PLEASE NOTE: This project requires some fairly advanced surface mount soldering skills, or the use of a reflow oven. It's unfortunately not a great project for beginners. If you have some soldering experience but haven't done much surface mount work, you may want to check out the E-Book FeatherWing; it still requires surface mount techniques, but has fewer parts to place. If you do not have much soldering experience at all, it might be better to cut your teeth on some simpler projects before attempting either of these builds.

What is it?

It's the bare PCB for assembling the Open Book, 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 assemble the board yourself, which will require a fair amount of surface mount soldering. Most of the parts are wide-pitch SOIC-type devices, and all passives are 0805 or larger. Still, there are a few fine-pitched parts including the flex connector, ATSAMD51 and the MAX4468 mic preamp. Which is all to say that it's a somewhat advanced build; for a simpler build, check out the E-Book FeatherWing, which has fewer fine-pitched parts (but requires a Feather M4 to function).

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 Open Book. The device is also a Feather, meaning you can stack any FeatherWing on top for additional features!

What's Included

• The Open Book PCB
• An enlarged printout of the board's silkscreen for reference
• A printed copy of the Open Book BOM
• A 24-page booklet with instructions for bringing the board to life for the first time

What you will need to assemble it

A list of the tools and supplies recommended for this build are listed in the Open Book board documentation, in the "Board Setup" section. In addition, you will need all of the components listed on the Open Book BOM; all but one are available on Digikey. That last part is the e-paper display; you will need to order it from Good Display. It's $18 or so, plus $10 for shipping. It ships from overseas though so expect to wait a few weeks. If Good Display is sold out, you can also get the same display from Waveshare for a couple bucks more.