If you have even the slightest interest in open hardware e-readers, you’ve certainly heard of [Joey Castillo]’s Open Book project. We’ve covered his efforts to develop an affordable reader that delivers a Kindle-like experience without the Orwellian megacorp trappings for several years now, and watched with great interest as the core hardware has evolved.
So we were particularly excited over the weekend to see the Open Book Touch finally hit Crowd Supply, and judging by the fact that the campaign for the $149 device has already blown past 60% of its funding goal in just a few days, it seems like we weren’t the only ones.
As the name implies, this latest iteration of the e-reader does away with physical navigation buttons and introduces an intuitive touch-based interface. Those who like to enjoy their open source hardware under the covers will be glad to hear that not only does this new version of the Open Book finally include an illuminated display, but it even allows you to adjust the color temperature and brightness of the LEDs with the swipe of a finger.While the hardware improvements over the previous Open Book are impressive, the software has really come a long way as well. The user interface lets you organize your books on virtual shelves and browse through their covers, providing the sort of slick experience that you’d expect from a modern e-reader. You can also look up the definitions of words, or dog-ear favorite pages so you can return to them later.
But what you won’t get is locked down with DRM — the Open Book Touch uses standard EPUB and TXT files loaded from a micro SD card, and thanks to the WiFi-enabled ESP32 at its heart, it offers up a web interface that lets you manage your collection over the network.
It’s been nearly a decade since the Open Book first graced our pages, and though we’re not in the habit of picking favorites here at Hackaday, this is one project where the stakes are so high that we can’t help but feel invested. Reading shouldn’t require a subscription fee, or depend on a proprietary piece of hardware that can get ejected from its own ecosystem once its maker decides you need a new one. Obviously the Open Book Touch won’t even make a dent in the market share that Amazon’s Kindle enjoys, at least there will be an option available for those who wish to keep reading on their own terms.