Amazon's Kindle has dominated the e-reader space for years now. But here's the thing: most people don't realize they're not really buying a reading device, but a storefront that primarily sells them books from Amazon's ecosystem.
If you're an author or publisher, you know this pain intimately. Amazon takes their cut, controls your pricing, and can pull your books at any time. For readers, you're locked into one ecosystem with limited customization options.
What if there was a different way? What if you could build your own e-reader that actually worked for you instead of Big Tech?
Meet the ZEReader, the brainchild of Anna-Lena Marx's bachelor's thesis in electrical engineering. It was born out of a simple question:
Is it truly feasible to handle EPUB files on a microcontroller’s limited resources?
Anna wanted to prove that a microcontroller-based e-reader could be a better fit than an Android or Linux-equipped one.
The device runs on Zephyr Real-Time Operating System, or Zephyr RTOS, which is specifically designed for embedded devices. Unlike resource-heavy mobile operating systems, Zephyr provides strictly what's needed for hardware control without unnecessary overhead.
The heart of the system can be a Raspberry Pi Pico 1 or 2 microcontroller, with a 7.5-inch Waveshare ePaper display giving the reader a crisp, hardcover-like reading experience, and storage duties are handled by a microSD card slot.
Power comes through USB-C charging that keeps the LiPo battery running for weeks, and the firmware handles all the essentials like EPUB reading, progress saving, and basic HTML parsing. Plus, you can use the four simple navigation buttons to control everything.
Want to Build Yours?
The ZEReader firmware and PCB design are both available on GitHub. You can build it exactly as designed or modify everything to fit your specific needs.
The community around the project should grow over the coming weeks, with developers contributing improvements and hardware modifications. And, since it's completely open source, you can fork the repositories and change the design in whatever direction makes sense for your reading habits.
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Sourav Rudra
