Life Dashboard

Low power, heads up display for every day life running on a Kindle.

Details

Second hand Kindles are waiting in drawers for someone to repurpose them into something great. Boasting large e-ink screens, wifi connectivity and ARM processors they are an amazing hacking platform.

In my case I created an information panel summarizing my day such as my calendar, surf and weather forecast, garbage schedule, school closures, etc. My favorite part is that any extra space is filled with a random Pokémon sprite which my kids(not me) like to come check in on.

The project uses a serverless backend to collate data from external services and on the Kindle itself Rust code (cross compiled via docker) fetches and typesets the data into an image.

I built a stand rather then a more standard frame because the e-reader functionality of the Kindle is still present and can be used without modification. I also thought it was important to avoid obscuring the original device and celebrate its reuse.

More details can be found on my blog.

Setup

USB

transfer pokemon folder to Kindle mounted as USB drive.

Jailbreak and Setup SSH

See (https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle4NTHacking) and if bricked then use Kubrick in VM to restore.

SSH Over USB

network settings, find RNDIS, change from DHCP to manual and ip: 192.168.15.201.

# set ip of computers usb port
ifconfig # search for device with 192.168.15.201
sudo ifconfig en5 192.168.15.201
ssh [email protected]
/usr/sbin/mntroot rw
mv /mnt/base-us/pokemon/ /

Install

Setup Wifi on Kindle and then run install.sh with Kindle connected via USB.

Cross Compiling to Kindle (ARM-7 Soft Float)

We need a statically compiled binary to run in the Kindle. There are many ways to do this but on OSX I use docker(via https://github.com/messense/rust-musl-cross) to avoid polluting my system with all the required bits and having to compile each requirement separately.

docker pull messense/rust-musl-cross:arm-musleabi
alias rust-musl-builder='docker run --rm -it -v "$(pwd)":/home/rust/src messense/rust-musl-cross:arm-musleabi'
rust-musl-builder cargo build --release

Copy books to Kindle vis SCP

scp book.mobi [email protected]:/mnt/base-us/documents/
dbus-send --system /default com.lab126.powerd.resuming int32:1

Notes

The mobileread forumn is the place for mobile reader hacking.

My Kindle (KT 4) does not provide access to the RTC, but if I ever find a Kindle Paper White I would be able to sleep the device and run it unplugged for months between changes.

I could have avoided the backend of this project and only used the Kindle but I had already created it for another project and saved time to reuse it.