My 2 eldest kids (10 and 14) are obsessed with books and their shelves are overflowing. I want to use technology that is away from their phones, to encourage an offline and valuable hobby. The plan is to have an antique hardback book, hollow out the middle (like the old secret stash books), and mount a small waveshare screen in the front cover (in a hole) and a small barcode scanner. I may use a blackberry style trackball for navigation or a touchscreen - not decided yet. The concept is a device where my kids scan the barcode of a book that they start reading, and the. Oil details (author, description, cover art) are pulled via an API, and loaded to their “reading” list, when they finish they mark it as “read” give it a star rating, and over time a database (probably supabase Postgresql), builds a library of their books which they can sort by genre and rating and get recommendations (via a lightweight LLM call connected to a read only database connection) for what to read next. Software I am ok with having vibe coded a few business apps and this would be my second piece of hardware, the first being a simple business dashboard tool which was limited hardware and more software work. The cost depends on a few things but likely parts list: Waveshare screen - £15-25 depending on whether I go for one with an integrated ESP32 ESP32 - depends on above but if needed c.£15 Barcode scanner - £20 Trackball (if required) -£18 Book - £5 (Charity shop!) Battery - £15 Total cost between 70-89 per device although may need more bits and pieces that I’m not aware of yet! What someone think?!

It’s a bit derivative (thanks Nick) but just received my Waveform ESP32 touchscreen (2.8 inch) gadget and am making a desktop interactive dashboard (revenue months to date, year to date), task reminder is okay for overdue and today’s tasks and an alert when one of my team gets a new client. So far so good! Will update as I go! Amazed at how cheap these bare units are A this one was £25! If it works then I’ll work out a housing and then get one for each of my team as a fun desk top toy and push annoying updates OTA!

Few new members the past few days. What brought you here? Let me know below

Wow!! The response has been crazy and we’ve nearly hit 100 members in just a week 🤯 I’m thinking of doing some sort of giveaway to celebrate… Let me know in the comments if you’d be up for that 🙏 P.S. If you know anyone else who’d love to build their own Vibe Hardware, please invite them. Just tell them to head to www.vibehardwareclub.com 👌