I just graduated and moved on to a new job, so things are kind of hectic in my life right now and I haven't had a lot of time to devote to this or any of my projects. I thought I would have the board together by now, but the schematic is more complicated than any I have done so far and is taking longer than I anticipated. I'm thinking about going the easy way and just make a breakout board for all the pins on the crazy connector, but we'll see what a couple of weeks does for that decision. The connector will be the hardest component to solder, so if I make a breakout, I might as well just go all the way with a full custom board.

Parts came in! I put in an order with Mouser and had them in less than a week. Plus the total was around $14. That was with shipping and ordering multiples of some of things I could use in other projects. One of my as yet unstated goals in this project is to keep it as cheap as possible, so I'm thinking even with a custom board, this might be significantly cheaper than the OLPC: the only similar commercial offering.

Here's that dastardly connector! You can barely see it in the picture, but it has 15 pins on each side! This will be the most difficult part I have soldered so far. The other components are SMD, but I got all the passives in 0805. I'm going to update the parts list soon so I can do a price breakdown of what I have so far.

This is how small I'm hoping to slim the board down to, so it and the Pi can fit behind the screen. Note how it is thin enough to be shorter than the singular USB plug.

Slightly different view to show what I'm going for. Hopefully a small board that can reside in the footprint of the Pi and turn it into an e-ink laptop!

This is the mess of a computer I have so far (not all of this is related, points if you can guess which things don't belong). A 3D printed case would be amazing, and it would be the first time I have used a custom enclosure that wasn't made with hot glue!

I finally formatted me up a card for the A+. I'm gonna get the compiler going next time I sit down with this and see if I can compile a version of the code with the GPIO pinouts from the Pi instead of the original board the code was made for. I'm sure shenanigans will ensue, and fun will be had at all junctures, lol.