I haven't provided any update about this project for a very long time, so what happened?

In the last update I mentioned the R0.1 PCB was alive. It worked well and I played with it to test several ideas. The real issue of making it into a eReader is the screen update speed. It's being too slow to be used as an interactive device.

The full screen update takes ~3s (including erase time), this means each page turn takes that long time. Though UI interactions could be a bit better, if only updating 1/10 screen at a time (say like there is a menu on screen with 20 items, and moving one to the next one) it takes "only" 300ms. It could be workable but does not fit with my initial concept.

Well I know the screen is slow to begin with, shouldn't this be known from very early on? Sort of. I was trying to answer a question for myself: could the screen be refreshed like a normal volatile LCD? The original board was too slow for me to know, but with a much faster RP2040, I got my answer. The answer was detailed in the last update, but basically no. If that worked, it would be a quite cool and allow much more flexible UI design.

So what's next? This project has been cancelled. I am planning to revisit the idea of using a 6" reflective LCD to build something interesting in a later date. But for now, thanks for reading.