CrossPoint

Apogee can send books to a CrossPoint e-ink reader and keep your reading progress in step, both ways. CrossPoint is community firmware for the XTEINK pocket readers; Apogee works with an X4 or X3 flashed with CrossPoint.

You need the phone and the device on the same Wi-Fi, with the device awake and in File Transfer mode.

The CrossPoint page

Open More and tap CrossPoint. The page opens whether or not the device is connected, and the card at the top says which it is: the model and firmware once the device answers, or what to do when it doesn’t.

If your network hides device names, type the address the reader shows and tap Connect. Apogee keeps it.

Below that are the things you can do: send books, look at what’s on the device, pin a collection, and check covers. If you don’t own a CrossPoint you can hide the row from More here, and bring it back later in Settings.

Sending books

Send Books picks from your library. Apogee only offers formats the device’s firmware reads, downloads a book first if it needs to, and uploads over Wi-Fi with a progress bar per book. One failed book doesn’t stop the rest of the batch.

Books already on the device are ticked, so you can see at a glance what’s missing.

Covers

Each book goes over with a sleep-screen cover, so the device shows the book’s cover while it sleeps. Apogee renders that cover for the device itself: sized for the e-ink screen and dithered to its four shades of gray, so it comes out crisp instead of a scaled phone image. Books whose cover only lives on the server get one too.

The Covers page shows what a converted cover looks like, side by side with the original, in both the fit and cropped versions the device can choose between.

It also counts. Books that reached the device some other way, by OPDS or off the SD card, never got a cover from Apogee, and the page says how many. Send Missing Covers gives them one. It writes covers only. The book itself is never re-sent, so your reading position is safe.

The device’s files

The device’s own file listing is one tap away: browse folders, upload a book, make a new folder, move things around, or delete from the device. What you see is what’s on the device, live.

Reading progress, both ways

When Apogee sends a book you’ve started, it seeds your reading position onto the device, so the book opens where you left off instead of at page one.

After you read on the device, the book’s page in Apogee shows where the CrossPoint left off, and the app can pull that progress to your server, so your phone, the web reader and the device all agree. The app offers to set this up after your first send.

Matching works on the contents of the file, not its name or where it sits, so renaming a book or moving it into a folder doesn’t lose your place.

A collection that sends itself

Pin a collection and the books you add to it go over on their own, next time you open CrossPoint with the device connected. The tile says how many are waiting.

It’s the same pin as Use for Quick Add in Browse, so pinning in either place does the same thing. You can choose the collection from the CrossPoint page, from CrossPoint settings, or from the collection’s own page.

Apogee only looks for the device while the CrossPoint screen is open, so this happens when you visit, not in the background.

Filing books by series

Organize by Series in CrossPoint settings puts each book you send into a folder named after its series. A book with no series goes to the main folder, as before. Navigating a long list on the device is fiddly, so this keeps it shorter.

Books already on the device stay where they are until you say otherwise. When you turn the setting on, Apogee offers to move them, and tells you how many. Turning it off offers to move them back. Both ask first, and either way nothing moves until you agree.

Moving a book only takes back what Apogee filed. A book you moved into a folder of your own is left alone, and so is anything the device tidied away itself.

When it doesn’t work

• Device never appears: check both are on the same Wi-Fi, the device is awake and in File Transfer mode, then tap Set Up again. If your network blocks discovery, type the address by hand.
• Upload stalls or fails: move closer to the router and send again; a batch resumes with the books that didn’t make it.
• A count looks wrong: the numbers come from reading the device, so they only appear when Apogee has actually read it. If a count is missing, the device didn’t answer.
• Anything else: Reporting a bug, and say which device and firmware version you have.