I rolled my own outdoor laptop, using an old Dasung e-ink monitor, power bank, and latte panda SBC. Works great for outdoor coding. Cut the chassis out of 1/2' plywood on the CNC router. Dual boots vanilla Windows and Linux. Picture here: https://imgur.com/a/RrpPjET
Love your keyboard. I use the UK version and it seems like the Trackpoint II keyboard is discontinued last I checked. Don't know what Lenovo are doing I think it's one of the best keyboards I've ever used when also factoring how portable it is
I code in the sun a fair amount just with a Macbook. Not direct direct sun - but outdoors on an English summer's day.
Main things are:
1. Use light mode not dark mode
2. Max out screen brightness (obvs) - there are hacks for HDR displays to make them even brighter but my Macbook is too old.
Coding is fine but anything that requires looking at images (low contrast UI design in particular) sucks. However this probably forces you to design good accessible UIs!
I also use a Quest 3 as a display when I can as that also solves the sunlight problem and gives me a huge virtual display to boot.
The biggest thing I'm lacking is a remote desktop app that doesn't mess with my muscle memory. Keys like escape and alt-tab often aren't handled correctly over remote desktop (Chrome Remote Desktop is the best thing I've found so far but that still doesn't handle alt-tab between Mac and PC)
I’m unsure if the same applies to older macbook screens, but I’ve found that polarized sunglasses help alot with reducing glare and the marks/dust on the retina screen. Combined with the HDR hacks you mentioned above I can sit in sun with sunglasses and still keep dark mode on while coding
I struggled with this for years, until Apple released the iPad Pro with tandem OLED and nano-textured glass. With that I could comfortably program outside, even in direct sunlight. The only issue has been when too much sun hits the iPad for too long and forces it to shutdown. But usually in that case I'm also too hot so it's not too much of a bother to find shade.
Now, with the MacBook Pro w/ nano texture display and the Vivid program to increase brightness, I can have a dual display setup outside using the MBP and iPad. It's an expensive setup if your employer isn't paying for it, but it works very well.
Sunlight-powered computing is an idea that is very, very ripe for arrival. It needs to happen.
I sincerely hope we see, within a few years from now, e-ink laptops where one side of the screen and the underneath surface of the laptop consist of solar cells, and all one need do for a daily/weekly charge, is tilt the laptop in teepee orientation and let it charge, charge, charge.
I've already decided personally to get off the grid as soon as possible - in my case, in the form of a sailboat outfitted with as much solar panels as possible. Having a solar powered laptop has been a fantastic dream for decades - I really think it's going to happen, commercially and successfully, within the next few years.
I could already power my iPad and uConsole with portable solar and battery banks. This all just needs to get integrated, and someone is going to have a HUGE HIT on their hands ..
I want that too, but it is much easier if you accept a significant loss in either computational capabilities or portability.
A typical cellphone uses about 4 watts, and a laptop closer to 12, the difference mostly being the screen. If you use batteries and want to run the computer for half an hour for every hour it spends in the sun, you'd need at least two watts of solar panels. Mainstream solar panels are about 220W/m², so you need roughly 100cm² of panels (0.01m²), more if you don't tilt the laptop perfectly. The cellphone I'm typing this on is 82mm×165mm = 135cm², so you would have to devote ¾ of its surface to solar panels, not leaving much room for a screen. If you covered the back with solar panels instead, you could use it a third of the time if you left it face down in the sun to recharge the rest of the time.
That's almost usable, but not quite. But, if you can cut the power budget by about an order of magnitude to about 0.4 watts, you can get to continuous usage with only a fraction of the face of the device devoted to solar panels. LCDs without backlights can help here, especially important for larger devices, but using lower-power CPUs is also important.
Much of my own interest in this is because batteries and charging are almost always what breaks on computers these days, so I'd like to be able to get by entirely without batteries, just using solar panels, like a solar calculator. http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/zorzpad.git/ has some preliminary research into that.
Thanks for sharing your awesome notes.. I will devour these eagerly and learn from your journey so far.
I don't mind lower power if it means I can get off the grid, and especially if I can have a small fleet of devices for the purpose of.. I'm already doing myself of my development work on the uConsole - it's not a fast PC, nor a beast in any sense, but it does function just fine for my use case.
I could see an ARM64 cluster being solar powered with workable results.
I agree .. the idea of a battery-less solar calculator-type computer would be grand. Lets see how long it takes for someone to design a viable product around this idea ..
This is great. I'd like to know more about how it feels subjectively to use it and how the author prefers to position it for readability. My batteryless version of this setup, using smaller screens and a subthreshold microcontroller, is still not yet working.
I'm glad to see that the very frustrating vogue for glossy computer screens finally ended after many years, making regular, nonreflective screens much less unusable outdoors. (I date it to the wide adoption of IPS, which might be a coincidence.)
I think it works nicely either at a table or desk with the stand, or from the sofa with a low table. Sometimes I zoom in a bit in termux. 80 columns fit anyway.
I tried using a Dasung e-ink monitor, then I asked for a refund because I cannot review PRs on it. Even though it is a color e-ink monitor, I could barely tell if a line of diff was an addition (green) or a removal (red)
Kaleido color eInk is a dead-end. The displays are too dark to use in anything but direct sunlight. I regret purchasing such a display.
However, black and white eInk is great to use in any well-lit environment and doesn't need direct sunlight. However, the lack of color can be fatal for many workflows.
The problem I have with coding on Termux is that it's not a full Linux environment, and a lot of tools will fail to compile because there's some dependency that doesn't exist. That includes, for instance, database adaptors for nodejs, which compromises web app development.
Do you use any workaround for that huge limitation? Or just SSH into a proper Linux box?
This great I would love to work on the sunny day outside but it feels so limiting after leaving my 3 monitors desks. It feels like I spend more time switching windows beetwen code, tests, browser and Teams than doing the actual work.
Both Windows and the Mac app Snap let you switch to programs 1-9 on your task bar by hitting Win+1-9 or Opt+1-9. These will be your most used shortcuts and switching to Teams will be as fast as you can think. My chosen order looks like this, but you can rearrange it by just moving the programs on your taskbar.
1 - IDE (PyCharm)
2 - Chrome
3 - Outlook
4 - Firefox (Jira, Github)
5 - iTerm (terminal)
6 - Excel (time tracker)
7 - Teams
8 - Slack
9 - ChatGPT app or Obsidian
I'm not sure what it means to switch between code and tests though?
I just use my laptop's screen more often than not. A number of years back I made the effort to extend my WiFi so that I could work on my deck only to discover I didn't really want to. I do have a dual monitor office setup but mostly just work on my laptop these days.
I’ve got a Daylight and it’s pretty similar to e-ink.
Without the backlight the contrast is lower than a newer e-ink display, such as on a Remarkable, so you need good ambient lighting. It being actually backlit rather than front-lit is nice though.
I’m not sure why, maybe it’s just psychological, but the Daylight panel feels like a screen, whereas an eink panel feels more like a static surface.
Agree with the above. It's during the night time reading with backlight that the difference from E-Ink is most clear, IMO. There's like a slight sense of depth between the surface and the pixels, if that makes sense, which I don't perceive with E-Ink in the same way. As noted above, "the Daylight panel feels like a screen" in that setting. With ambient daylight though, it is close to the E-Ink feel.
Yeah you’re right, I was trying to put my finger on it, but the slight depth gives it the screen feeling, whereas eink is close to the surface. The Remarkable doesn’t feel like a computer whereas the daylight does.
7.3 turbo diesel. This year it's been from my house in St. Pete, FL, to Porcupine Fest in NH, across the US to Oregon, and then down to Cali where I am now.
It's funny that you say you had a friend in Portland with one: I did a significant part of the internal build in Portland. There are so many skoolie projects there.
I rolled my own outdoor laptop, using an old Dasung e-ink monitor, power bank, and latte panda SBC. Works great for outdoor coding. Cut the chassis out of 1/2' plywood on the CNC router. Dual boots vanilla Windows and Linux. Picture here: https://imgur.com/a/RrpPjET
You rang? https://imgur.com/a/H5UufKh
Mine is just normal notebook dropped one too many times on the floor.
Love your keyboard. I use the UK version and it seems like the Trackpoint II keyboard is discontinued last I checked. Don't know what Lenovo are doing I think it's one of the best keyboards I've ever used when also factoring how portable it is
Wow this is awesome, I think you’ve inspired me to try and make something similar…
That's sick, very inspiring!
I code in the sun a fair amount just with a Macbook. Not direct direct sun - but outdoors on an English summer's day.
Main things are:
1. Use light mode not dark mode
2. Max out screen brightness (obvs) - there are hacks for HDR displays to make them even brighter but my Macbook is too old.
Coding is fine but anything that requires looking at images (low contrast UI design in particular) sucks. However this probably forces you to design good accessible UIs!
I also use a Quest 3 as a display when I can as that also solves the sunlight problem and gives me a huge virtual display to boot.
The biggest thing I'm lacking is a remote desktop app that doesn't mess with my muscle memory. Keys like escape and alt-tab often aren't handled correctly over remote desktop (Chrome Remote Desktop is the best thing I've found so far but that still doesn't handle alt-tab between Mac and PC)
I’m unsure if the same applies to older macbook screens, but I’ve found that polarized sunglasses help alot with reducing glare and the marks/dust on the retina screen. Combined with the HDR hacks you mentioned above I can sit in sun with sunglasses and still keep dark mode on while coding
I use lightmode full time for that exact reason. Other developers tend to think it's weird when pair programming or whatnot.
At night, I just use macos built-in accessibility functions to invert the screen. Work pretty well but sometimes you have to un-invert to view photos.
I struggled with this for years, until Apple released the iPad Pro with tandem OLED and nano-textured glass. With that I could comfortably program outside, even in direct sunlight. The only issue has been when too much sun hits the iPad for too long and forces it to shutdown. But usually in that case I'm also too hot so it's not too much of a bother to find shade.
Now, with the MacBook Pro w/ nano texture display and the Vivid program to increase brightness, I can have a dual display setup outside using the MBP and iPad. It's an expensive setup if your employer isn't paying for it, but it works very well.
Which MacBook Pro’s have this? Only the newest lineup?
Sunlight-powered computing is an idea that is very, very ripe for arrival. It needs to happen.
I sincerely hope we see, within a few years from now, e-ink laptops where one side of the screen and the underneath surface of the laptop consist of solar cells, and all one need do for a daily/weekly charge, is tilt the laptop in teepee orientation and let it charge, charge, charge.
I've already decided personally to get off the grid as soon as possible - in my case, in the form of a sailboat outfitted with as much solar panels as possible. Having a solar powered laptop has been a fantastic dream for decades - I really think it's going to happen, commercially and successfully, within the next few years.
I could already power my iPad and uConsole with portable solar and battery banks. This all just needs to get integrated, and someone is going to have a HUGE HIT on their hands ..
I want that too, but it is much easier if you accept a significant loss in either computational capabilities or portability.
A typical cellphone uses about 4 watts, and a laptop closer to 12, the difference mostly being the screen. If you use batteries and want to run the computer for half an hour for every hour it spends in the sun, you'd need at least two watts of solar panels. Mainstream solar panels are about 220W/m², so you need roughly 100cm² of panels (0.01m²), more if you don't tilt the laptop perfectly. The cellphone I'm typing this on is 82mm×165mm = 135cm², so you would have to devote ¾ of its surface to solar panels, not leaving much room for a screen. If you covered the back with solar panels instead, you could use it a third of the time if you left it face down in the sun to recharge the rest of the time.
That's almost usable, but not quite. But, if you can cut the power budget by about an order of magnitude to about 0.4 watts, you can get to continuous usage with only a fraction of the face of the device devoted to solar panels. LCDs without backlights can help here, especially important for larger devices, but using lower-power CPUs is also important.
You can see some of my previous notes on the topic, listing nanojoules per instruction for processors then available, at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/keyboard-powered-computers..... Ambiq's subthreshold microcontrollers go much lower.
Much of my own interest in this is because batteries and charging are almost always what breaks on computers these days, so I'd like to be able to get by entirely without batteries, just using solar panels, like a solar calculator. http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/zorzpad.git/ has some preliminary research into that.
Thanks for sharing your awesome notes.. I will devour these eagerly and learn from your journey so far.
I don't mind lower power if it means I can get off the grid, and especially if I can have a small fleet of devices for the purpose of.. I'm already doing myself of my development work on the uConsole - it's not a fast PC, nor a beast in any sense, but it does function just fine for my use case.
I could see an ARM64 cluster being solar powered with workable results.
I agree .. the idea of a battery-less solar calculator-type computer would be grand. Lets see how long it takes for someone to design a viable product around this idea ..
This is great. I'd like to know more about how it feels subjectively to use it and how the author prefers to position it for readability. My batteryless version of this setup, using smaller screens and a subthreshold microcontroller, is still not yet working.
I'm glad to see that the very frustrating vogue for glossy computer screens finally ended after many years, making regular, nonreflective screens much less unusable outdoors. (I date it to the wide adoption of IPS, which might be a coincidence.)
I think it works nicely either at a table or desk with the stand, or from the sofa with a low table. Sometimes I zoom in a bit in termux. 80 columns fit anyway.
I tried using a Dasung e-ink monitor, then I asked for a refund because I cannot review PRs on it. Even though it is a color e-ink monitor, I could barely tell if a line of diff was an addition (green) or a removal (red)
Yeah I watched the Linus tech tips review of it and the color one doesn't seem good. I'd rather try the monochrome one.
Did you try changing the highlighting colours to colours that do represent well?
Kaleido color eInk is a dead-end. The displays are too dark to use in anything but direct sunlight. I regret purchasing such a display.
However, black and white eInk is great to use in any well-lit environment and doesn't need direct sunlight. However, the lack of color can be fatal for many workflows.
The problem I have with coding on Termux is that it's not a full Linux environment, and a lot of tools will fail to compile because there's some dependency that doesn't exist. That includes, for instance, database adaptors for nodejs, which compromises web app development.
Do you use any workaround for that huge limitation? Or just SSH into a proper Linux box?
Yeah main workflow is over ssh into desktop rig.
This great I would love to work on the sunny day outside but it feels so limiting after leaving my 3 monitors desks. It feels like I spend more time switching windows beetwen code, tests, browser and Teams than doing the actual work.
Both Windows and the Mac app Snap let you switch to programs 1-9 on your task bar by hitting Win+1-9 or Opt+1-9. These will be your most used shortcuts and switching to Teams will be as fast as you can think. My chosen order looks like this, but you can rearrange it by just moving the programs on your taskbar.
I'm not sure what it means to switch between code and tests though?I just use my laptop's screen more often than not. A number of years back I made the effort to extend my WiFi so that I could work on my deck only to discover I didn't really want to. I do have a dual monitor office setup but mostly just work on my laptop these days.
As it is hard see from the photos alone: How much does the aesthetics of the reflective LCD differ from E-Ink?
If power consumption is not an issue would you recommend it for a real-time information radiator that strives for the paper-like look?
I’ve got a Daylight and it’s pretty similar to e-ink.
Without the backlight the contrast is lower than a newer e-ink display, such as on a Remarkable, so you need good ambient lighting. It being actually backlit rather than front-lit is nice though.
I’m not sure why, maybe it’s just psychological, but the Daylight panel feels like a screen, whereas an eink panel feels more like a static surface.
Agree with the above. It's during the night time reading with backlight that the difference from E-Ink is most clear, IMO. There's like a slight sense of depth between the surface and the pixels, if that makes sense, which I don't perceive with E-Ink in the same way. As noted above, "the Daylight panel feels like a screen" in that setting. With ambient daylight though, it is close to the E-Ink feel.
Yeah you’re right, I was trying to put my finger on it, but the slight depth gives it the screen feeling, whereas eink is close to the surface. The Remarkable doesn’t feel like a computer whereas the daylight does.
Man I love sunlight vibe coding. A good RLCD screen is one of the most significant investments I've made for my health in recent years.
I'm in my skoolie, off-grid at the moment in Skyline Wilderness Park in Napa.
My standing desk for the weekend: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPpZjy1Ej9t/
nice van! Does it run? Had some friend in portland had a similar one try to fix it.
Heck yeah it runs! :-)
7.3 turbo diesel. This year it's been from my house in St. Pete, FL, to Porcupine Fest in NH, across the US to Oregon, and then down to Cali where I am now.
It's funny that you say you had a friend in Portland with one: I did a significant part of the internal build in Portland. There are so many skoolie projects there.
What RLCD would you recommend?
I love my Sun Vision 32", but I believe it's not in production right now; not sure why.
The stand that it came with was awful; I switched it for the stand that my curved Samsung OLED came with.
If/when my Sun Vision stops working, I'm going to be so sad if I can't get another one.
They have it on their website + the version 2 which has reflective protection + a backlight and is also in 24 inches.
Oh nice! I guess they're back! And wow, the version 2 looks great.
I love it, and that's hugely inspirational.
What about using AR glasses like the Viture PRO XR / Luma?
Anyone know if you could run vs code on one of these beasts?
You can install 'code-server' with termux's pkg and access it from a browser.
$ pkg install tur-repo $ pkg install code-server
it’s Android so you’d need to use the VS code web app. Maybe remote desktop?
You can run full VS Code on android https://dev.to/junaid_dev/setup-official-vs-code-on-android-...
Theres even a paid native android app on the play store for it
But can you play Doom on it?