Librery

Project logo
Librery main page
Form to add a book
Adding a book
The new book is in the Librery :D
Downloading books
The hardware itself :D
There's also a sticker to make the hardware identificable, but no scisors :_C

Inspiration

Books are an important part of someone's culture, I wanted to help bring books and other documentation to places where this can be really dificult.

What it does

Librery (Libre + library) is a modified version of the OpenWRT router firmware. Inspired by PirateBox but build from the ground up by me in a weekend (So it's a lot simpler and hackier, also being a totally different concept).

My version runs in a MR-3020 router, but it's capable of running in a huge range of hardware, making it Extremely cheap compared with having "full servers" or raspberries doing the same job. I think you can get a Librery up and running (acceptably) in a 10€ hardware.

This point makes really adequate to be used in applications where cost is really important (For example during the refugee humanitarian crisis, where lots of people have internet-capable devices, but no internet and it's difficult to access culture or information, or even places where the internet is censored)

To use it, you join the network via cable or wifi and connect to any page, (it even works with https pages compared to captive portals that do not! :D). Librery will detect it and redirect you to the Librery itself.

How I built it

Challenges I ran into

Low memory, unstable firmware, bad connection, the kind of stuff you get when playing with the hardware devil.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I was unsure that I could do it, but I did! this is my first solo hack, and it has been a grat experience.

What I learned

Routers are cool and powerful, memory is super valuable. You don't want to mess too much with software that can brick your hardware.

What's next for Librery

It would be super cool to add meshing abilities so routers can propagate books between them, this could be very useful to distribute information in places where no internet is available.