Does this work for the paperlike 253?

[Revilotom]

No description provided.

[leoluk]

Maybe? It's likely that the Paperlike 253 uses a similar I2C interface, so it might work with just minor modifications.

I do not own one but if anyone wants to give it a try, happy to assist with the reverse engineering.

[Revilotom]

@leoluk Perfect timing!
I just got my Paperlike 253 and out of the box it doesn't seem to work with paperlike-go.
Unfortunately I have never programmed in go, my strengths are with Javascript and other web stuff.... But I would love to collaborate with you on the reverse engineering process!

Please let me know if you are available to talk, I would really appreciate any advice on how how to reverse engineer something like this!

[krobelus]

@Revilotom does your Paperlike 253 work on Linux? Mine works fine on macOS but Linux does not detect any modes/resolutions for it so the screen is dead. If I set one manually it has random glitches, and does not display things properly. I'll report a bug to the i915 driver.
(I need to get that working before I can use paperlike-go)

[krobelus]

ok I got my Paperlike 253 to work by setting a custom modeline, e.g. xrandr --newmode "3200x1800" 252.0 3200 3248 3280 3400 1800 1808 1818 1850 +HSync +VSync see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/intel/-/issues/8147#note_1778754

[Revilotom]

@krobelus
Glad you got yours working!
I use wayland so probably wouldnt be of much help anyway.

So after contacting leoluk and trying a few things we have found out that the 253 uses a serial bus to communicate which is different to the I2C in the original paperlike.
To work out the 253 protocol we might need to reverse engineer the Dasung software for Macos/Windows. Unfortunately this is not my forte so have not made any progress with it.

[Revilotom]

Oh just reaalised that you're using sway just like me... Didn't realise you could use xrandr under wayland...

[rainforest1155]

Dasung has a Paperlike 253 color on Indiegogo and when I asked about the lack of Linux software support for the original Paperlike 253 (and thus also the new color one), they quickly released a Linux software which is now available on:
http://www.dasung.com/h-col-112.html
Since I don't have a screen yet to test it, perhaps one of you could give it a whirl and provide feedback if it's working properly. I guess now would be a good time to also bring on feature requests for them to improve upon it.

Oh and they also included the source code for it so the functionality could also go into Paperlike-Go.

[krobelus]

wow that's very interesting. I'll try to take a look. On Linux without their software, the 253 works fine pretty much all the time. Sometimes it starts flashing and needs restarting but I think that also happens on macos (not sure though).

[Revilotom]

@rainforest1155 Ooh thanks for mentioning that!
I just tried it and it more or less seems to work... The source code does seem fairly ghetto.
@leoluk Do you think this would be possible to integrate this 253 code into this tool or is way too different?

[Revilotom]

I should clarrify, I only looked at & tested the C code, I am unsure what the python code is for...

[ultrafragile]

Anyone get it to work?

[leoluk]

No idea, someone needs to reverse engineer it

(unfortunately, I have neither the device, nor the time to do it)