I've had this little Eink "development" device, the M5Paper, for a while now and it has mostly been relegated to the fridge as a weather forecast dashboard and lately it's just been in the drawer. I had high hopes that someone (not me, I'm not that smart) would develop some sort of multipurpose firmware that could do various useful things like reading text of different sorts and maybe some other PIM type stuff. That has not happened unfortunately and I was starting to consider selling it on to someone that can actually you know, develop things. Then I was going through my github stars and looking at the recently updated repos to see if anything interesting had happend with any of the projects I follow there when I saw this diy-esp32-epub-reader project. I have no recollection of finding this before or starring it. Maybe it was not very far along when I first discovered it so it left my brain rather quickly? Well I flashed it and it turns out it is quite serviceable as a super basic ereader! I mean really, really basic but it does get the primary job done of reading epubs and it fits in a pocket very nicely.
M5Paper on my desk next to a coffee
M5Paper next to a Kobo Aura and a Pinephone w/keyboard for comparison
I have been yearning for a truly pocketable size ereader for a while now. In fact, I went as far as buying an old Sony PRS-350 ereader which is one of the smallest dedicated ereaders until the mostly Chinese market ereaders and phones started coming out in the last few years. This was fun to play with but the small size is really not that small with how big the bezels are. It is only a hair smaller than my Kobo Aura which is to say it doesn't make any difference in the pocketability between the two. Aside from being attracted to the potentially smaller size I was intrigued that the PRS-350 came with a stylus that slides into the side of the ereader body like an old PDA. A pocket size eink device that can read books and do PDA things sounds like heaven to me but sadly it doesn't really do this. There are a few PDA-ish things it can do but it's more of novelty than actually useful. If any of you reading this would like a PRS-350 to play around with I'd be happy to pass it.
Looping back around, the M5Paper and the diy-esp32-epub-reader firmware actually accomplishes a pocketable ereader without any android or third party telemetry nonsense. Oh, I forgot to mention that it doesn't just run on the M5Paper, though I think the M5Paper is by far the most fitting device to run it on if you actually want to use it. It will also run on the Lilygo T5 which is the same epaper display panel but without the battery and case integrating everything into one nice unit.
To get epubs onto it you just copy the files to the root of a micro SD card and it will see them. There are no settings or anthing else to fiddle with either so I suppose you could say it would be good for totally getting rid of possible distractions. Reading is literally all you can do! You're presented with a list of ebooks (with cover thumbnails even!) and you can select one and read it. It is about as minimal of an ereader interface as you can get. Just like a physical book except you can fit a lot of books into a much smaller physical space. Another thing I like about this is that it uses the little jog dial on the side of the M5Paper for navigation instead of the touchscreen. I prefer this input method especially on a small device with thin bezels where it would be very easy to accidentally tap the screen just by holding it. How long the battery will last is yet to be discovered but as long as I can get a week or so of casual reading from it I'll be happy enough. The simplicity of the firmware likely will help here becuase it isn't doing anything at all in the background and it auto deep sleeps after 30 secs without any input. Overall it is giving this device some new life for me and maybe it will improve even more in the future.
https://github.com/atomic14/diy-esp32-epub-reader
We will be taking a vacation to Austria next month and I'm super excited! I've been spending a fair amount of time on duolingo brushing up on my German. I took classes for a few years but that is quite a ways in the past at this point. Some of it is coming back to me as I do the duolingo courses and it's kind of fun. Hopefully I keep going after our trip and get to a serviceable level of understanding or even basic conversation. Keeping the motivation to continue studying and practicing will be the hard part. Right now the prospect of being able to better understand people and my surroundings is a good motivator.
I'm really excited to get to ski again. It has been a number of years since I last got a chance to. We'll be in the mountains for one week in the middle of the trip and will spend some time in Salzburg on both ends as well. Certainly a long shot but if any of my gemlog readers have any tips or suggestions for things to do or see in Salzburg hit me up! My email is listed at the bottom of my main capsule page.
