eInk, or electronic paper - slowly fading away?

It only came to my attention today that TfL has been trialing eInk/electronic paper at a bus stop on Westminster Bridge.  And that was only because the Evening Standard ran a story on it!  The bus stop chosen is 'P' on the northbound approach to Waterloo Bridge, a very busy bus stop adjacent to the Imax cinema.  The display is very similar to an Amazon Kindle.

 

 

 

 

 

The photos which accompanied the Evening Standard story show the date on the bus stop as 12th November 2015.  So this has passed me by for a few weeks!  The technology is promoted by Smart City Displays and Technoframe - they share a phone number so are the same company.  No idea why they have two trading names both promoting the same thing.  Anyway, the jist is that screens can be installed at a bus stop showing whatever information is desired, in the example above the next bus on every route departing from bus stop P.  The promo shots show the display in sunlight and in darkness, proving it works in all weathers.  The photo above, at obligatory natty angle, is from one of their websites, also showing the 12th November date.

So when I visited on 23 December at dusk, the reality is more like this.  It is visually unappealing, looking more like long since abandoned, faded, and water damaged bus timetables left in a shelter and not the sort of thing TfL typically provides at bus stops.  I tried pressing the button at the top (on some bus stops this provides a back light to help read the display at night) and the three blue/red/green coloured buttons at the bottom.  None of them did anything, though some press releases suggest the bottom buttons should change a page.

A close up of the display.  It is very faded, almost like constantly displaying the same colours has burnt out the ability to show clear information (I'm no techy expert on the technology behind this display.)  The header band and route numbers will only have limited changese so unlike the Kindle where page content is constantly changing, this eInk has to be able to show the same imagery for all its life - I'd expect 5 years minimum.  This image showing routes 243/341/521/RV1 looks like a second page as the previous photo showed routes numbered between 1 and 188.  Observation of passengers at the stop showed they had no interest in it - the printed linear diagrams were of much more interest to the largely tourist crowd waiting at stop P.

Over the last decade or so TfL has used 'Countdown' displays within bus shelters to provide at-stop real time information.  They seem quite reliable and are probably quite simple technology in themselves.  Photo from tfl.gov.uk.  TfL also has web-based real time information (as do some mapping sites) and a text-back service from every bus stop, though awareness of the latter seems quite low.

In these days of high levels of smart phone ownership there are numerous apps available showing real time bus times, all using the same data from the TfL iBus vehicle tracking function as is used in TfL's own applications.  This is one simply called Bus Times which I use, and this screenshot is showing comprehensive information for the same bus stop on Waterloo Bridge.  I appreciate it is less likely that a visitor/tourist especially from overseas will have the data allowance to run the app, but data is getting cheaper (and at no additional charge across Europe from mid 2017) and wifi is getting more common, so in the goodness of time this could become the preeminent way of giving real time bus information.

Th eInk technology is also proposed to be used on bus destination displays (and recent evidence with how in or out of touch I am, may already have happened).  Image from Technoframe's website.  The paper blind is a pretty reliable and clear way of describing bus information - eInk needs to work a lot better before it is released in to the mainstream, at bus stops, as bus destination displays or otherwise.  I am also unsure exactly what problem eInk is seeking to solve, especially with the bus stop displays,