an issue.
No problem in a car. I'm using a color screen there also.

My idea was to make a small compromise in readability because of b/w via
a big advance in readability in high light conditions and less power
consumption.
>
>> Ok, it could take up to a second to show an new tile.
>
> That's one of the major issues. Faster update is needed. That said,
> some e-ink displays are quite reasonable.
Yes there are advances. But if I look at my kindle "small changes" like
cursor or so are done fast enough and without this blurry second. This
would just occur say once a minute when changing tiles.
>
>> Anyone seen a GPS device on e-paper basis?
>
> They don't exist outside of various prototypes now, but will hopefully
> soon. The current technical tradeoffs make them not suitable for the
> purpose.
>
> However, technically, the new generation e-ink can do full colour, fast
> enough to do video, and consume less power than conventional LCD
> displays, AND be entirely readable outdoors.
> Also technically, they cost the earth, and that's the problem. They're
> still working on that. :-)
Hope they will arrive soon. I'm not happy with the readability of my
german FALK IBEX with "transflective" device in high light conditions.