When it comes to an eBook reader, the choices are limited. The market is dominated by Amazon’s proprietary Kindle along with a few other options like Kobo, Nook and Onyx.
An interesting news for open source enthusiasts is that a developer, Joey Castillo, is working on creating an open source eBook reader appropriately named Open Book.
Open Book: An open source eBook reader
The Open Book aims to be a simple ‘open’ device that “anyone with a soldering iron can build for themselves”.
It’s hackable so if you are into DIY stuff and you have some knowledge, you may tweak it to your liking. For example, Joey used TensorFlow Lite to give voice commands for flipping the pages on Open Book. You can do things like this on your own on this open hardware device.
If that kind of scares you because you are not really into tinkering with hardware, I have a good news for you. Open Book was named winner of Hackaday’s Take Flight with Feather contest!
This means that when the hardware is ready, you should be able to purchase it from DigiKey. You should be able to fit the device as an eBook reader or experiment with it, if you feel like doing it.
It kind of reminds me of Game Shell, a single board computer based retro gaming console that could be tinkered into many other things.
Open Book specifications
There are two versions of Open Book: Open Book Feather and E-Book Feather Wing. The eBook wing does less than the Open Book Feather, mainly because it’s limited to using only the pins available via the Feather header.
You may guess from the name that the project uses Adafruit’s Feather development boards.
Here are the main specifications for the Open Book (both versions):
- 4.2 inch, 400 x 300 pixel ePaper display
- SAMD51 ARM Cortex-M4 32-bit processor
- 7 buttons for navigation (directional pad, select button and page turn buttons)
- status LED lights
- A microSD card reader
- Headphone jack
The display seems a bit small, isn’t it?
Open Book release, pricing and availability
Open Book is the winner of Take Flight with Feather competition by Hackaday. This means that at least 100 Open Book boards will be manufactured and made available for purchase.
Liliputing noted that Adafruit will be handling the manufacturing, and Digi-Key will eventually be selling Open Book boards.
At this point, it’s not clear how much will it cost and exactly when it will be available.
Remember that it’s an open source project. You can find all the circuit designs, source code on its GitHub page and if you have the skills, get the required hardware components and build an Open Book on your own.
Otherwise, wait for a couple of months (hopefully) for the release of the Open Book boards and then go about experimenting with the device.
If you like the project and want to support it, you can help Joey on Pateron. You can follow the updates on the Open Book on the Patreon page, Joey’s mailing list or Joey’s Twitter account.
Do you think the project has potential? Would you buy one when it is available? What do you think of it?
Cool project, but there are already BQ Cervantez or Kobo readers which support open source firmware.
I don’t know about BQ Cervantez, but it doesn’t appear that the Kobo company is particularly friendly to Open Source firmware.
Open Book makes sense to me as it is hardware that is open from the beginning. I’ve wasted a lot of my life trying to get closed hardware to do what I want: reverse engineering, jail breaking, and rooting devices I own. While that can be a fun puzzle, it’s exhausting. I don’t want to financially support such companies anymore. I’d pay twice as much for a device with half the features, if the hardware is open.
I have an old Sony reader. Can I convert it to an open book?
No, you cannot. Your hardware is different.
Ebook readers and to some extent tablets have largely been superseded by smartphones for casual use. With such a small screen I don’t see much purpose for this device.
E-paper and LED screen are much different.
I’m well aware, but most people don’t care at this point, with the proliferation of extreme high dpi OLED displays. E-ink is like a step backwards. In my experience only hardcore book fans would prefer reading on an e-ink device, and I wouldn’t bother with an e-ink device myself unless it was much larger than this device is. I’ve had a number of Kindles, but they’ve mostly just sat on a shelf. I’m much more likely to grab a tablet or laptop if I really want a larger screen with me.
Some people care
Not having a bunch of distractions and only the book in front of me is important to me, as I have ADHD. I also MUCH prefer e-paper when reading because it’s not fatiguing, easier to read in the night, and I don’t have to worry about battery.
You also mentioned Kindles, I find Kobos to be much better because they use ePub, so no conversion required. They are much friendlier to different formats, even plaintext works.
Can this be ported onto a Raspberry Pi?
I’m sorry that the comment below was rude!!!
I was not aware.
Perhaps like me, you were struck by the aesthetic heft? It’s undeniably an integral work of art, already with claim to space in a future gallery of ultra-modern craft art.