e-book reader ideas

Hey all, please share all your wacky ideas for using/reusing some hardware to make an e-book reader. I have some hardware laying around, and I'm looking for some inspiration. :-D

Posted in: s/permacomputing

๐Ÿš€ tpt_

2025-05-19 ยท 1 year ago ยท ๐Ÿ‘ zeerooth

8 Comments โ†“

๐Ÿ‘ zeerooth ยท 2025-05-20 at 13:57:

Honestly it's a bit hard to come up with wild ideas for an e-book since it's such a boring yet amazing invention - anything can become an e-book as long as you have an e-ink display hooked up to some device :D

๐Ÿš€ clarahd ยท 2025-05-20 at 17:59:

I have a dozen old devices that could be WiFi clients or "ereaders" like using a j2me app to read textfiles on a tiny screen, but the experience pales beside the delight of seeing a static eink display illuminated by natural daylight. Have you tried entering your equipment list into chatGPT and asking for a recipe?

๐ŸŒง๏ธ candycanearter [โœ๏ธ] ยท 2025-05-21 at 12:08:

what about using a reciept printer?

๐Ÿš€ clarahd ยท 2025-05-21 at 12:55:

lol, that was almost a thing for me when I was broke and experimenting with Linux - the cheapest "printer" I could get was repurposing an old thermal imaging fax machine as a printer.

At the call center where I worked there was a Congolese businessman who had a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the bottomless pit of the sequence of motivations leading up to the Rwandan genocide. One day I managed to dazzle him by bringing in a roll of fax paper with a long historical recounting of the event.

๐Ÿš€ tpt_ [OP] ยท 2025-05-27 at 20:43:

Good idea with ChatGPT, I just might do that!

๐Ÿš€ tpt_ [OP] ยท 2025-05-27 at 20:45:

I'm actually in a process of acquiring a receipt printer, but that is reserved for other projects. :-D

๐ŸŒง๏ธ candycanearter [โœ๏ธ] ยท 2025-05-31 at 14:52:

@tpt_ what kinda project can u do with a receipt printer?

๐Ÿš€ tpt_ [OP] ยท 2025-06-04 at 20:26:

Well, I would say the "usual", daily news, weather, etc. More for practise really. I really like the output of https://wttr.in/ so maybe I will try to pretty print that first.