-
1Procure parts for the Open Book
You'll need parts from a few suppliers to build your Open Book:
- You can get printed circuit boards from a PCB fabrication service like PCBWay. Just upload the zipped gerbers provided in the Files section.
- Next, procure components for the build; follow the BOM provided in the Files section, and you should be able to get almost all the components from Digi-Key.
- The e-paper display, you'll have to source from Good Display.
- The battery is available on Aliexpress.
- Finally, if you plan to 3D print a case for your Open Book, you can get the metal M2.5 screws from McMaster-Carr.
-
2Assemble the Open Book PCB
I'll admit that this step has “draw the rest of the owl” vibes to it, but the truth is, there are so many ways to assemble a circuit board that I don't want to be prescriptive. You may want to order a stencil with your board, apply paste, pick and place and bake. On the other hand you may, like me, prefer to use a fine-tipped soldering iron and put the parts down one by one. Maybe you're a whiz with the hot air station and you want to assemble it with that.
However you're most comfortable, assemble all the surface mount and through-hole parts on the circuit board.
-
3Mount the e-paper display and battery
Once you've assembled the board, CAREFULLY insert the display's flex cable into the flex connector, and fold it over the edge of the board so that the display covers the documentation on the front of the PCB. You can secure it along the edges with Scotch tape or plain blue painter's tape.
Plug the battery into the Molex Picoblade connector, and tape the battery into place on top of the pin assignments block on the back of the Open Book.
-
4Build and flash the Libros firmware
Support for the ESP32-S3 Open Book is very early at this time; there is no prebuilt firmware image, so you'll need to have both Visual Studio Code and PlatformIO installed. Download the Libros firmware from GitHub, open it in VS Code, and in the PlatformIO tab, click “Build” under the ESP32-S3 target. If the firmware builds successfully, you can flash the Open Book:
- Plug the Open Book into your computer using a USB-C cable.
- Hold down the Lock button at the top of the device, and press the Reset button on the side.
- In the PlatformIO tab in VS Code, click “Upload” under the ESP32-S3 target.
After the code finishes uploading, the Open Book should boot to a book logo, followed by a message telling you to insert a MicroSD card.
-
5Print an enclosure
The STL files provided in the Files section should print fine on any 3D printer. It should print fine without supports, although if you want to add supports anywhere, supports under the four screw holes on the front plate do tend to help.
Insert the fully assembled Open Book into the frontplate, and then insert the backplate (taking care that the lock button "pusher" on the backplate is aligned with the notch in the frontplate).
When you are satisfied with the fit, screw the four metal M2.5 screws into the four screw holes on the front of the device. Note that it may take some effort, as the screws need to "bite" into the plastic in the backplate.
-
6Get some books!
The canonical format for the Open Book is plain UTF-8 text. I'm working on a library of public domain works with metadata and chapter breaks for the Open Book, but in the meantime, there are detailed notes about converting books to text on this page of the Oddly Specific Objects website.
Discussions
Become a Hackaday.io Member
Create an account to leave a comment. Already have an account? Log In.