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

If you ever looked for open up-source e-audience, you have no doubt found [Joey Castillo]’s Open up Book reader, but you could possibly not but have seen the Abridged model he’s building all over a Raspberry Pi Pico.

The Open up E book venture pairs a 4.2″ E-Ink monitor with microprocessors we all know and adore, developing a hacker-welcoming e-reader platform. Two many years in the past, this task gained to start with location in our Adafruit Feather contest — the Feather footprint creating the Open E-book suitable with a large assortment of MCUs, providing hackers alternative on which CPU their hackable e-reader would operate. Now, it is time for a RP2040-centered reboot.

three PCBs being shown - one soldered-together version with a Pico on it, and two upopulated PCBs, showing front and back, on the populated PCB, you can see the Raspberry Pi Pico and other components soldered on. On the unpopulated PCBs, you can see there's a lot of text helping you understand and assemble this e-reader. This undertaking is developed so that you can assemble it on your personal just after sourcing parts and PCBs. To aid you in the procedure, the PCB by itself resembles a e-book webpage – on the silkscreen, there is explanations of what each individual part is for, as very well as information and facts that would be practical for you although hacking on it, conveying the components backstory to the hacker about to dive into assembly with a soldering iron in hand. There’s very simple but pretty purposeful software to accompany this components, also – and, as totally open up-source gadgets go, any lacking functions can be included.

Joey has recorded a 30-moment movie of the Pi Pico variation for us, assembling and testing the recently ordered boards, then exhibiting the software program efficiently booting and operational. The Pi Pico-based mostly revision has been drastically simplified, with a range of self-assembly aspects enhanced in comparison to preceding versions – the full process actually does choose a lot less than 50 percent an hour, and he receives it accomplished with a quite simple soldering iron, too!

If you are searching for updates on this revision as improvement goes on, adhering to [Joey] on Twitter is your best guess. He’s no stranger to creating products all over us a lot more totally free and then sharing the magic formula sauce with all of us! For the duration of the 2021 Remoticon he confirmed off a drop-in substitution mainboard for the Casio F-91W wristwatch, and told us all about reverse-engineering its controller-much less phase Liquid crystal display — worthy of a hear for any hacker who’s ever needed to bend these LCDs to their will.

UPDATE: that could not have gone far better. Assembled and absolutely useful in 30 minutes flat, together with the automated flashing of the language chip at 1st boot (which took all of 60 seconds). Complete video at the connection! https://t.co/J9vXF2HYwA pic.twitter.com/z9TsVPcBix

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