PLEASE NOTE: This project requires surface mount soldering. If you have some experience with through-hole soldering, this may challenge you, but I've tried to pick surface-mount parts that are relatively easy to work with. There are a couple of tricky ones, but the build video will guide you through strategies for soldering them. If you do not have much experience soldering at all, I would recommend gaining some experience with simpler kits before attempting this build.

What is it?

It's the bare PCB for assembling the E-Book Featherwing, a Feather-compatible e-reader gadget with buttons, an SD card slot, headphone jack, a Flash chip for font data and three STEMMA-compatible expansion ports.

This is just the bare PCB; you will need to buy the components and solder them on to the board. The project requires you to do some surface mount soldering, but the only fine-pitched part is the flex connector, which you should be able to manage with a soldering iron and a flux pen. The MicroSD also requires a fine tip and a steady hand.

You will also need to provide your own Feather; I recommend the Feather M4 Express.

Why did you make it?

I wanted to create an open-hardware e-book reader with support for all the languages of the world, because it felt like the kind of object that ought to exist.

What makes it special?

It's a completely open, hackable gadget that you can use for anything from reading stories to displaying graphics (black and white or 2-bit grayscale). The Open Book Arduino library provides support for the M4 Feather with an E-Book Wing. The wing also leaves pins open for stacking an AirLift FeatherWing, if you want to add Wifi to your project.

What you will need to assemble it

Except for the e-paper display, all of the parts required are available from DigiKey using the BOM file on kitspace.org; you can either use their one-click BOM extension, or download a CSV and upload it to DigiKey's BOM manager. The total there should be about $30, plus $5 for shipping.

You will also need to order the e-paper display from Good Display; it's $18 or so, plus $10 for shipping. It ships from overseas though so expect to wait a few weeks.

To assemble the board, you will need a soldering iron with a fine tip, thin leaded or lead-free solder, flux or a flux pen and solder wick. If you've never done surface mount soldering before, don't worry! It's totally doable. All these parts are 0805 or larger and the IC's are SOIC, which has a relatively wide pitch of 1.27 mm. The flex connector is a bit finer, 0.5mm. This is where your flux and solder wick will come in especially handy. Watch this video for some techniques and tips on soldering these types of parts.