It’s harder to get an open source e-reader than you might think. Kindles are popular, but they lock you into Amazon’s ecosystem. Amazon’s books come with digital rights protection and the company can remove them from your device whenever it wants. Those problems exist on tablets from Barnes and Nobles, Google, and Apple, too. When it comes to open source reading, there’s just no good options. The Open Book Project wants to change that.
As first spotted by Hackster.io, “the Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone with a soldering iron can build for themselves,” designer Joey Castillo said on the GitHub repository for the project. Castillo is still prototyping the device, and his goal is to build an e-reader that anyone can redesign, recode, or accessorize as they see fit. Of course, it should be able to read books in any format, from ePub to MOBI and everything in between.
Castillo’s prototype is built from a circuit board of his own design. The design works in the Adafruit Feather ecosystem, a user friendly set of development boards and electronics. Castillo has listed all the parts you’ll need to build your own open source e-reader and tweak the design on his GitHub. (Castillo is still working on the device’s firmware, so you’ll have to write it yourself or wait for a release.)
One day, Castillo hopes people will be able to read millions of free eBooks on the open source devices. The Open Book is a work in progress, and Castillo hopes to have finalized the basic design by the end of the month. “I'll also have to start writing an open source firmware that can hold a library on an SD card and let people read, but hey, one thing at a time,” he said on his GitHub page.
joeycastillo on June 20th, 2020 at 17:26 UTC »
Wow, ok, interesting. FWIW, project creator here; saw the username ping and got excited to jump in to share news of the book. But this repost is fishy as all get-out and I think the OP is a karma farming bot. Its only two posts are this one (which was shared with the same title six months ago) and this one which was posted with the same title two months ago. Even the one comment they've posted is a copy-paste of another user's comment from last year. I've seen this pattern before; bots will repost things that did well to farm karma, and then turn to spamming at a later date.
I appreciate the positive comments and sentiments in this thread, but unless OP wants to explain themselves, this post should probably be removed and the OP banned. EDIT: adding a screenshot of OP's profile.
hobbykitjr on June 20th, 2020 at 13:28 UTC »
What's wrong with Kobo readers?
Id love to build one if these for fun, but Kobo makes great drm free open readers
tinykeyboard on June 20th, 2020 at 13:13 UTC »
very cool. i love diy/open source versions of stuff. though i've never really had an issue with being "locked in" amazon's ecosystem. i just use calibre to convert and upload ebooks to my kindle.