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Open Source Games

Valve Open-Sources Steam Machine's E-Ink Display (gamingonlinux.com) 35

Posted by BeauHD from the good-move dept.
Valve has open-sourced the design for a customizable e-ink front panel for the Steam Machine, dubbed the "Inkterface." "All of it is available on their GitLab under the MIT license, which goes over everything you need to make your own and stick it on the front of your fancy new Steam Machine," reports GamingOnLinux. From the report: They're now calling it the "Inkterface" and there's a good few things you'll need to make it including:
1 x Adafruit ESP32 Feather with 2MB PSRAM.
1 x Adafruit eInk Breakout Friend.
1 x Adafruit 5.83" Monochrome eInk Panel.
13 x M2.5 x 5mm Pan Head Machine Screws.
4 x 1/4" x 1/4" x 3/16" Stepped Magnet SB443-OUT.

Valve even provided a video on the GitLab showing it being put together [...].

Valve Open-Sources Steam Machine's E-Ink Display More | Reply

Valve Open-Sources Steam Machine's E-Ink Display

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  • Valve (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Friday July 03, 2026 @04:29PM (#66221694)

    This is why Valve is one of the few tech companies around that people actually like. They seem genuinely interested in helping customers.

    • Yes and no. They talk a good game, but sometimes that's all it is. For example the Steamdeck is listed as having excellent repairability by iFixit. Valve have provided an official OEM guide on how to replace literally any component.

      However try actually getting those components. Even iFixIt's own guides given a nice disclaimer that you effectively need a donour Steam Deck to do something like repair a left button: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/S... [ifixit.com]

      In this case it's a little different since this is a project r

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        It isn't Valve's job or responsibility to make replacement parts available, especially if they aren't being directly made by Valve.

        • It isn't Valve's job or responsibility to make replacement parts available, especially if they aren't being directly made by Valve.

          The Steamdeck is a Valve device, it's not a combination of aftermarket off the shelf parts. But that's beside the point. I'm just talking about the fact that talk and action are two different things.

          I was one of the people who praised the Steamdeck repairability and Valve releasing full set of repair instructions, right until I actually had to repair my unit.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

            The Steamdeck is a Valve device

            So what? Valve doesn't manufacture individuals parts by themselves. It's on the manufacturers of the various parts and components for their availability.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Aighearach ( 97333 )

        It would cost them many millions of dollars to make parts available, because they don't manufacture the devices in-house and don't have possession of the parts. And getting access to that included in manufacturing contracts vastly increases prices.

        Customers, however, can often source compatible parts. But listing compatible parts can create liability. So customers should create user groups for that, if there is demand.

        They don't have any "wants to go yet," you've just got stupid expectations.

        • It would cost them many millions of dollars to make parts available, because they don't manufacture the devices in-house and don't have possession of the parts. And getting access to that included in manufacturing contracts vastly increases prices.

          True. If only Gabe bought one less yacht they can make it happen.

          But the point remains talk is cheap when it can't be converted into action. The Steamdeck has a repairability score of 9/10. The Surface Pro 4 had a repairability score of 1/10. Why was I able to fix the Surface Pro but not the Steamdeck?

          Praising repairability needs to take into account part availability. We all praised Valve for releasing the OEM repair instructions here, but it turns out they are completely fucking useless since the parts ar

      • Well this explains what happened: https://www.reddit.com/r/dbran... [reddit.com]

        It sounds like Valve was in the right here.

        • How did you get me confused with someone who cares whether they had the legal right to stop it?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by evanh ( 627108 )

            Valve had to defend. Otherwise they lose all rights to that product for good.

            Dbrand could have easily asked for a license. They've even admitted they messed up.

            • I'm pretty sure that if they signed a license agreement after the making a youtube video they still would have protected it.
              There isn't any "youtube" clause in the law.

            • Valve had to defend. Otherwise they lose all rights to that product for good.

              Nonsense. You don't have to defend your copyright to retain it.

              At worst, they can lose the Trademark, if it no longer identifies the original owner in common usage (which makes sense, because of the purpose of the Trademark). They still retain the copyright and all other relevant intellectual property.

          • The link you provided has the maker of the device agreeing that Valve didn't do anything wrong. Not just legally, but in any way. As they said, "That’s basically the whole story. We made something a lot of people were excited about, then incinerated our shot at bringing it to market. It’s a hard lesson to learn publicly."

            They were stupid in public and learned an embarrassing lesson.

            You, however, learned nothing and remain an idiot.

  • Custom eReaders? (Score:3)

    by Berkyjay ( 1225604 ) on Friday July 03, 2026 @06:36PM (#66221756)

    Does this mean I can ditch my Kindle and build my own E-Ink reader?

  • How to make an e-Ink display (Score:3, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday July 03, 2026 @06:50PM (#66221766)

    First, buy an e-Ink display..

    WTF? We all know that once you have the panel you just make a frame and hook up a compute device and HDMI or whatever to it. I thought the article was going to explain how to DIY make an e-Ink panel from scratch using a matrix of chewing gum, cat piss, and squid ink or whatever.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      That's not how this works. There are a few ways to send an image to the bare display, but HDMI isn't one of them. If you actually look up the item list from TFS you will see that.

      You didn't expect them to actually explain how you could manufacture an e-ink panel starting with sand and some chemicals in your kitchen, did you?

    • There's lots of documents from quality sources about how an e-ink panel works under the hood that you could use to DIY it, but unfortunately for you they're engineering documents. Unlikely to be readable by people who think technology is made of bubble gum and cat urine.

      Also it would take years and you'd need a pretty fancy prototyping lab in your garage to pull off a decent build.

  • It's a hardware performance monitor (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chelloveck ( 14643 ) on Friday July 03, 2026 @09:56PM (#66221850)

    Not that the article bothered to say, but scanning the docs shows that the purpose of this is to display hardware performance graphs and maybe some other statistics. Maybe that's obvious to people who are in the loop regarding Steam Machine news, but I'm not and it wasn't.

    eInk seems like an odd choice for this, since it's meant more for static displays than constantly updating ones. If you don't want to play with the eInk hardware I expect someone will eventually re-implement it as a tablet or phone app.

    • eInk seems like an odd choice for this, since it's meant more for static displays than constantly updating ones.

      eInk is meant as a display tech, nothing more. Static vs constantly updating is a function of limitations of a particular piece of hardware. Your view is a bit outdated. Modos has e-ink displays that update at 75Hz, higher refresh rates than most laptops.

      And while Adafruit's display is not one of those, it does support flicker free partial update meaning you absolutely can use it for real-time graphs, though you need to periodically do a full refresh.

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