Does the e-ink display work yet?

[Kairei]

I'm super excited about the PineNote but read things from the announcement months ago like "expect to write software for it, not to write notes." On the current store page it says "Most of the device’s functionality, including the e-paper display, do not work at this time." This made me think I just need to wait but then I saw that someone (@pgwipeout) already had something working on screen almost immediately after getting their device.

Months have passed since then but I'm not sure of the current status or where I'd start if I just bought one and tried to learn what I need to enable bootup with working e-ink screen and basic note-taking functionality. I'm a developer, but not an embedded/mobile developer so I'm wondering how I know things have progressed to where I can at least boot the thing and see something on screen. How hard would it be to get it to just let me write notes? Could a super simple temporary solution be to just create a webpage that enables note-taking and use that from a browser on the device? Anyone know any status updates (or where to look out for them) or have pointers in the right direction for a newbie?

[CounterPillow]

No, the eink display does not work yet. What pgwipeout did was change the boot logo which is stored on a special partition.

There are a few things that make progress slow:

1. the eink driver rockchip released is an assembly dump
   
2. this will be the first eInk device driver in mainline linux, period
   
3. rkdeveloptool to flash stuff to the device is a pain, you have to flash individual partitions and it's buggy and inconvenient to do
   
4. smaeul is mostly going at it all on his own from what I understand, I've been focusing on the Quartz64 instead, as have others
   

You do not want to purchase this right now with any hopes of using it for its intended purpose for the next year at least.

[Kairei]

Thanks so much for the detailed response, especially the timeline - I wasn't sure if we were looking at weeks, months, or years. This really helps my (and I'm sure other people's) planning efforts.

[jasonriedy]

However, the stock OS works for reading and annotating books and papers. Writing this from mine...

[zer0sig]

The stock software doesn't seem super powerful but the basic features are stable which is a good start for something without a lot of developer exposure yet.

[Kairei]

When you say the "stock software," what exactly do you mean? It isn't clear to me what software, if any, actually comes on new devices when shipped out. I've seen stuff saying there is no software (not even an OS) and that you have to flash something onto it. I've also seen people referring to the default android OS and what "comes on it" and the above post's "stock software" comment which makes me think something comes on it. Can anyone clarify? If it came with something that booted to the graphical UI at this point, and had a web browser, that would be enough for me to buy one to play with...

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Just FYI in case anyone else is interested in this question, I found a post indicating that (as of end of January 2022) it does come with an Android image installed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/...images_or/