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?

  • Андрей Быдло@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    3 months ago

    Cheaper and simplier devices can do that, I agree. Lowering gradations of grey can hurt comic books readers but won’t hurt book reading routine that much. WiFi and bluetooth are convinient, but at the same time they hurts bettery life too much, so it’s better to go without them. Sleeping or turned off mode is kinda stupid for it rerenders the whole page to show the default image on cheap devices - the goal as I see it is to minimize rerendering and thus turn off these completely. Touchscreens are rather useless and they too use power – a couple of physical buttons cover most needs. It’s just the UI on most of them is very unfriendly, judging by chinese ones I had used, and open-sourcing it can save us a lot of headache. Backlit books though are here to be, and there should be a hotkey to turn it off and on, so one can resd it comfortably at any time and quickly avoid energy waste. Having SD card for everything exluding OS instead of internal memory would probably make it cheaper. And as we probably expecting schools to make them popular, there should be a dock for multiple devices to rapidly upload one collection of files to a dozen of devices.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.mlM
    0·
    3 months ago

    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

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.mlM
        0·
        3 months ago

        I don’t have one currently, but from some of the stuff I’ve read, the Clara HD model is one of the most popular for hacking/modding.

    • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, even if you don’t hack em, I just use it for ebooks from my library and that works great. Not open source by a long shot, but wayyyyy better than kindle.

    • doubtingtammy@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      3 months ago

      Very Cool, I didn’t know about these. Maybe just keeping readers out of landfills is the way to go.

        • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          I’m gonna look into that, we have an old kindle collecting dust that would be a good candidate I think!

      • thefartographer@lemm.ee
        0·
        3 months ago

        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.

  • glimse@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    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

    • Schorsch@feddit.de
      0·
      3 months ago

      You see, parents are a motor to innovation. (/s)

      Hopefully the patent runs out soon…

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        3 months ago

        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.

        • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
          0·
          3 months ago

          Yeah, but small, low res, slow-refresh ones without partial refresh (absolutely essential for ereaders and tablets) have not had patent limitations for a while I think.

          They are simply called e-paper and there are many chinese manufacturers of them that sell them for “cheap”.

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
        0·
        3 months ago

        parents are a motor to innovation

        Absolutely. No parents -> No children -> No innovation.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        I think basic patents are good for inventors but the way the system is set up to allow “evergreen” patenting is ridiculous. It heavily favors big businesses and pushes out the people the system was “supposed” to protect

    • doubtingtammy@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      3 months ago

      Ah, thanks. That makes sense. I knew it was the screens, but didn’t realize it’s a whack patent issue

      • glimse@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        Yeah…I guess the original patent expired in 2018 but you know how patents go… “We changed one tiny thing and patented it again”

    • Corroded@leminal.spaceEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      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.

  • Schorsch@feddit.de
    0·
    3 months ago

    I have a Sony Reader PRS-350 since 2011 and honestly the battery life never has been great. It’s discharging too quickly when powered off and even faster when on standby.

  • 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒆𝒍@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    3 months ago

    Briefly researched the idea after looking for an e-reader, a screen would be the most expensive part, a cheap microcontroller and battery would be the second ones, overall it would be more expensive than basic kindle with a lot worse capabilities, like worse screen etc

  • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
    0·
    3 months ago

    Another option- Kindle paperwhite or even an old Gen 1 / gen 2 Kindle keyboard or other e-ink model. The old models can be battery swapped with only a guitar pick and a Philips screwdriver.

    DNS ad blocker like PiHole, to block all the ads and telemetry while connected to WiFi. Keep WiFi off if not actively transferring books, as it wastes battery.

    Sideload all your own books via whispernet free WiFi transfer or just plain USB.

    Get free books from Gutenberg/Libgen/IRC/Usenet.

    This is very workable and results in being able to read almost whatever you want for $0/year.

    • Corroded@leminal.spaceEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Get free books from Gutenberg/Libgen/IRC/Usenet.

      I think Anna’s Archive is still pretty popular as well

  • KryptonBlur@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    The open book looks to be the sort of thing you’re looking for, it’s a very basic open source e reader

  • z00s@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    There’s already projects going for open source firmware for pre existing hardware, such as inkbox and KoReader

    I’m also watching the open book project. I’m hoping that supporting it will enable things to progress to the point where it gets in the hands of schoolchildren in developing countries

  • Palacegalleryratio [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    There definitely should be a good open source e-reader, but for what it’s worth I use a Kobo Clara 2e (newer models are available in both black and white and colour eink) and it works fine for me.

    I download books from various resources; like Project Gutenberg and use Calibre for managing them. Works pretty seamlessly, especially with the Calibre Kobo plugin for automatic conversion to the kepub format too. However this obviously requires the use of a computer, which may be a dealbreaker. Also Kobo works well with Overdrive for borrowing library ebooks, which is neat.