Coming across e-readers having mechanical switches is increasingly becoming a rarity. While there still are a few – read the Kindle Oasis, the B&N Nook, or those from Onyx, Pocketbook, and Boyue – most seem to be shifting towards incorporating a touchscreen that allows for a clean and minimalist design. This being the scenario, a particular DIY enthusiast by the name Brandon, aka “krabizzwainch” and “bwkrayb” decided to take matters into his own hands and built an e-reader from scratch featuring mechanical switches.

As the website Hackster.io revealed, the set of four switches that have been incorporated in Brandon’s version of an e-reader happen to be the Adafruit NeoKey 1×4 mechanical key switch pad having NeoPixel backlighting. Forming the core of the device is the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 to which the four switches connect via I2C. An old Apple AirPods box has been adapted to serve as the enclosure.

For the display, Brandon used a 3.7-inch Waveshare ePaper screen which is devoid of a touchscreen layer as most of what you need to do with the device can be accomplished with the buttons themselves. Providing the juice is a conventional USB power bank though Brandon has plans to incorporate a dedicated internal battery in the future version.

For the software, all of it has been written in Python from scratch by Brandon. The first thing that the device will show after booting is the last page being read. The user will have to use the right switch to return back to the main menu if he or she wishes to read something else. The device can read e-books in ePUB format, which happens to be the most common e-book format outside of the Amazon ecosystem.

So, it may look rudimentary and bare bones at the moment though it is not every day that we come across a DIY e-reader project. All of it makes for an interesting development, it must be said.

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