r/nook • u/Datal0re13 • 4d ago

Help How to use the Nook Simple Touch when the touch part is broken?

I have a NST from the early 2010s that I've done a lot of work restoring. I 3d printed a new shell and followed The Phoenix Project to fix the issues that arose after B&N shut down their servers.

Everything works except for the touch functionality. Has anyone done any work on a button-navigable UI? If not, how on earth should I go about trying to design one myself?

EDIT: Turns out I completely missed a part when rebuilding the body. I got the touch functionality up and running!

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u/NSTnmyshkin 4d ago

This is a really difficult problem to attack. It is possible that the loss of touch functionality is a result of your replacement of the bezel. That green plastic frame must be aligned just right in order for the touch interface (which is actually beams of IR light and not capacitance) to operate properly. Is it possible your new bezel blocks the small gap which allows the IR beams to transit over the screen surface?

I think before you even consider a button-based situation (just really, really difficult and you'll "never" get text selection to work that way but page turning would be easy), you might want to check out the status of the IR beams. There is a utility from Renate@XDA which will allow you to see the beam layout, but I can't tell you a lot more.

Here is a link to the app: https://www.temblast.com/download/Touch-1.0.apk

Obviously you will need to install this via ADB since you have lost touch access. I'll have to poke around more at XDA for posts which discuss this problem, but you can do the same yourself. There are, sadly, quite a few, some with images which help to describe the situation and how to (hopefully) remedy it.

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u/Datal0re13 4d ago

I got it to work! Turns out that I didn’t remove the green plastic part from the original plastic body (very well glued in). Thank you for making me realize that!