Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader(www.crowdsupply.com)
83 pointsby surprisetalk9 hours ago13 comments
  • hamdingers6 hours ago
    > There are no physical buttons on the front

    That's too bad. For whatever reason I find swipe gestures on e-ink annoying. I currently use a Kobo Clara BW and miss dedicated page-turning buttons.

    I see they're offering the print files for the case, maybe there will be some pins on the ESP32 exposed somewhere for adding buttons

    • neodenan hour ago
      They even kind of admit that themselves and offer a remote page turning accessory with buttons for Kobo readers)
    • tiagod4 hours ago
      I don't like swiping, but kobo supports just a single touch on the right and left edges of the screen for switching pages, and I don't mind that.
      • wolvoleoan hour ago
        I don't like that either. Physical buttons with real feedback are so much better.
    • kjs34 hours ago
      Yeah...I stick with my Kindle Oasis for the buttons. I'll wait until/if this gets them; otherwise would have been a no brainer purchase.
  • holysoles4 hours ago
    I almost bought an xteink the other week but held off due to lack of a frontlight option.

    I instead resurrected my nook simple touch (2011) with this project [1] from XDA forums, its made it infinitely more usable and still has good battery life.

    [1] https://xdaforums.com/t/nst-g-the-phoenix-project.4673934/

    • wolvoleoan hour ago
      Xteink is coming with a backlit option soon.

      Be aware though they're trying to block third party software and their own sucks badly. I don't understand why they try to block this because it makes their hardware actually worth buying.

    • eth0up3 hours ago
      Thanks for mentioning both of these, the xteink and the nook resurrection. My old nooks are all slimy with the black material liquifying, and unusable just for that, else I'd pursue the XDA option. Looking into the xteink now, else Kobo. The one the post is about seems extremely appealing, but the price is a bit high for me, and the lifePo option makes the lesser one seem even more expensive. I really love e-ink. I could easily go with it for all compute.

      5k cycles would be nice.

  • devindotcom7 hours ago
    Looks nice. Personally I don't know I can go back to 220ppi, but if I did I would definitely pay for the touchscreen and light over the X4!

    Maybe you already have this, but I'd encourage you to put a "pure" reading mode in there, with no status bars top or bottom. That would probably allow for an extra line.

    I wonder if there's also room in the case spec to slot in a magnet here or there. Could make for some creative solutions for covers or stands. Personally I use a Clara BW with a folding cover-stand and it's incredibly convenient.

  • zoom66283 hours ago
    I really like the thinking of openness behind this device. Could be great as a pocketable "notice board" getting info on a schedule from mobile and "posting" to a pub on device for me to look at when I feel like it and react to messages on my schedule.
  • vjvjvjvjghvan hour ago
    The screen seems a little small. And buttons would be good too.
  • mimo845 hours ago
    Looks like it's a well thought project. I might consider it to replace my old Kobo. There are only two things I don't see in the description:

    1. A dictionary

    2. A flash card creation functionality

  • Grombobulous3 hours ago
    4.3” screen, that’s a dealbreaker. That is a real shame.
  • onemoresoop2 hours ago
    I was thinking about getting a xteink x4 and run biscuit on it. Does anyone know how it compares to open Book touch?
  • aidenn06 hours ago
    I really liked their comparison matrix, it's honest about what it does and what it doesn't do. I'll probably go with Kobo + Koreader when my current ereader gives up the ghost, but given that 4" ereaders seem to be all the rage these days, I wish them success.
    • crtasm5 hours ago
      I'd like to see some corrections to the matrix, Kobo can run custom code and does not require an account. Also "DRM: yes" feels misleading - you can read DRM-free files on one just fine.
  • dartharvaan hour ago
    Some LLM-assisted guesstimating tells me that in terms of raw cost of manufacturing and delivery, given an average (non-voracious) rate of consumption, supplying paper books is still several times cheaper than supplying usable E-Ink devices in non-price-rigged markets.

    Supplying kids textbooks in India in paperback, for instance, is at least 5-6x cheaper than supplying them the same in an E-Ink reader despite the ginormous (10-12x assuming 6-7 books each year) difference in freight volume.

  • KennyBlankenan hour ago
    This is 10 year old ebook technology for the sake of being "open", when one can just install KOreader on a Kobo.

    KOreader fixes nearly all of the annoying bullshit in Kobo's firmware, which frankly, is terrible. The UI is poorly organized (why the hell is night mode so hard to get to!?), crashed routinely (just like it did ~10+ years ago...), and page changes are painfully slow, barely any improvement from the much older Kobos. It also provides support for remote libraries and a slew of other features. The UI isn't very clean, but it has a ton more features.

    I've never understood how my much newer Kobo is just as slow as my first Kobo reader which was 10+ years ago, or why both of them rather frequently hang and have to be power-cycled.

  • cyberax6 hours ago
    Nice. I wish it had a bigger screen and buttons, though. Kindle Oasis was the sweet spot for me.
  • paulcole5 hours ago
    > Open Book Touch is the device I’ve been trying to build for six years: a small, beautiful, completely open source e-book reader that does one thing and does it well

    What makes this beautiful?