Open Book Abridged: OSHW E-Reader Now Simplified, Pico-Driven

If you at any time appeared for open up-source e-readers, you have no question noticed [Joey Castillo]’s Open up E book reader, but you might not nonetheless have noticed the Abridged model he’s setting up around a Raspberry Pi Pico.

The Open up Book challenge pairs a 4.2″ E-Ink monitor with microprocessors we all know and adore, constructing a hacker-helpful e-reader platform. Two several years back, this venture gained initially put in our Adafruit Feather contest — the Feather footprint generating the Open up Guide appropriate with a broad assortment of MCUs, offering hackers selection on which CPU their hackable e-reader would run. Now, it’s time for a RP2040-primarily based reboot.

This job is developed so that you can assemble it on your possess just after sourcing elements and PCBs. To aid you in the method, the PCB alone resembles a book page – on the silkscreen, there is explanations of what every component is for, as nicely as information and facts that would be handy for you though hacking on it, conveying the hardware backstory to the hacker about to dive into assembly with a soldering iron in hand. There is uncomplicated but quite useful software package to accompany this hardware, as well – and, as absolutely open up-source equipment go, any missing attributes can be extra.

Joey has recorded a 30-moment movie of the Pi Pico variation for us, assembling and screening the recently purchased boards, then demonstrating the application efficiently booting and operational. The Pi Pico-dependent revision has been tremendously simplified, with a amount of self-assembly factors enhanced when compared to preceding variations – the entire system definitely does take fewer than fifty percent an hour, and he gets it performed with a really standard soldering iron, far too!

If you’re on the lookout for updates on this revision as improvement goes on, next [Joey] on Twitter is your best bet. He’s no stranger to generating products all around us more totally free and then sharing the key sauce with all of us! For the duration of the 2021 Remoticon he confirmed off a drop-in replacement mainboard for the Casio F-91W wristwatch, and informed us all about reverse-engineering its controller-less section Lcd — worth a hear for any hacker who’s at any time needed to bend these LCDs to their will.

UPDATE: that could not have absent better. Assembled and absolutely practical in 30 minutes flat, like the computerized flashing of the language chip at to start with boot (which took all of 60 seconds). Complete movie at the backlink! https://t.co/J9vXF2HYwA pic.twitter.com/z9TsVPcBix

— @[email protected] (@josecastillo) September 18, 2022