I recently got a Sony prs 600 e reader from 2009. The battery is at the end of its life (It lasts about 3 days with heavy reading, and a couple weeks without reading). No backlight, no Wi-Fi, just an SD card that I can load epub files and small PDFs. The screen is slow and the contrast isn’t the best. The “touch screen” is the old resistive type where you really need to press with your nail or a stylus. Despite all those flaws, it’s fantastic. It’s just good enough for reading books.
I read with large text so I don’t even need to put on glasses, and it’s easier to read than an actual book. Combined with Anna’s archive, I’m reading more than I ever have before. No Wi-Fi nd slow screen make the experience feel closer to an actual book than a smartphone. It’s great to just have a device do one thing without distractions popping up every minute.
It’s all old technology, but it’s so rare to see anyone with an e-reader. Probably because they’re still expensive and designed to microtransact the fuck out of you.
So do you think there could be a simple open source e reader? I see pine64 is making the “pinenote”, but it’s still just the developer version, it’s expensive, doesn’t have an sd card, and looks like it’s trying to be a lot more than an reader. Maybe it’ll come down in cost, or they’ll release a simpler version? The biggest obstacle for making an e-reader seems to be the screen, so maybe the pinenote’s screen could become something of a standard.
Or maybe I’m overthinking it, because there’s already so many old Kindles and nooks out there that could be improved with a new battery and maybe new firmware too.
Thoughts?
Kobo e-readers are known to be pretty hackable and many of their models can be used with ‘KoReader’ an open source e-reading OS/app
Very Cool, I didn’t know about these. Maybe just keeping readers out of landfills is the way to go.
You might be in a better position than you realize! I see two great options for you:
Option 1.
Here’s a new battery for your reader, it’s about $13.
Here’s a battery replacement video. It’s amazingly simple! I forgot what wonderful times the aughts were for diy repair.
Option 2
If you’re feeling a little more carefree and like saying “damn the aesthetics!” Especially when you mention keeping readers out of landfills:
Buy a broken eReader off of eBay that still turns on and scavenge the battery. Most of them seem to use the same voltage. If the battery you source doesn’t fit, make a notch in the side of your reader and tape the new battery to the back or whatever. Donate the remainder to your local Makerspace.
If you end up enjoying your little rebellious repairs, buy bulk non-functioning eReaders and try using them to repair each other. Donate the functioning ones to your local library and the non-functioning parts to your local Makerspace.
Dope! I think I will get that
Thoughts?
Cool nails.
I like the Kobo readers they work very well. No bullshit or anything.
You don’t even ever need to connect it to WiFi.
They are also much nicer than an ancient tablet form 2009.
Interesting thoughts. Personally I use a pocketbook to read. It’s been pretty good with a red light backlight for the dark(that is gentle for the eyes before sleep) a built-in dictionary and the ability to export notes from books. This is everything I need in an ereader. Unfortunately it has a browser, some unnecessary small games and some other features that anyone who buys relatively expensive ereaders(hence is committed to reading books) won’t possibly ever need.
But the unnecessary features won’t bother you too much. The UI is clean and easy to navigate.
Pocketbook is not open source or anything, but at least I don’t fund Amazon’s monopoly, it’s a smaller company and it’s definitely value for money imo.
I had that exact same model 15 years ago. It got stolen and I’m still not over it. I got basic Kobo readers instead; they work fine with Calibre and any ebook you can get. I don’t touch Amazon with a ten-foot pole, and I never use the Kobo account you have to create when buying the device.
But I’d give somebody’s left arm to have the Sony back. It was perfect.
There is actually an open source eReader, openbook https://www.oddlyspecificobjects.com/projects/openbook/
Unfortunately, the current screen it uses is not being made anymore. People have stated that they have gotten other screens to work, but no official instructions on using them yet
Your nails are so dope!
I don’t remember the name of it but there is one. The only problem is it only takes text files iirc. also last I checked it was a PCB sandwich type device with open sides
Epub are the de facto open source standard. That’s like a “MP3 Player” only playing Wav.
How do you blunder it that bad?
What are you even talking about? I was referring to open book reader which others already mentioned which should have been easy enough to realize by PCB sandwich. Unless things have developed significantly since I last checked in on the project it does not take epub as is and needs to be txt (got auto corrected to text in previous post).
I was talking about the file format only allowing .txt being a blunder.
Epub is a drm free format with no royalties. And it’s the de facto standard all over the internet.
The reason e-readers are still so expensive is because the company that makes the displays (E-ink) has a patent on them. The Pinenote website says it uses an E-ink panel so I’m assuming that’s where they’re sourcing from
A few years ago there was a potential competitor in the space (ClearInk) but…it looks like their website is gone and their Facebook page hasn’t been updated in 5 years
You see, parents are a motor to innovation. (/s)
Hopefully the patent runs out soon…
To be fair, e-ink has been reinvesting hard into RnD. That’s why there have continued to be new generations of panels, with color capabilities and faster refresh-rates etc.
And yeah, the larger panels aren’t cheap, but small cheap ones have already been used for years as re-usable price tags and product information displays in stores. They don’t even need a battery as the image will stay on the screen without power until the next time they need to be programmed to show new product prices and details.
They might be charging a lot for the panels, but they are also not a patent troll, sitting on a technology without doing squat with it.
parents are a motor to innovation
Absolutely. No parents -> No children -> No innovation.
Fucking Genius! (I would add the Simpsons Scorpio meme, but my instance currently is unable to handle images)
Oops, missed that typo. Sorry I guess…
Do you know of any articles that talk about the patent aspect? This is the first I’m hearing of it and I’d be interested to learn more.
I don’t have one handy, sorry. I’ve been very casually following it for awhile because once the price comes down I have some project ideas
Here’s a non-article discussing it
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
And here’s the eink page discussing their 2500 parents
The price has nothing to do with patents, it’s economy of scale - LCDs ship at a rate of billions per quarter, and are included in every device under the sun, whereas e-ink screens basically only ship in niche luxury devices (ereaders/enotes) that can be replaced by your phone and an ipad respectively. As a result, LCDs ship several orders of magnitude more screens, and reap the resulting economies of scale.
Yes, EInk corp has patents, but that doesn’t prove that the price is caused by the patents.
Currently, our best hope of seeing prices come down is 1) if the fast-multidye tech (i.e. the Gallery 3 thing) takes off enough to give e-notes mass market appeal (color drawing and comic book reading could be huge, maybe) and thus some extra economy of scale, or 2) if GoodDisplay’s DES screens get their PPI up to 300 and thus are able to compete in the ereader space against E-Ink’s MED.
DES = Display Electronic Slurry, AKA the cofferdam tech. It’s a different method of creating an e-ink screen that (apparently) doesn’t touch E-Ink’s patents, and it works by creating a grid of ditches to be filled up with the e-ink liquid and ink (where 1 ditch = 1 pixel). In contrast, E-Ink’s MED (=Microencapsulated Electrophoretic Display) produces self-contained microcapsules that have the liquid/ink sealed inside, and then the microcapsules are sprinkled onto the screen’s pixel grid like Hundreds And Thousands, and each microcapsule is substantially smaller than a pixel, and each pixel toggles several microcapsules. The microcapsules sometimes overlap the border of the pixel grid (since they’re a bunch of packed circles basically), which breaks up the straightness of the pixel grid and is what gives E-Ink screen their ‘grainy’ look where DES screens are more noticeably checkerboarding. This could potentially give MED a long-term aesthetic advantage, although that might turn out to be a non-issue for DES with sufficiently high PPI.
The advantage of DES is that because it skips a layer (the slurry is directly on the substrate, rather than in microcapsules on the substrate) it could potentially be higher-resolution(/PPI), and higher contrast. Also possibly cheaper, since it might be able to skip a manufacturing step of making the microcapsules. Maybe.
