Double Your Fun with a Dual-Screen eReader
Why don't eReaders ever have two pages like paper books? Now they do, thanks to Redditor spacerower's DIY ESP32-S3-based eReader project.
Long before anyone ever rocked a sweet dual-screen setup on their desktop rig there was the great-granddaddy of all dual-“screen” setups — the paper book. So why is it that when books went digital, we only got one display? The Kindle, the Nook, the Kobo — you name it: one screen.
For most use cases, that actually makes pretty good sense. We only read one page at a time, so using a single screen reduces weight, bulk, and cost without giving up much in exchange. But all reading is not the same. When thumbing through a textbook or other technical content, for instance, it is common to bounce around, frequently looking back to reference material that was previously introduced. The slow refresh rate of E Ink screens is not ideal in these situations.
To better support these kinds of applications, and also to create something really interesting and new, Redditor spacerower has designed and built a dual-screen eReader. With a foldable design, this device does not take up much more room than a traditional eReader, yet it has far more screen real estate. And by folding, it also has built-in protection — there is no need to buy a case to keep it safe when you toss it in your backpack.
When opened, the device essentially looks like a pair of side-by-side Kindles, with the screen on the left side featuring a few buttons to interact with the user interface and turn pages. Each E Ink display is fairly large at 5.83 inches, but when closed, the eReader is only 16mm thick, so it is highly portable. A powerful ESP32-S3 microcontroller serves as the main processing unit, and its sleep modes, which it enters during periods of inactivity, should keep the dual 1,300mAh rechargeable batteries humming along for a long time between charges.
The firmware is still a work in progress, but it is actively being improved. If there is enough interest, spacerower may ultimately launch a crowdfunding campaign to produce a batch of these eReaders, so stay tuned. There is no word yet on how much they might cost, but the bill of materials totals about $80, so it should be quite reasonable.