The Open Book Project: open-hardware e-ink eBook reader | Hacker News Reader

The Open Book Project: open-hardware e-ink eBook reader

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This is AWESOME! I definitely have to build this some day, maybe when I'm in the mood to suffer through all that soldering. I don't mind the small screen for reading novels, but a text book or PDF probably won't happen.

Also, I noticed that the price for components went up from the ~$30 mentioned in the instructions to $50+ on Digikey, and there is currently one part that is out of stock (and no back order allowed).

Total cost: $15 (PCB) + ~$55 (components) + $15 (display) = ~$85. With shipping it may be more like $100.

But $100 for an open, hackable e-ink eBook reader is still pretty good IMO.

I agree it is awesome but the current semiconductor market is really hurting the ability to make this.

Note that if you follow the kitspace link for the non-FeatherWing version and use the digikey link, there is one part that disallows backorder, but 18 other line items with backorder status. This includes really important items like the microcontroller that has a 52 week lead time.

I looked into building one a while back and found that many items can have substitutes, some could be redesigned easily into leadless versions of the components, but some were just too difficult to redesign or source.

I recently switched from reading white-on-black on OLED to e-ink and it's been a world of difference. E-ink is so much easier on the eyes. It's amazing how it works in any lighting condition. It really does feel like the display technology of the future (for productivity.)

I mean OLED is basically shining a LED flashlight at your eyeballs, so, yeah. Of course, pretty much every other form of backlit display has the same problem. The only thing I can think of that might be better would be possibly a laptop LCD with the backlight taken out and replaced with a front surface mirror, and then that depends on the surrounding lighting, too.

There is zero evidence -- I mean literally, none, go look for yourself -- that emissive screens are better for your eyes in any way than reflective one. Shining a lightbulb directly into your eyes isn't any worse than shining a lightbulb at a mirror with dark spots on it.

The underlying issue may not be reflective vs. emissive, but rather luminance/contrast ratios. Here's one paper on the subject: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01698...

Basically their finding is that a very modest amount of luminance contrast (8:1) is optimal for reading, after which readability actually decreases. Which actually isn’t that surprising when you think about it. If you had a display where the whites were as bright as the sun, and the blacks were perfectly, totally non-reflectively black, it would be hard to read.

This is probably consistent with people’s experience with e-readers. E-ink doesn’t have a particularly good contrast ratio, but it is adequate and roughly in the sweet spot for reading. Whereas today’s 200:1 IPS displays score well on spec charts and are great for video and games but are arguably not that good for reading, at least for some people.

A "200:1" IPS display can't really provide that 200:1 contrast at e-paper-like luminance. In fact, it probably can't even provide the same contrast as e-paper itself. The technologies are too different for a direct comparison.

100%. The nature of light that falls on the retina doesn’t change whether it’s reflected off of a surface or shine directly via an incandescent bulb.

What matters to the eye is the flux of light (i.e. intensity) and for that, the emissive screens are better since they are not dependent on ambient lighting. Great point!

While I agree in the sense that I have not seen evidence that reflective is better than emissive, I would rather see studies than depend upon ad hoc comparisons. The properties of a light source are typically different, the properties of surface reflecting or transmitting (for the lack of a better word) the light are different, and how the screen brightness responds to ambient light is different.

There are many reasons why one type of screen may be better than another. The lack of compelling evidence simply means that there is a lack of research and certainly does not imply they are equivalent.

What you’re describing is a transflective screen. It has a normal transmissive LCD mode but the main use is as a reflective screen. They have the speed of an LCD but usually the brightness and contrast are poorer than current e-ink screen.

Counter-intuitive, but a reflective screen is potentially more damaging to the eyes than a transflective (illuminated) one because with the reflective one, the reader has to depend on the ambient lighting entirely. Many times the flux of light falling into the retina of a reader may not be enough and prompt the pupil to open more widely than required, and set them eyes up for quicker degradation.

I thought it was the other way around. Pupil dilation tends to be based on ambient light, so the closer the screen intensity matches ambient light the better.

Yes, but a dimly lit room will cause more exertion on the pupillary muscles anyway, because the flux of light is way too low for all types of focused activity like reading. Both undivided attention and the flux of light have a significant influence on the pupillary state of the eyes.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4634867/

For me black text on white oled with yellow filter is much easier on eyes than than white on black. Main problem of oled is the flickering.

There are yellow/orange/red filters on some e readers. And it's often black on gray, not black on white (it depends on the e reader though).

I prefer reading on backlit LCD/OLED, personally. Been doing it since I was a young child, have read more this way than any other format.

I got an e-ink just for the portable battery life.

I bought a cheap Kindle with no backlight to read more at outdoors. It's great with direct sunlight but really bad at indoors, specially when reading at bed as the screen is under a shadow in all the positions I find comfortable to read. Ended putting it aside and returning to the smartphone even thought the screen is smaller I find it easier to read everywhere and to store in the pocket. It's bad under sunlight but doable.

I've never found an LCD or OLED display that's anywhere near as good as e-ink in sunlight.

Fair point! I always read indoors.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Dasung 27 inch eink monitor. I hope it becomes reality it would be perfect for long days of coding.

Coding on EPD displays, some miss the colour highlighting. Maybe with Kaleido or a high refresh ACeP...

I mean I think I can live with for the most part if the benefits of eye strain outweighs it.

You should probably try that process on an available device (e.g. a 10.3'' tablet, maybe connected to your station through VNC or similar) to see if the experience is satisfactory and worth considering using a big EPD display for your purposes.

How many colors do you need? What about bold, cursive, underline? Another font?

Amber on black has been a great OLED experience to me.

White might be too bright.

> It's amazing how it works in any lighting condition.

In the dark it needs a backlight though.

Frontlight. E-ink displays are not backlit, because they're opaque. They're instead illuminated on the front side using lights placed on the sides in the frame.

I definitely support this but the 400x300 4.2" screen is not something I'd want to read on for extended periods. The generation of e-paper displays on commercial readers right now is really very good. Hopefully the FeatherWing 2 bumps that particular spec!

As much as I like the color-adjustable frontlight, though, that seems like a stretch. I'm okay with losing that though.

Yeah I'd probably use something bigger. Waveshare has a good selection of larger displays e.g.

https://www.waveshare.com/13.3inch-e-paper-hat.htm

This panel looks nice too for something a little smaller and much cheaper.

https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/7.8inch-e...

They have a slightly smaller red/black/white panel for about half the price of the 13" one too. https://www.waveshare.com/12.48inch-e-Paper-Module-B.htm

That one is interesting but not great resolution and no greyscale. Also the ones that have 3 colors are usually extremely slow to refresh in my experience.

But at a similar price point there is also a 10 inch one with decent resolution and greyscale.

https://www.waveshare.net/wiki/10.3inch_e-Paper_HAT

I have this one running in a picture frame

https://dheera.net/projects/einkframe/

$444.99

e-ink prices are wild

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779

The last time I checked, there was only one manufacturer with patents on e-ink tech, all the models on the market use the same screens. Even e-ink is more like a brand, not a technology name Remind me how "you need to google something" became a synonym to "you need to search something."

And from the discussion you posted, I was probably right about the market state at the moment. Damn, what a shame, another monopolized market without real competition.

At least with "google" I can still say [web] search and people will know what I mean. I'm not sure how I'd even refer to e-ink screens without that word; even with the word I sometimes need to clarify ("like a calculator, but with higher resolution").

> I'm not sure how I'd even refer to e-ink screens

"Electrophoretic displays (EPD)"

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003257239404.html

If you look around you'll find 13.3" panels at less than half that price, i.e. without the "maker markup".

Damn near impossible to use though if you can't design PCBs and have surgical hands for surface mount soldering ...

The WaveShare one comes with a Pi HAT (sadly with headers soldered on though so I've had to desolder and resolder other headers to them)

And if you get the voltages even slightly wrong you'll fry the display and maybe a few more ...

Yes, the market is small for e-ink screens this size. There are few manufacturers and there is not the volume pricing that you can get with an LCD screen.

Inkplate, which uses recycled kindle screens, is way cheaper than buying new panels. Ebay has a good selection of scavenged panels as well.

Absolutely, I own a Sony DPTS and the size is essential to read non reflowable technical papers (i. e., most of them). Hope that gets built somewhen.

Yep. Also, sheet music. I have a Boox Max Lumi which is the same size.

Great name, but I'm annoyed to see that this is another one with "schematics" which are little more than components with labeled pins... it makes it really hard to find what is actually connected to what. E.g. is "PORT A" and "PORT B" supposed to be a single part, the MCU?

On the topic of e-ink, I agree with some of the others here that 4.2" (smaller than the average smartphone?) is far too small to be of practical use; even the first Kindle was 6" --- and replacement displays for them are a good option for anyone wanting to create their own eBook readers, since they have a higher resolution and can be made to display more shades of gray than they officially support(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140284)

See also PineNote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28190756.

Open e-book reader? Sure, that's a really really great thing, that we (the society) need.

The problem with this is, that an ebook needs to perform a minimal set of software functions (basically parsing a book saved in some standard format, displaying it on screen, and navigating pages), and this is not hard to do... but the hard part is hardware itself... it needs to have a large, high(-ish) resolution screen, it has to be light, preferably waterproof, have some kind of back/front light, some cases available for it, very long-lasting battery, etc. Readers like the new kindles have perfected this, while still keeping users closed to amazons store, and having them do workarounds for imorting new books (calibre,...).

Instead of focusing on bare pcbs with micro switches, i'd rather focus on user-friendly hardware. You can already get friendlier kits for cheap [0].

Otherwise a great product idea

[0] https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-esp32-development-...

> displaying it on screen [...] and this is not hard to do

It might not be difficult to display text on screen, but it's pretty hard to do it well if you care about typography, hyphenation, supporting non-standard layouts, and all the other things that print books do so well.

The words open source and excellent typography don't go together often enough.

I don’t think it’s a hardware problem at all. Spend two years solving all those issues you just listed (or better yet just pay a talented industrial design graduate to do it for you), then tell me how to get a DRM’ed copy of any of this week’s top ten NYT bestsellers on the silly thing.

DRM is a legal problem, not a technical one. I'm pretty sure amazon won't allow open source developers to work with their drm-ed kindle books, neither will eg. "adobe digital editions" (or whatever that drm crap for libraries is called).

Amazon-distributed ebooks can be stripped from DRM with utilities floating around. (And so do ADE-wrapped PDFs but I can't recall any provider using that thing anymore)

The major lending-library services like OverDrive use ADE-wrapped epubs.

The open-source Calibre eBook management software has a plugin called DeDRM [1] which provides the ability to decrypt any Amazon eBook.

[1] https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools

The DeDRM tool support for KFX is still a bit unstable. It breaks pretty frequently as Amazon tweaks that format.

If you demand exactly that book then you lost to DRM. However there are enough other books that if you only need something like that book there are enough other choices without DRM that didn't get popular but are otherwise just as good.

DRM is going to be more of a problem for some people than others. It depends upon both the author and the publisher of the books they want to read. There are many DRM free books available from legal sources.

Piracy?

Stick a thumbdrive in it. Or a micro sd. Load an EPUB from that. Is this a common functionality?

I love the documentation silkscreened right onto the PCB! Very fun!

This looks great! Does it have a 3D printable case? This looks like it would be a good candidate for one of my late night design sessions if none exists.

https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book/wiki/Open-Book...

you should have a late night design session anyway. it sounds fun

I'm always working on something!

https://twitter.com/TLAlexander/status/1432219252556107776

The case looks good. I was thinking it would be cool to see a finished unit in the case on the git readme. Love that PCB but people might like to see it with a case too.

This is awesome - but the bigger issue these days is the monopoly of Kindle.

Many of the books I want to read are kindle only - to the point where I'd be willing to use Adobe DRM etc. like the one used on Sony's awesome e-readers.

Sadly, my deep-seated hate for big-tech isn't shared by the commoners around me.

Aren't there some requirements for interoperability in some territories?

First time I hear about kindle - only books, would you mind giving an example?

I beleive all Amazon published books are Kindle only: https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/

That makes sense. I bought only a single ebook from Amazon and getting it to be usable on my device (tconverting the mobi to epub) was so annoying that I will not buy a single ebook from Amazon again. In cases without alternative dealers there's always z-lib. Not reading the book is also always an option

This is an excellent hardware project! Open hardware e-reader is definitely a step in the right direction.

However, I like to believe that the future of books is independent of hardware. Platform agnostic and liberated from hardware––so to speak. If hardware is the go-to consumer experience, then the dead-tree medium isn't doing bad either.

The real deal is a pure software solution that blends the world of books and the web together into a single unified resource that is both open and accessible to everyone. A Netflix of books, perhaps–although, I know this idea has failed a couple of times already. Just my 2 cents.

True, many a time it's been the software that ruined a good e-book idea. Even just the idea of ePub seems to have been hampered by lack of good software.

Exactly! Software has shortchanged the idea of books, which is a consumer product, with the idea of files, which spawned originally for only enterprise use-cases like the MS Word, PDF, and what not.

It's nice to have it as open hardware, but the features need to also be practical and low resolution is a deal breaker for e-readers. Higher resolution and larger EPDs are still hideously expensive, but I wonder if there would be suitable transflective/reflective LCDs that could be viable e-reader displays. Battery consumption would be much worse, but what you don't spend feeding e-inks monopoly, you can spend in brains, storage and battery.

Cholesteric LCD's should be competitive with EPD on power-consumption. It's hard to find panels though.

Hard to make or small market?

nice. i had a quick scan through the docs but couldn't see what OS it runs. maybe it's just something basic? i would love to get syncthing installed on something like this so i could just manage books/articles on my laptop or phone and have them sync across to the reader. i have a boox ereader which is running android so its easy to get syncthing running on that through the app store.

i have a hackernews app installed as well which is great, but I'm thinking it would be nicer to have a second ereader just for books, something that is quicker to boot up, and remembers the last thing you were reading etc

It’s powered by a microcontroller, so it doesn’t run an OS.

It uses ARM Cortex M4 with 512 KB of Flash, 192 KB RAM and 51 GPIO pins

The low level of RAM will make it hard to support epub files out of the box. They are pretty nasty to deal with as they are actually zip files containing html and css. So to render an epub file accurately you need to parse and render html.

This is fantastic. An open-source e-reader that has all the niceties that one expects from a kindle would be awesome, and this looks like it has the potential to eventually become that.

Cool project! I suggest looking at the ED097OC1 for a bigger screen.

What's the best e-ink display these days for reading?

Try the "E Ink Mobius Carta", I think it's the best now.

You can find e-readers with 10.3" displays, 227 PPI, double front-lit (warm and cold, you can mix them for the best experience, work independently), full android on the device.

To be precise, I'm talking about the Onyx Boox Note series (note 2, note 3, note air) that I picked after my previous kindles and pocketbook. It's awesome.

Android is adapted for the best experience with its unique features, you can use any application in google play, and the screen is so good in "speed mode" that you can browse the web and even watch youtube. Stylus for notes, and you can buy a "paperlike" protector for the screen.

For now, it's the best one from around five different e-readers that I have before.

If you want to take notes, there is Remarkable 2. You can check PocketBookt InkPad Color, Onyx Nova Color, Onyx Poke2 Color, and Kobo if you wish for color display.

Check this blog for, there are excellent comparisons and reviews for almost every model you can find on the market https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/

Not sure if Onyx still do this but they were violating GPL, I wouldn't buy their product if that hasn't changed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735962

  > and even watch youtube

I couldn't believe this, but it's demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRbt19kyg6A

Thank you for opening my eyes.

> and even watch [video]

But has Onyx fixed the dithering, optimizing for less pixel switching?

I have been played with using EPD for video for years: very usable, but the ghosting can be a problem.

The implementations of the firmwares around the Max2 had the issue of using the Floyd-Steinberg dithering only, which changes the dot status too frequently for EPD (where dot switch is very costly in energy/battery). For video, you want a dithering algorithm that is very conservative on the dots. (I was tempted to develop a video player following those principles, but time constraints did not permit.)

Onyx Boox has great hardware (although my Poke 3 screen has two cracks in less than 6 months), but Android is not a selling point. It is very annoying to have a locked-down, app-based ecosystem, especially after my last device, a Pocketbook Inkpad X (which broke in less than 2 months, they wanted $300+ to repair the screen). At this point, I am waiting for the PineNote, which should be repairable and open enough to be comfortable.

Is there anything 220+ PPI at 8"-ish?

Yup. Several options. Smaller sizes have higher PPIs available. There is the 300PPI 7.8" Boox Nova 3 and Nova Air, Boyue has a 300PPI 7.8" Likebook P78 and Kobo has the 300 PPI 8" Kobo Forma. Boox and Boyue run full android, kobo uses Linux and is more similar to a Kindle.

There are a few devices around that size with 300PPI screens. Kobo Forma, Boox Nova2, Likebook P78, etc.

The best Kobos and paperwhites have the E Ink Carta HD which is 6" and 300 ppi. I find it to be excellent for reading.

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