The e-ink display has a working lifespan of about 50,000 hours, translating to about 90,000,000 refreshes at 2 seconds each. (source)
I liked your guess about the direct sun light causing the fading. More unreliable sources (reddit) seem to have similar experiences.
So maybe just a UV light protected enclosure to the rescue?
Ok but that seems a bit too early?
Certainly you might be right. Another guess is that somebody was so excited about it that it received a bit too much tough love? 
when it does the refresh the black is vibrant for a second then fades 
so might me something else.
Ok that’s definitely a telltale
OK I looked at the numbers properly:
The manufacturer for this display says 1,000,000 times.
If it refreshes every 20 seconds then that’s 4320 refreshes a day, so it’s probably not an issue yet.
I guess it’s the light then, also in conjuction with the fact that this particular display doesn’t seem to have any backing (it’s kinda transparent, if you look from the back) and I’ve not built a case.
Not sure if it’s permanently damaged or not, but say I managed to fix it or get a new one, what would be a good way to protect it from UV?
UV blocking sheet in the window, suncream.
Could be the heat as well? Get’s quite toasty by the window, no?
Uv blocking acrylic or plexi, i think most plexi has UVblocking, from what i can see.
Plywood has very good UV blocking properties too 
Ok people.
It’s only about June and it’s england and the space barely gets any direct sunlight.
There is no way it got UV damaged.
Think about how many people read ebooks in the park.
I’m thinking about a short or EMF as the board it’s completely unprotected.
A beach umbrella
The screen might have an attention deficit.
Ok, I had a look at it yesterday.
The display it’s toasted, 2 second refresh its way too fast for eink.
If you are planning to rebuild it I think 2 minutes or 5 minutes it’s more reasonable.
Eink shouldn’t be refreshed fully, you should do partial refresh and ideally full refresh once an hour or so, to get rid of the artifacts
Yours!
This particular display doesn’t support partial refresh unfortunately 
And refreshing this less often isn’t good if you want to show “live” times and do this for multiple buses/trains/stations.
That’s why I’m gravitating towards doing somehting with a computer monitor in the end.
Seems a bit overkill if I have to be honest…
@futureshape Do you still want the monitor for this project? We are clearing out the junk from the clean room, just let me know!
Thanks!!
Yes please, I can pop in sometime next week or so to pick it up and take it home, so it’s easier to experiment with it, and I can then bring it back when it’s done.