Hello,
I'm sorry if this has already been asked (I looked but couldn't find anything), but I was wondering if anyone knows of any Arduino based e-reader projects. The device doesn't need to be as fancy as an Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader, just something that several e-books can be dropped on. Being able to add e-books from something like the Gutenberg project would be great.
Thanks,
Jeremy
That is an interesting project.
Screen size is the first issue I thought of. Big screens will be expensive. I think I could read a book 4 lines at a time, but I don't know if others would.
Storage is the next issue, you will probably need a couple of megabytes of space to keep a few books in. EEPROM chip? SDCard? Flash chip?
You would also need some code to handle navigation and such.
I don't know of any existing projects, but it sounds fun to build up something and mount it in an old book with the pages glued together.
As above, I don't know off hand of any, but I think could be feasible with THIS screen and THIS shield.
You don't need to add the GPS end, it's just a convenient SDCard interface.
I wondered about screen size too. I was looking at 2 line LCDs on SparkFun's site, but I bet you're right that 4 would be a bare minimum. Some sort of progress indicator of where the user is on the page and in the book as a whole might be nice too.
As far as storage, I was looking at instructions on using a USB memory stick Arduino Playground - UsbMemory . If you could do that, maybe you could have gigs of space to store books in.
Yes, navigation code would be an interesting challenge, especially if you have more than a few books on the reader. I was thinking about keeping it simple. 3 buttons: 1 for up, 1 for down, and 1 for select. If you were able to fit a lot of books on the storage, maybe you would need to have the books organized in a menu by genre? You'd also have issues like saving a user's place in a book so they wouldn't have to search back through it to continue reading.
It does sound like a fun project. I was thinking that something like that would be great for giving people access to entire libraries no matter where they are in the world or what their resources are. It would also be great if the e-reader was solar powered or something similar.
Thanks for the input!
Thanks BRuTuS.
I was reading a post somewhere about the USB memory, it could have been updated.
But I heard using more than 1 gig would just be a waste, the arduino would have alot of problems trying to sort through more than 1gig of information?
People have already implemented programs to work with graphic lcds, so they can upload .GIF images, I'm sure uploading a .txt would be amazingly simple compared to that.
I like the idea though, keep us updated! 
I was thinking about this.. you could get away with a product like the one below for the storage aspect.
I haven't looked too deeply into it, but I would assume a lot of the file handling would be done for you, freeing up some of the Arduino resources.
http://www.hvwtech.com/products_view.asp?ProductID=603
Running out of space for datalogging from your micro? The Viniculum VDRIVE2 is a tidy way to add a USB drive to your microcontroller project! Only four signal lines plus 5V supply and ground are required to be connected!
It features:
The FTDI VNC1L embedded USB host controller IC
USB 'A' socket
Data-activitity LED
Jumper selectable UART or SPI interface
Front-enclose mountable via snap mounts
Firmware upgradeable via USBZ Flash or UAT
VNC1L firmware programming control pins PROG# and RESET# brought out onto internal jumper interface
RoHS compliant