[wastholm]

I bought a Remarkable 2 a month or two ago because I wanted a cool hackable e-ink Linux computer. But instead I immediately started using it as an e-book and document reader and note-taking pad, and nothing else. And, so far at least, that's perfect.

The screen is beautiful (a bit gray, but the black is really black so the contrast is still good), the device is thin and reasonably light, I only have to charge it once a week or so, and there are absolutely no distractions. I have even rediscovered the visceral pleasantness of writing by hand.

I especially like that it's *not* running Android (which I dislike more with each release). The biggest drawbacks, to me, are the fragile pen nibs and the inability to just SCP a PDF or EPUB to the device and have it work (their sync software works but isn't great).

[afandian]

My first thought was "if you can SSH then you can pipe" and, like magic, you can pipe the wacom device from /dev through SSH to a computer.

The result was this: https://gitlab.com/afandian/pipes-and-paper

Blog post https://blog.afandian.com/2020/10/pipes-and-paper-remarkable...

It's kind of abandonware now, but some others have made some great forks!

https://gitlab.com/afandian/pipes-and-paper/-/forks

https://github.com/flomlo/rm2canvas

[owenfi]

This is amazing!

[jader201]

> I have even rediscovered the visceral pleasantness of writing by hand.

A bit unrelated, but I’ve often wondered if I’m in the minority that hates writing by hand. Compared to typing, I’m much slower, and it looks terrible — I print in caps just so that it’s remotely legible.

I avoid handwriting at all costs, and loath the few times it’s required.

[0_____0]

I long hated writing, and like you only wrote in block capitals, until I decided to re-learn to write cursive. Mostly I wanted to be able to write sweet paper notes to my lovers that didn't look like a 5th grader wrote them. I've found that when the process is approached as art, maybe even meditation, it's far more pleasurable than an act simply meant to record words on paper.

[crussmann]

Over the last years, I felt my handwriting was deteriorating. I blamed my lack of practice and reliance on computers, and accepted that.

But, last year I got glasses. With them, my hand writing quickly improved. As an aside, I can type a lot faster on a touch screen now too. Presbyopia snuck up on me somewhere when I hit 40...

[marshmellman]

Yes, I’m in that minority too. I’ve always had poor handwriting and always hated writing by hand.

After introspecting about it, I realized that, for me, it’s because of low grade stress during handwriting, as my attention is constantly churned between thinking about the content and about legibility.

[asdff]

It might seem obvious but the less you write the more illegible your handwriting seems to you. I noticed this during school. Over summers I would pretty much never have to handwrite anything, and in august I had all the same gripes that you do about my slow illegible terrible looking handwriting. Those kinks would be worked out two weeks into the school year, after your hand is back in shape from writing notes 8+ hours a day.

The other thing about handwriting is that you remember things better. The act of transmuting something you've heard, put it into a thought, then taking that thought and stroking out words on a distinct location on a physical page taps into all these levels of comprehension and processing that you just miss if you take the stenographer approach with a keyboard and transcribe directly what you hear, or even writing digitally on the exact same 8x10 screen day in day out. I've fallen asleep in lectures with my hands on the keyboard mid sentence typing up some note, because the effort required by your brain is so much smaller and you are not nearly as engaged as when you are actually stroking out words and in the background thinking about how to fit relevant information on a unique 8'x11' sheet of paper.

[meristohm]

Have you tried writing with your other hand, if you have it? Writing with my non-dominant hand is slower and more precise. It’s been twenty-odd years of practice, in part in case I lose a hand, and it continues to feel like a fun, healthy challenge.

[jfb]

I hate my handwriting, but the physical act of longhand absolutely helps me with retention, so I have a reMarkable. It's a pretty great device.

[EvanAnderson]

You're not alone. I appreciate that some people enjoy hand-writing (the act itself, the ergonomics, and all the various bits of physical ephemera that accompany it-- pens, papers, etc) but for me typing's sheer efficiency and inherent machine-readability (not to mention being readable by other humans) wins every time.

[Aeolun]

I use handwriting for thinking, not writing. I don’t really expect to be able to recover the things I write down more than 2 weeks after the fact without some extra work.

[Nursie]

I’m terrible at it, but I enjoy fountain pens. They make me slow down enough that it’s at least legible, where my biro-scrawl is very much not. It is hard not to let my brain race ahead though, as it does when I’m typing.

Also fountain pens are shiny and you can get all sorts of inks and accessories!

[macintux]

I took the LSAT on a lark about 20 years ago, and at the time they required an essay written in cursive. Took me a couple of hours just to reconstruct my distant memories of how to write cursive, and I hated every minute of the essay itself.

[musingsole]

Writing text by hand is certainly slower than typing.

Unless you're filling out a form or writing an essay in school, handwritten things should use more symbolic language. Use a shorthand of words and images and arrows and circles that are meaningful to you. Whether or not someone else (or even you later) can read it is really a secondary concern.

[xattt]

I worked in positions that required me to write by hand more than I had in the last decade. I found that my handwriting found an equilibrium that balanced speed and legibility after a while.

Perhaps consider changing your writing technique?

[renewiltord]

My handwriting is fine but I am slow af compared to editing in a vimlike. Definitely agree with you. None of this writing stuff appeals to me.

The drawing maybe.

[Jedd]

Have you looked at:

https://github.com/Evidlo/remarkable_syncthing

I don't have a remarkable, and have therefore not experimented with this software. But it's the approach I'd prefer if / when I get a device like this.

[wastholm]

I have not but it looks interesting so I will. Thanks!

[freeqaz]

You can actually SCP into the device without any modification. It's under the Copyright section of the device. It'll show you the default SSH password for your device and then you can drop files in there. :)

[gpm]

You can, but getting the reader to pick up a new pdf involves

- Setting up a bit of metadata

- Restarting the system service

it's not quite as simple as `scp file remarkable:/folder`

[wastholm]

Sure, you can SCP all the files you want but even if they're PDFs or EPUBs they won't show up in the interface. (I can't remember if I actually tried this or if I just read it somewhere. Maybe it's worth a shot.)

[_ph_]

Actually you can. The IP address is shown at the bottom of the copyright notice, you can ssh into the device and once your have put your ssh keys onto it, just scp onto it (the ip changes on reboot). Unfortunately, you cannot just copy the documents, but you have to bundle them with some meta data, it is pretty trivial to construct, I made a small script, will try to share it at some time.

[flatiron]

you can fix the ip changing on reboot by pegging the MAC to an IP in your router. if you are also running something like pi-hole you can give it a local dns entry too, which makes it even easier to remember.

[aerique]

I use rMAPI to push and pull stuff from the machine. Not sure if it works for the rm2 as well.

Also, it requires storing your stuff on reMarkable's servers ('cloud').

https://github.com/juruen/rmapi

[abawany]

I love rmapi and use it often with my rM2.

[gspr]

> the inability to just SCP a PDF or EPUB to the device and have it work (their sync software works but isn't great).

Are you aware of the web interface? It's only available over USB, and requires flipping a switch in the settings. That interface is so simple that I imagine that an scp replacement is just an novice-level curl invocation away.

[wastholm]

Yes, but the "only over USB" thing is unfortunate so I find myself mostly using the bundled cloud service, which is usually something I try to avoid relying on. Some sort of peer-to-peer sync like Syncthing would be great.

[pjerem]

When I had a Remarkable, I installed KOReader on it. It transforms the e-book experience from "really poor" to "really power user".

[andrei_says_]

Can you also get kindle on it?

Nova devices are android so kindle, safari reader, and any ePub, pdf etc. book are a breeze to install.

[nafizh]

Same here. RM2 is probably one of my best investments for research and learning ever. Only drawback is I cannot read it without light at night. Would have been perfect if there was a back light like kindle.

[kcartlidge]

I was seriously considering popping over to their site and ordering an RM2. But no backlight? That's a show-stopper for me - thanks for mentioning it as I think I just assumed it would have one given that most eReaders do.

[sanderjd]

Man, I got the thing because I wanted to use it as an ebook and document reader, but it's totally failed at that for me. I spent hours working on a decent system for getting books on the thing and came up empty. I think it would be good for reading and taking notes on academic papers, but I mostly read books, and I couldn't figure out how to get most books on there. A lot of this is Amazon's fault for kindle being a proprietary format, but a lot of it is also the non-Amazon e-book community for failing to provide solutions that are as user friendly as Amazon is.

Edit: But yeah, I love the hardware. It just isn't functional enough for me to use it regularly, which is a bummer.

[salamandersauce]

This is what makes the Android eInk devices better IMO. Yeah, note taking is a touch worse but they are way better at reading as you can just grab the Kindle, Kobo, Google Play Books, Libby, Comixology app etc. And getting things off and on is a breeze because it supports MTP and cloud service apps like Dropbox and OneDrive.

[Abishek_Muthian]

> inability to just SCP a PDF or EPUB to the device

Do they support document delivery through email like Kindle? Recently I showcased[1] 'HN to Kindle' here and someone asked for Remarkable tablet support, But I didn't get an answer regarding email delivery.

Update: A quick search on their website says documents can be emailed out of the device i.e. sharing, But there doesn't seem to be a way to email content to the device.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27483159

[j6m8]

Yup. That was my main complaint with it, too. I wrote this package to add email uploads:

https://github.com/remailable/remailable

The rM is a delightful product to hack on.

[xwowsersx]

I have been looking at the Remarkable 2 and other devices in the category. My use case is taking notes on CS and maths, which both often require diagrams and other drawings. Can you speak to how well it works for something like this and how it compares to note-taking with a pen and paper?

[riidom]

I have a ReMarkable 2 as well, and there are zero drawing tools or alike, if you want some graphical object, you just draw it.

You have a multitude of background-guides (lines, grids, etc.) for easier aligning.

The only features you have that you don't get with pen&paper are a layer system and a select tool which you can use for copy/paste/cut or move parts around.

Page management is pretty basic, but ok. You have notebooks which are folders of pages and you can change their order.

[marvindanig]

My experience: iPad with a pencil is much better. But it is a personal choice in the end, I'd say.

[Loughla]

I use the Remarkable 2 daily. It feels like writing in a notebook - the screen gives you just a little bit of drag like a mechanical pencil and paper would. Very good to use.

[Shorel]

Kobo Elipsa appears as a very strong contender.

https://youtu.be/X9UNZqfHEtU

[Terretta]

iPad Pro with Apple Pencil ... and the paper texture screen cover shown here last year.

[moelf]

https://twitter.com/KenoFischer/status/1333952722849198084

[devenvdev]

I guess the problem is that there is no directory to scp into, not that scp doesn't work?

Because if ssh does work - you can always ssh tunnel, and pipe into netcat. A nice trick to impress junior devs BTW :)

[neves]

Is it good to read PDFs?

[bm1362]

Frankly no, it doesn’t re-flow them so the text will often be too small. Quite a massive oversight and no one really talks about it.

[keedon]

Pretty good, and you can make notes & highlight them too

[stewbrew]

Since you can connect via ssh to the device you should be able to use SCP too, shouldn't you?

I personally prefer to mount the cloud via some fuse-based solution though.

[cycomanic]

Yeah I use rmfuse for connecting. It works like a charm.