Oh god, they reinvented the electronic typewriter.
This seems more similar to word processors prior to PCs taking over that functionality.
I’d been looking into building something like this out of a Raspberry Pi, very cool that this is open source.
I do think a split keyboard design would serve a slate like this a bit better though.
I built my own before getting a freewrite traveler, so it’s nice to see people making them easier for others!
This is basically a modern AlphaSmart. Looks like they took some inspiration from that, too!
It is! AlphaSmart went under a while ago so the only models available are used. Astrohaus made their own version too, but it’s about as expensive ad their other products so I’m looking forward to this.
Wasn’t the point of these low power computers to be cheap?
Somebody should really sweep in and snag that market position by not actually overcharging for it!
This looks great. I was thinking about buying an Android ebook reader and a bluetooth keyboard in order to cobble together something like this for myself. But if this is less than the cost of an ebook reader by itself, that’s even better.
Interesting but so ugly
It’s an alternate to Astrohaus’s Freewrite, should be a bit more competitively priced! Source code isn’t available yet but it’s running an ESP32 so that’s pretty cool (the original version used a raspi zero)
I can’t expect this will cost less than 400 bucks.
$200!
Imagine having a word processor without letters on the keys.
(Only partially kidding)
I thought the keys were E-ink too, so you can show any letter, image or disable them. I kinda wish I had such a keyboard with programmable E-ink; I mean my entire keyboard, not a fancy extra thing.
Wow, that is dumb.
Don’t even have to imagine. IBM made those into the early 90s. My family had one
That’s not an uncommon thing, actually. One of the most famous mechanical keyboards, the Das Keyboard, was by default glyph-less.
I guess letters are a distraction.
Colors are also distraction!
I think I would want to be able to adjust the viewing angle of the screen. I imagine you would want to set it up in a way that is similar to a mechanic typewriter.