Mark II now has a Face
The Kickstarter madness has died down (although we’re still on IndieGoGo!) and we’re making great progress on finalizing our design, engineering, and parts selection for Mark II.
We recently finalized one of the most important components of the Mark II, the screen! The screen acts as the face of Mark II–displaying vibrant animations along with valuable information from our skills such as timers, video feeds, music information, and more. Because it’s such an integral part of our interface, a lot of research, time, and discussion went into this choice. We’ll be sharing the manufacturer and model number for the display soon, but we thought we’d start now be detailing the general specifications. We’re using a 4” display with a resolution of 800 × 480, the viewing angle is 80 degrees in all directions, the brightness is 325 nits, and the display technology is IPS. Finding this fit meant reviewing a variety of samples, which you can see in the picture below.
If you are familiar with displays, you will know why we chose an IPS display over a TN or other type of panel. A quick google search for “IPS vs TN” will show you that the viewing angles and color reproduction are much better on an IPS display. On TN displays when you look at the screen from an angle they can invert the colors or turn gray.
Selecting parts for production is a delicate art.
It requires us to find balance amongst a number of variables, ranging from the quality of the display, availability over the lifetime of the product, comparability with the system, and of course price. Moreover, we’re thrilled to have such a great partner in our display vendor, and we’re excited to bring you a great product.
Excited to see Mark II? Comment and tell us why! And watch for more hardware updates coming soon!
Mycroft Chief of Design