NOTE: This project log was originally posted on 07/13/2023 at 18:10 EDT, but due to a misunderstanding, it had to be deleted and remade. 

Hi y’all. It’s been a long time.

In case you’ve forgotten why you followed this project in the first place, a brief recap: the Open Book is an open hardware e-book reader, designed to be built from parts and understood by the reader who uses it. I searched today for the earliest references I could find to this project, and came up with this tweet from August 9th, 2019: 

Looking back, it’s wild to think how little I knew back then — or perhaps more optimistically, it’s wild to think of how much I’ve learned since then. I didn’t have a background in electrical engineering when I set out to build this gadget; I wanted to build an e-book, and along the way, I taught myself what I thought I needed to know. To be clear: I’ve made mistakes along the way. In many ways, the early version gracing the cover of the Hackaday project page embodies a lot of those mistakes. But I’ve been working on it on and off ever since, learning more and refining the concept. 

Several times over the years, I’ve commented to friends that this project has been my education in engineering and product design; I built my own curriculum, and taught myself what it takes to ship a product and build a business; I learned accounting and parts sourcing at the same time I learned low power design and firmware development. But if this were a four year program, now would be the time for it to come to a close, and that means a final project. 

The Open Book is that project, and over the next nine weeks, I intend to get it into shape and submit it for the Hackaday prize.

There’s a lot to do between now and then, and a lot to update y’all on. For my part, I’m finalizing the circuit board design in the next 48 hours, and I have a new enclosure design printing even as we speak. I hope to be able to share some images and details of those things as soon as next week, with weekly updates to follow in advance of the September 12th “Save the World Wildcard” deadline. 

Do I think the Open Book is meant to save the world? In a way, yes; it stakes out an alternate vision for technology, using the humble e-book reader as its ideological canvas: 

• It posits that technology should be understood by the user, not act like a black box. 
• It posits that technology should serve the user, not the platform owner that created the technology. 
• It posits that technology should be extensible, offering expansion points for accessibility features that make it work for differently abled users. 
• It posits that technology should aim to support users around the globe as equals, supporting all the world’s languages by default instead of leaving some behind. 
• Most of all, it posits technology as a thing that you make out in the open, not a thing that you buy that is closed. I will admit, the exact level of “makiness” may vary a bit from where we started. But the core vision remains as strong as ever.

Anyway. All will be revealed soon. Until then, thank you so much for your interest in Open Book, and your patience with me as I’ve drawn this vision into the world over the last four years.