DIY Digital Typewriter as an Astrohaus Alternative

We’re seeing an interesting shift in the way people approach technology — especially among Gen Z. There is a growing sentiment that tech is useful (and often necessary) for specific tasks, but that always-connected “do everything” computers and smartphones foster unhealthy habits. As a result, some niche manufacturers put out products dedicated to a single job without all the distractions. Astrohaus is the most notable example for writers. But their devices are expensive, which is why Ryan Whalen built this pocket-friendly DIY alternative to Astrohaus digital typewriters.

Astrohaus’s most popular products focus on providing a distraction-free writing experience. Both the Freewrite and Freewrite Traveler are “digital typewriters” that allow writing and nothing else. To squeeze out as much battery life as possible and ease eye strain, they both have E Ink displays. Whalen's DIY digital typewriter has similar features, but at a much lower cost and with a far better keyboard.

The hardware consists of a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer, a Waveshare 4.2” E Ink display, a Pisugar 3 battery and power supply, and a Keychron K6 Pro mechanical keyboard. The total cost for all of those parts is about $200, compared to $350-650 for a digital typewriter from Astrohaus. That is a significant savings without any real sacrifices beyond packaging — Astrohaus products do look great.

This project is heavily based on zerowriter, which is a similar E Ink digital typewriter. Whalen put their own spin on that, including a slimmed-down 3D-printable enclosure and custom software.

That software, called TypeWryter, was written in Python and is optimized for this job. It minimizes full screen refreshes (which are slow on an E Ink screen) with a simple interface that prioritizes typing. There isn’t any fancy document formatting to tinker with or web features to distract the writer. Instead, it only has a simple menu to load or save files, display the current word count, or reboot the device. The user can configure Linux to automatically launch TypeWryter at boot, so there is never an opportunity to get sucked into another program or the internet.

If this intrigues you, you can visit Whalen's TypeWryter GitHub page, the zerowriter GitHub page, or take a look at my own FeatherQuill project here on Hackster.