SPUDwrite Is a Dedicated E-Paper Word Processor with a Built-in Receipt Printer

Creative writing is difficult, and the biggest challenge is often just avoiding distractions. Most people choose to write using their computer, but that’s full of social media, games, and websites that all want to grab your attention. There is software available that temporarily disables those so you can concentrate on writing, but Lucian came up with another solution: a dedicated ePaper word processor.

Lucian is an engineer, and so spends most of their time at work on a computer. In the evenings, they like to move away from that world and get down to some creative writing. So, the last thing they want to do is spend more time on a computer. The solution was to build what is essentially a modern typewriter, which allows Lucian to write without the distraction of the internet or the eye strain of an LCD monitor.

The most obvious feature of SPUDwrite (Single Purpose User Device…write) is the large E-Ink display, which shows whatever Lucian types. But, E-Ink displays are notoriously slow to refresh and are difficult to type with. That’s why Lucian included a second, smaller LCD screen that displays just the current line of the text. That provides quick refreshes so they can type quickly, and the display is friendlier on the eyes when reading large chunks of text.

After writing for a while, the document can be saved to an SD card or printed out on a thermal receipt printer — perfect for redline editing. SPUDwrite runs on a STM32F401 Cortex-M4, and the software is built on Arm’s Mbed IoT Device Platform. If you want a dedicated word processor so you can write without distractions, this is the project to replicate.