The Open Book PCB on Tindie #ebook #CircuitPython #Feather #SAMD51 @tindie @josecastillo
Back last year, you might recall hearing about an open source hardware project called the Open Book: a do-it-yourself, Feather-compatible device with e-paper, designed for reading books. Well as of this month, the bare printed circuit boards for building this project are available on Tindie!
The Open Book took a winding road to becoming reality, but it’s always been tied very closely to Adafruit’s Feather platform. The first incarnation, the E-Book FeatherWing, was an accessory board with many of the features of the Open Book, designed to pair with a Feather. The E-Book FeatherWing is still a board you can make yourself, using one of those blue PCBs. I like it because it’s a bit easier to build compared to the Open Book, with simpler parts and fewer of them to place.
The Open Book has been a passion project of mine for over a year now, and at every turn, Adafruit’s products and learn guides have inspired and informed what the Open Book would become. Early prototypes used an eInk Breakout Friend to operate the screen, before I knew how to design a PCB. Then once I learned, I was able to adapt aspects of Adafruit’s open source schematics, from power supplies to microphone preamps, into the design of the Open Book. Design cues, like the shift register D-pad buttons and the trio of STEMMA ports, come directly from the PyBadge. I even learned surface mount soldering from Collin’s Lab.
It takes some patience and a steady hand to build your own e-book reader. But once you have, you can run Arduino or CircuitPython on it, stack it with wings to add Wi-fi or GPS — and yes, of course, use it to read. The book-reading software is still pretty basic, but we’re working on it!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
