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Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

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11–20 of 59 posts

Re: Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

#11
post #6

Looks like it's a well thought project. I might consider it to replace my old Kobo. There are only two things I don't see in the description: 1. A dictionary 2. A flash card creation functionality

Flash card creation? Talk about scope creep for a dedicated reader.

Re: Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

#13
I almost bought an xteink the other week but held off due to lack of a frontlight option.

I instead resurrected my nook simple touch (2011) with this project [1] from XDA forums, its made it infinitely more usable and still has good battery life.

[1] https://xdaforums.com/t/nst-g-the-phoenix-project.4673934/

Re: Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

#14

> There are no physical buttons on the front That's too bad. For whatever reason I find swipe gestures on e-ink annoying. I currently use a Kobo Clara BW and miss dedicated page-turning buttons. I see they're offering the print files for the case, maybe there will be some pins on the ESP32 exposed somewhere for adding buttons

I don't like swiping, but kobo supports just a single touch on the right and left edges of the screen for switching pages, and I don't mind that.

Re: Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

#15

I almost bought an xteink the other week but held off due to lack of a frontlight option. I instead resurrected my nook simple touch (2011) with this project [1] from XDA forums, its made it infinitely more usable and still has good battery life. [1] https://xdaforums.com/t/nst-g-the-phoenix-project.4673934/

Thanks for mentioning both of these, the xteink and the nook resurrection. My old nooks are all slimy with the black material liquifying, and unusable just for that, else I'd pursue the XDA option. Looking into the xteink now, else Kobo. The one the post is about seems extremely appealing, but the price is a bit high for me, and the lifePo option makes the lesser one seem even more expensive. I really love e-ink. I could easily go with it for all compute.

5k cycles would be nice.

Re: Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

#16
I really like the thinking of openness behind this device. Could be great as a pocketable "notice board" getting info on a schedule from mobile and "posting" to a pub on device for me to look at when I feel like it and react to messages on my schedule.

Re: Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

#20
Some LLM-assisted guesstimating tells me that in terms of raw cost of manufacturing and delivery, given an average (non-voracious) rate of consumption, supplying paper books is still several times cheaper than supplying usable E-Ink devices in non-price-rigged markets.

Supplying kids textbooks in India in paperback, for instance, is at least 5-6x cheaper than supplying them the same in an E-Ink reader despite the ginormous (10-12x assuming 6-7 books each year) difference in freight volume.

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