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(post
:title "A look inside the Kobo Touch"
:date (make-date* 2013 07 25 00 00)
:tags '("DIY" "electronics")
(p [The e-ink screen of my Kobo Touch ebook reader broke, probably
because it didn’t like being bent regularly. It was a little over
a year old when it happened, way too soon to give up on it, so I
decided to take it apart and replace the screen if possible.])
(wide-img "2013/kobo-broken.jpg"
"the broken display")
(p [If you want to open any device that is held together by plastic
parts with teeny plastic flaps that snap into each other: use a
guitar pick. The Jazz III pick (my favourite) is very well suited
for the job. I used it to pry apart the plastic frame of my
netbook before. The Kobo touch is really a beautiful device (if
you have one, I encourage you to look inside) and is much easier
to take apart than my netbook. The battery is much smaller than I
expected and the PCB is very clean and ordered.])
(figure "2013/kobo-inside.jpg"
"After removing the back cover")
(p [The screen is glued to a very robust frame (metallic, looks like
iron) with two stripes of adhesives; with some nudging I could
separate the two components. The screen’s backside is shiny,
polished; mesmerizing. If you want to keep it that way, don’t
touch it with your filthy fingers.])
(p [Originally, I wanted to take the opportunity to upgrade the screen
to whatever model is compatible with the driver chip. This is
printed on the chip:])
(pre (code [E INK
TPS65185
TI 181
A49F G4]))
(wide-img "2013/kobo-driver-chip.jpg"
"close-up of the driver chip")
(p [As it was difficult to get detailed documentation on the types of
panels that can be used with the chip I decided to simply get the
same model as the broken screen: ED060SCE LF T1. The same screen
seems to be used in the Nook.])
(p [I paid CNY,(~)180 for a replacement. It appears to be a more
recent revision of the screen; there’s a little IC on the
flexible connector and a few numbers on the labels have changed.
It works fine, though ghosting seems to be significantly worse.
The Kobo UI doesn’t always force a full page refresh; this only
really affects the library browser, though. (The refresh rate can
be configured for reading mode.) The more often a part of the
screen is updated the more gray noise appears all over the
screen.]))
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