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My newest Sky wifi pen has been with me for less than a week, and the OLED display is now barely visible. This was a used pen purchased on eBay so I can’t say for certain how long the display has been used.

I have to say, this OLED display issue is giving me fits! I love how the Sky is integrated with Evernote. The wifi sync is nice but not totally needed since I dock my pen every night to charge so I sync using Livescribe Helper.

There is not a lot of information about repair of these displays on the internet. It seems that the OLED display is a proprietary 96 x 16 pixels instead of the more commonly found 96 x 18 displays. The Sky display has a ribbon connector with 10 pads, and of course, this is not very common either. It makes swapping in a new display problematic at best. Someone has reported that the chip that drives the display is labelled, “SSD1305” so it might be possible to figure how to drive a display with 10 pins: most have 14 or more pin outs.

There is some information about swapping your dead display with a working display – but it requires finding a working display. eBay does have some Echo and Sky pens for sale for parts but you aren’t guaranteed getting a live display, let alone a live display with a lot of life left in it!

A word of caution: I purchased a pen on eBay that was branded Livescribe Echo on the front, and Sky on the back. It didn’t work with Livescribe Helper (which is meant for the Sky) but it did seem to talk to the activation server at Livescribe so its probably an Echo in a mismatched case. Another pen I bought on eBay was labelled, “Echo wifi” and that didn’t make any sense at all so I returned it.

I do have a brand new Echo purchased directly from Livescribe. I’m tempted to swap its display for my Sky. As I’ve mentioned before, my soldering skills are weak at best, and the contacts on the display ribbon are tiny!

I’m going to try to live with this display-less Sky for now. At least it was working long enough for me to write down it’s mac address, and verify that it could join the wifi network at work. Not sure how I’ll select networks in the future since the display is so dim… more aggravation to come.

Happy Day of the Dead.

Although I’ve got the Livescribe Pulse, Echo, Sky, and Livescribe 3 pens, I find that I use my Sky the most. I guess I’m used to having everything sync up with Evernote.  This lets me access my notes where ever I am.

The Livescribe 3 would be a great solution for me since I carry my iPhone with me but I’m not in love with the way that pen feels in my hand. Its a lot like the original Pulse, in that its really just a round cylinder… sigh, you’d think that Livescribe would have learned their lesson about ergonomics. The 3 might figure more prominently if I make the plunge and upgrade to the 6S+ (the one with the huge screen 😉 as my older eyes are just not so comfortable with reading small screens anymore.

Why am I considering the change? Livescribe no longer carries the Sky in their lineup. I’m not sure why they dropped it; I love that it syncs whenever I’ve got wifi. This makes sure that my daily notes are always backed up in the cloud.

The OLED display on my second Sky finally died about a month ago. This happened to my first Sky, thus the second. Evidently, these displays have a limited lifetime, and I’ve used up two screens. Other Sky owners have reported their aggravation at not being able to read their OLED displays.

My biggest problem is that I’m used to glancing at the OLED display to be sure that the Sky is turned on. Can’t do that if the display is dead. So now, I usually tap the menu icon to hear “main menu,” and I know that the pen is powered up. “Usually” is the operative word here. My notes have more and more gaps because I assume that the Sky is on when in fact, it has powered itself down.

I can’t live with this situation! I purchased a used Sky on eBay, and am setting it up while I write this entry. Not going to be able to keep doing this though. The “New in Box” Sky pens are getting pretty pricey on eBay, and the used ones are a crapshoot – they already have some of their OLED life used up, and you never really know if they are fully operational until you get them. I’ve been lucky so far, 3 for 3.

I found a DIY page for replacing the OLED display on the Sky. Evidently this is an issue for the Echo as well. The only problem is that these displays were custom manufactured for Livescribe so you need to find a Sky or Echo with a working display, remove the dead display from your pen, and solder in the replacement display from the other pen. There are 10 solder pads on a ribbon which may be beyond my limited soldering capabilities.

Luckily, I know someone with better soldering skills than mine! I may have to find a couple of Sky or Echo pens being sold for parts – with working displays. They do show up on eBay but most of them have dead displays so they are getting harder to find. Might be worth taking a multimeter to the innards of a Sky to see if there is enough voltage to run an LED that can serve as a power indicator…

We’ve got plenty of refills packaged and ready to ship immediately! Our smooth writing German ink makes all the difference to your writing experience. So much nicer than the Livescribe-branded refills.

We’ve gotten a couple requests for green or purple refills. Are there any other colors that strike your fancy? Send us your suggestions! it’s the only way we have to gauge demand for new items. Speaking of new items, we’ve got the Poquito Stylus available for $9.99, and we’ll ship a pack of our Generic Refills with them (they take the 67 mm long refills). This makes them an incredible deal, and you are guaranteed to like the way they write since you’ll also get a set of our Generic Refills with them. They are perfect for jotting down notes, signing credit card slips, and of course, for any iPhone or iPad screen.  They’ll also make a great little stocking stuffer, the Holidays are just around the corner…

Generic Refills is on vacation, and can fill orders but more slowly than normal. We’re in the Seattle area for a few more days, and have access to the Post Office etc. so you can expect more or less normal service for a few more days. Headed across to south eastern Washington State for a reunion for three days so you might get your package post marked, “Walla Walla, WA” if you’re lucky!

After the reunion, we’ll drive back to Seattle for a day, then we get on the Empire Builder (Amtrak #8) to head to Chicago. Definitely limited access to the Post Office during this time! One day in Chicago (any suggestions for essential sights to take in?), and then we’re on the Capitol Limited to Washington DC with a connection to the Silver Star to ride back to Cary, North Carolina, and a short drive back to Carrboro. A cross-country train adventure!

Haven’t had much time the last few months to keep the blog up to date but you’ll hear from us again soon!

Well, its hard to believe but its time to order more Generic Refills… specifically the blue fine tip refills for Pulse, Echo or Sky.  There is still plenty of stock on hand but these custom production runs do take some time to arrange. Don’t worry, we’ll still use the premium German ink that you’ve come to love! and the tips will remain the same too!

Hey Everyone!

Blue and Black German ink Generic Refills are now available on Amazon.com!

Thanks for your patience.

Hey Everyone!  We apologize for any inconvenience, our Generic Refills for Livescribe 3 are temporarily unavailable on Amazon.com

We’re switching from Merchant fulfilled to Fulfilled by Amazon and the system doesn’t let us continue to fill orders while our inventory in in transit.  Hopefully these will be available on Amazon.com by the end of the week. Inventory was sent Priority Mail today and then the folks at the distribution center will have to check in our inventory before its made available.

In the meantime, you can always purchase directly from us! either here on genericrefills.org or check out our listings on eBay.com (there are links in the previous post).

Happy Livescribing!

We’ve got our Generic Refills for Livescribe 3 listed on eBay!

Premium black German ink with fine tips for Livescribe 3

Premium blue German ink with fine tips for Livescribe 3

We’ve got our Generic Refills for sale on Amazon

Available with fine-tips and filled with our smooth-writing, premium German ink in Blue or Black! Be sure to click on the right item; there are refills for the Pulse, Echo and Sky wifi pens which DO NOT fit your new Livescribe 3.

Generic Refills for Livescribe 3 are now available at our eBay listing.

We’ve been using the Livescribe 3 (LS3) for a little while now.  The OEM ink is much better than the OEM ink for the Pulse, Echo or Sky but it still has a high coefficient of friction.  What does this mean? It means that the ink flows out of the ball point slowly which keeps the ball from rolling easily across the page.  We were happy to start using our new Generic Refills for Livescribe 3 because as you know, our premium German ink is silky smooth! This really helps improve the writing experience with the Livescribe 3 pen.

One thing we noticed right away with the OEM refills and unfortunately with our Generic Refills too:  Livescribe has designed the end of the LS3 to be a little too wide for their own refills as well as other ball point pen refills.  In addition, the end of the pen is metallic so every time you the pen touches the paper, there is a little click or rattle.  If you shake the LS3 with one of our Generic Refills or the OEM refill,  it sounds like a baby’s rattle!! This is not really acceptable for such an expensive pen as the LS3!

Some of our customers have told us that they use a single layer of Scotch tape on their refills to mostly eliminate the metal-on-metal click.  Please be careful when doing this!  The refill fits into a pressure sensor and it must be able to tell the pen when it is not touching the paper. More than one layer of Scotch tape can prevent the refill from moving properly and your Livescribe writing will look like a complete scrawl… the infrared camera gets stuck in the on position and its reading dot patterns where ever its pointed, regardless of whether you are touching the refill tip to the paper or not!

We are investigating a sturdier alternative to Scotch tape.  One of our other worries is that a piece of Scotch tape will break off and foul the sensor, deep inside the pen.  This would not be good!

Finally, those of you with smaller hands may be having trouble gripping the Livescribe pen.  We think its because the barrel is completely round like the original Pulse pen.  On top of that, the plastic barrel is quite slippery to the touch.  This might cause you to grip more tightly and that will cause hand fatigue.  It might be possible to use a silicone pen grip to help solve this problem. More details to follow.

The Livescribe 3 is an amazing piece of technology but its not perfect.  Hopefully, Livescribe will pay more attention to the aesthetics of writing and address these concerns.  It won’t do any good for those of us that have already purchased the Livescribe 3 (one problem with being an early adopter!) but could make the next iteration of the pen better for all of us!