e-Reader devices can be the best thing any e-book lover can ask for. It offers a very natural paper-like reading experience that is glare-free and has negligible blue light emissions. This makes reading via an e-reader very safe for the eyes. Apart from this, the long battery life along with the ability to carry thousands of books in one compact, lightweight device makes e-readers an excellent choice. Devices such as the Kindle or the Kobo are easily among the best examples of excellent e-reader devices.
However, manufacturers tend to lock users into their respective ecosystems, which means you will be restricted to buying content only from their respective e-book stores. This greatly restricts the flexibility of such devices, as transferring purchases across platforms or using third-party content is often far from being as simple as you might believe it should.
Enter the ZEReader, which, as Hackaday stated, offers an open usage environment and has none of the above-mentioned limitations. Interestingly, the ZEReader began as an engineering bachelor’s [Anna-Lena Marx] project whose idea was to develop an open-source, microcontroller-based e-reader. This is possible thanks to the Zephyr Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) that the firmware is based on and is designed for embedded systems.
The firmware, however, is still under development, but it makes it easy to adapt the e-reader for different microcontrollers and screen types. Nonetheless, the firmware is capable of handling many of the primary e-reader functions, which include reading EPUB files, saving reading progress, navigating pages, and basic HTML parsing.
As regards its hardware, the ZEReader comes with a charging circuit for a lithium battery and a booster circuit for the display. Further, there is also a microSD card slot for storage along with four control buttons. Future iterations may include solar charging, an even better power management system, along with extra PSRAM.
Additionally, it being an open-source project, there likely will be several more e-reader projects coming our way in the coming months inspired by the ZEReader.
