Submitted 1 year ago by CowsLookLikeMaps@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world
https://itsfoss.com/open-book/
The extremely tiny screen is the deal-breaker for me, I want to build one of these for my father to replace the over a decade old kindle he uses, but I want to upgrade to a bigger screen.
We can’t afford much, and we have a 3d printer and I know my way around a Pi and wiring, so it would be a great option.
But such tiny display for what should be an upgrade from the tech of 10+ years ago :-(
The problem is that such open hardware projects can mostly only work with the components on the market, and eInk displays (or advanced displays in general) are principally only sold by their manufacturers to the OEMs they have contracts with. We are lucky to have any eInk display available to us at all for these kinds of endeavours!
This, plus making bigger eink displays with reasonable refresh and antighosting is a pain. They are proportionately more expensive.
Except I’m dead certain you can buy screens a lot larger than 4.2 inches - the 6 inch screen behind the Kobo Clara HD is actually all over AliExpress and eBay, and it has a backlight. Kobo just glues a thin metal plate and a battery to it for rigidity, but otherwise it’s identical. And there are a fair number of other screens you can find online in various sizes if you want to get them working.
The hard part is getting data sheets or reverse engineering them. But it’s far from impossible.
Aren’t all e-readers tiny? I want an A4 sized one (with a stylus for taking notes and scribbling).
There are A4 e-readers. Bamboo note for example.
Inkplate 10 is not tiny (10"). I’d prefer larger but it’s a start, and fairly affordable. I might get one sometime.
This is an interesting concept but doesn't seem like it has long term legs.
It depends on what you mean by open source and also even eBook reader (I'm assuming eInk), but if people want open source e-readers I would say flashing existing reader hardware with open source operating systems would be the way to go. However I'm not sure if there is much motivation to do that.
There are Android based eink ereaders available with more freedom than Kindle devices (Boox is an example) and you can side load free or open source reader software onto Kobo (maybe not Android Kindles though?), and you can load free books onto e-readers via software like Calibre. So you can read books in privacy outside the vendors ecosystem - it kinda reduces the imputus to build an open source ereader (hardware or OS).
I'd love to see a truly open source Eink device - particularly software wise. But I doubt the demand is enough. And this Open Source hardware solution seems a bit too cut back to fit the bill.
It’s not cheap, though.
This is the creator’s Mastodon account: @joeycastillo@mastodon.social
I think he does cool stuff.
A few years ago amazon made a few big screen kindles before settling on the current format, I don’t know which eink screens sizes are available for consumers, but it would be interesting bring that back
A screen around 10" is perfect for reading pdfs. No need to reflow or anything, just read the pdf as it is.
personally I use a 10 inch tablet for pdfs, reading PDFs on eink is a terrible experience.
PDFs are also often reference materials that require flipping back and forth. which makes it doubly painful.
This looks fun. I got a Kobo. I wish it was opensource. It would be cool if some people were to team up with Fairphone and make a Fairbook project to make a light weight device with USB-C charging and long lasting battery life. There needs to be a bigger incentive if the firmware is ever going to get better. You could just use Linux as per usual tho.
That would be great!
I also have a Kobo, Calibre works great with it (Calibre is a life saver) but it would be nice to get something that is more open.
I would love a full kit for the open book. Or a preassembled one. I just don’t have the time anymore to solder/assemble it but I would pay a good amount for the open book.
I feel that. I desperately want to support open source hardware, but don’t have the chops to do it from scratch.
Framework laptops been close to that dream though.
I’m glad to see some other options. I’m not a fan of Amazon, but the only other practical option has been tablets, which are generally a lot more expensive and less well-suited to the purpose. This looks like a good design.
Kobo and Boox are both great alternatives to Kindles.
The first couple of Kobos I got over the last decade were admittedly a bit shit and plasticky, but I stuck with them, and the one I have now was double the price and ten times the quality. Really good company now
I wasn’t impressed with the Kobo, although it does the job. I’m not familiar with the Boox. I will have to look that one up.
There are other ebook readers. What’s up with those?
Same. I’m waiting with baited breath. I feel like I’m the target market for this: I love my e-reader, I love open source stuff, and I hate the options on the market. Sadly, my experience is that these things can’t compete on the economy of scale, and are often at least 50% more expensive than the alternative. I want to vote with my dollars, but I’m not rich, and used e-readers are always on eBay & Craigslist for $40.
We’ll see, though.
What’s wrong with the barbs n noble one?
Kinda basic for the price, and the built-in store is the B&N Store. But they at least have EPUB and PDF support, and Adobe DRM compatibility, so you can hook them up to a PC and transfer books.
They do run a stripped down Android underneath, so you might be able to Root them and install a third-party launcher and apps on it, I’ve done this in the past, but I haven’t kept up in recent years(I’ve switched to Boox devices) so it might not be as easy to Root these days.
Barbs n noble
Haha, autoincorrect has a sense of humor!
Really cool! I do wish the screen was a bit bigger. It’s the size of my 2012 windows phone, haha.
I’ve got a Hisense A5 and reading is surprisingly nice on it. Although this looks even smaller?
Also regarding the overall idea - just get a Kobo and put Koreader on it, then sideload any book format you like.
I do have a kobo! It’s pretty good. What’s Koreader? Is that software to jailbreak it?
Pocketbook anyone?
Love my Era
Here!
To add, the used linux kernel of PB devices is mostly open source last time I checked.
“When it comes to an eBook reader, the choices are limited.”
?
Limited to every other smart phone and tablet on the planet?
Having a good, dedicated e-reader is a hill that I would die on. I want a big screen, with physical buttons, lightweight, multi-weeklong battery, and an e-ink display. Reading 8 hours on my phone makes my eyes go twitchy. And TBH it’s been a pain finding something that supports all that and has a reasonably open ecosystem.
I don’t buy the need for e-ink. I’m on normal LCDs for… way more hours than I’d care to admit. No strain.
I just can’t understand why someone who cares about an open source book reader wouldn’t just buy a Kindle for much less money and then flash a different OS…
Just so they can say they built it?
BoneALisa@lemm.ee 1 year ago
IIRC it only suports plain text files / Markdown rn. Not supporting EPUB is a non-starter for me. I use my Kobo right now and love it. If they add EPUB support i will heavily consider building one.
Synthead@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah it’s an interesting project, but it looks bad with the printed case and exposed tract switches, and seems to have little functionality.
Isoprenoid@programming.dev 1 year ago
The creator is working on an epub-to-text-file converter here:
github.com/joeycastillo/libros-convert
WaDef7@kbin.social 1 year ago
I'm not sure I understand, epub is both the industry standard and an open format, as far as I know. Why not work on using it or build it around epub from the get-go?
I have to admit I'll have to wait for the project to start implementing epub to consider getting on board, but it's still a great effort.
Hyperreality@kbin.social 1 year ago
Doesn't calibre also have a built in converter?
It used to be able to strip DRM from stuff too, but I think they got rid of that for legal reasons.
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Calibre already does this but cool we have options.
solrize@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Epub to text is very easy and Pandoc can do it. I end up using lynx -dump because that’s faster though.