Here’s introducing the Zerowriter Ink, the typewriter with an E Ink display. If that is sounding familiar, that’s because the Zerowriter Ink happens to be the commercial version of the Zerowriter e-paper typewriter that creator Adam Wilk had revealed late last year. As Hackster.io revealed, Wilk has partnered with Soldered Electronics to manufacture the Zerowriter Ink typewriters.
The Zerowriter that Wilk had unveiled last year was built using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer. It came with a Waveshare 4.2-inch e-paper display and was attached to a mechanical keyboard unit. It was a clamshell design with the keyboard housed within the lower portion while the e-paper display was fitted onto the upper half. In its closed stated, the entire thing would resemble a small rectangular box. The device ran a Python-based word processor that allowed for a distraction-free writing experience.
“Zerowriter Ink is an ePaper word processor with a low-profile mechanical keyboard, brilliant readability, and marathon-ready battery life,” Wilk explains of the new design. “This is an exciting new collaboration between Zerowriter and Soldered Electronics, makers of the Inkplate series of ePaper displays. We aim to build an active, robust community around this product, and we hope you’ll be a part of it!”
The commercial version, the Zerowriter Ink however adopts a solid flat design. Understandably, it is going to be an Inkplate display that the device will come with, one that has its resolution boosted to 1280×720 pixels. The keyboard part which makes up 60 percent of the device now uses low-profile keys and switches which look more sleek and modern compared to the clunky-looking keys of the original design.
Further, it’s the ESP32 microcontroller that now renders service instead of the Raspberry Pi on the original. Also, it is now entirely based on an Arduino platform.
“Zerowriter runs on [an Espressif] ESP32 [microcontroller], and is written entirely in Arduino,” Wilk explains. “It’s one of the easiest languages to learn and work with for hardware projects. Our goal is to keep things extremely approachable. By the time Zerowriter Ink ships to backers, we will publish the code base on GitHub and release our hardware design files.”
If all of this sounds enticing enough, you can register yourself at the Crowd Supply site. The crowdfunding campaign is expected to start soon.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I’ll likely make a film sometime in the future.
