Turning an old Amazon Kindle into a eInk development platform | Hacker News Reader

Turning an old Amazon Kindle into a eInk development platform

blog.lidskialf.net

373 pointsmiles95 comments

The blog post is greatly interesting, yet this bit melted my heart:

> In case that site dies here’s the key snippet of Javascript:

By taking the initiative and archiving this bit of crucial information and not simply trusting that the link will remain there permanently, they go beyond thoughtfulness.

I wish there were courses on hardware hacking. It's more of a niche art today. Such valuable information deserves to be taught rather than the nth java tutorial.

Hacking is more a way of thinking than a skill to be learned. For example, When I look at e-ink displays, I think of its potential as a general purpose monitor, even though 99% of eink screens are not general purpose monitors with HDMI/VGA-out. So hacking is the process of determining how this custom built display only works with Acme (any) Corporation, and how it could be reverse- engineered to be used for other purposes.

I recommend this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture I agree with most of it except this:

"Hacking is not using process of elimination to find a solution; it's the process of finding a clever solution to a problem."

Hacking IMO is finding a solution to extend or enhance a feature by ANY legal means, but also ethical and moral ways, whether it is a tediously deductive approach or an innovative approach. Process of elimination, and logical thinking when used for hacking, is still hacking, even though it may be a technique used by more scientific or professional fields.

"Using things in a unique way outside their intended purpose is often perceived as having hack value."

This really is up to the user-If something serves a purpose even for one person, it still has value- it doesn't mean others need to like it.

The original script is still alive at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1873256 but it requires running python. A web browser is less of a hassle for many.

It looks simple enough to install md5sum and copy the parts of the hash that you need.

Agreed! I too appreciated that.

I'm eager to see 100% (not dual-screen like Lenovo) eInk laptops and eInk-optimized GUIs to come.

I'm thrilled to imagine how much neural energy (sounds stupid, I know, but I hope many understand what I mean) could it save me if I my working display (where I mostly work with eMail, text documents and some code, never really needed anything colorful or dynamic at work) was an eInk and I was only presented the very information I need (rather than tons of bullshit visual effects modern GUIs consist of).

There seem to be an emerging trend to "digital minimalism", perhaps it could drive the sales.

"and I was only presented the very information I need (rather than tons of bullshit visual effects modern GUIs consist of)."

You're implying that visual effects cost mental energy. I disagree - a major point of the visual effects is to provide confirmation for the thing you've done, and reduce confusion if you mis-tap or something unexpected happens, by having an indicator that sticks around for the second or two it takes for your brain to catch up and re-view the screen.

I am with you on this one, but the technological hurdle is going to be refresh rates and finding better ways to tackle ghosting. When I talk about refreshing the refresh rates, I mean it should be possible to pan a schematic in a reasonable manner. When I talk about tackling ghosting, I mean it should be possible to remove or reduce it without flashing the entire screen. Designing user interfaces specific to the technology helps, but it can only go so far.

I would love to see an eink monitor that doesn't break the bank. It would be great to have it for showing hw spec sheets and protocol docs for reference while I'm coding.

I just want an e-ink display the same size as a standard A4 paper sheet.

To read pdfs.

I gave up on most articles being distributed in a format that can be re-displayed on demand with different aspect ratio and pixel density.

I'm also looking forward to using an eInk display for work, but I'm not quite as optimistic as you are for minimalism. As the technology improves we're going to see higher and higher framerates, and eventually color eInk will be affordable.

IMO it's much more likely that we'll end up with the same visually overloaded GUIs, just running on a color, 60fps eInk display than having the whole industry return to static black and white.

> As the technology improves

It can't improve unless you change the underlying physics. Electrophoretic displays like E Ink's use particles in a solvent. They can't move fast because fast moving particles are not going to be stay in a stable position. Have a look at those displays from 2008 and compare it to 2020. The quality of the display has changed, contrast is better, but timing is still about half a second. Modes like A2 which is used by Dasung are just hacks that tradeoff speed for stability and perhaps even panel life / reliability.

The startups doing fast displays typically use a different underlying physics. But no one wants to invest the necessary billions in them so they keep dying out like Liquavista, Mirasol and many others.

Why use eInk then?

Valid question. eInk is draws much lower power than competitors and excels for sunlight readable displays. It also has superior contrast, improving readability.

It would be much better for the health of your eyes too. I'm still looking for consumer ready desktop monitors that I don't have to order through AliBaba

EDIT https://www.tomshardware.com/news/25-inch-eink-monitor-comin...

https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Paperlike-Front-Light-Touch-Mo...

The second these become available at a reasonable price, I am buying one. I suffer from chronic migraines and the difference in the way that I feel on days I have to look at a monitor all day (workdays) vs the days I don't is very large. On the weekends/evenings I read on an old gen 2 kindle and it doesn't cause any discomfort at all.

If it's that bad, the current price is reasonable. I'd just make sure you list it as a working expense on your taxes.

Do you wear LED blocking glasses?

I do indeed! They help quite a bit. I'll have to look into that, thanks for the suggestion.

Maybe get a doctor's note too. It will help offset the cost if it's treated as something medically needed.

That's a good idea. If I'm formally diagnosed with computer vision syndrome or something similar, I bet I could use a fsa card to buy it.

Slow display is actually frustrating for text input. E Ink is not suited to UI display for that reason.

If there's enough demand, they'll fix this. Especially after the patents run out.

This ignores the cost of missed opportunity: investing any amount of time and money on something else is almost certainly going to generate higher RoI than trying to make fast, responsive eink displays work.

It's almost never about whether a company can do something, but about whether they leave money on the table by not doing something else.

> Especially after the patents run out.

I see this mistaken assumption repeated everywhere by people unfamiliar with the display technology industry. You can attend display conferences and see lots of startups trying to make stable displays. The limitation is not patents. You can ask a simple question to prove this to yourself. Which E Ink patent is blocking progress and will suddenly cause the industry to become amazing after the patent runs out? At best, you'll get lazy answers like ALL of E Ink's patents.

That's not a lazy answer, "patent thickets" are a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_thicket

It is when it is not applicable to the topic being discussed.

People said the same thing about 3d printing, and as soon as the FDM patents expired in 2009 the field exploded.

Isn't that a Trumpism? "People said". I noticed nobody answered the simple question of which patent is blocking progress.

Not everything Trump might have said is a "Trumpism". As for the statement "people said", it's absolutely fair to point out that your argument has been incorrectly stated in the past in very similar circumstances.

And you can look up e-ink's dozen or so patents that still have about half of their lifetime left. They're pretty fundamental to the technology. I personally try not to patent bomb here on HN so I don't push someone into willful infringement.

I don't see a concrete answer to the simple question of which patent it is that is blocking the industry. Is that question somehow illegitimate?

There’s a perfect alternative to E Ink for laptops called Liquid Crystal Display(LCD)

Good point, it has many of the same advantages: low power, sunlight readability. Why isn't it used more often? The OLPC had a dual LCD/LED display (PixelQi) and it worked very well.

RLCD is starting to pick up in some niches in China (e.g., the Hisense Q5). Its main disadvantage is that it tends to have a color cast depending on the nature of the ambient light, which e-ink doesn't, but it is cheaper and has higher refresh rates.

Glad to hear RLCD is finding a niche between e-ink and other displays, thanks for the recommendation.

Unfortunately that would require tons of work on the UI and a big rethinking of the dumpster fire known as web.

Good! These already beg for the rethinking.

I suggest gopher.

Yeah. Gopher, Gemini or something slightly more sophisticated. In fact HTTP/HTML/CSS are OK if you use them the right way.

Really? More silent downvotes? Did I touch a sore spot?

It's a very cool hack but I don't really understand the final purpose. What's an "eInk development platform"? I thought they would use the Kindle as a monitor and code on it, but instead they're left with an outdated, unsupported and under powered ARM SoC shell?

The "Future" section mentions replacing the display driver but even if that works out I'm still unclear what's the final purpose.

They mean a platform for developing for eink, not a development platform using eink.

Lots of people want to make projects with epaper displays but it’s not particularly easy or cheap to source the panels and hook them up to a Linux system. Reusing these ereaders makes it cheap and easy.

The main issue with this is that a Kindle is not a typical Linux environment; they use heavily patched kernels that range from old to hideously old depending on the age of the device, have a severely stripped down userspace similar to most other embedded devices and it's a pain to set up the development tools needed to compile software against the various libc/kernel versions used across the Kindle family.

That's fine if you're using the built-in kernel as a souped-up display driver. All you need is a way to make pixels happen, the rest can happen off-device.

Exactly I'm in a process of turning one Kindle into a openhab panel.

I failed a bit during the soldering part (the pads got unglued, so now I need to push hard a conductive cable, until I get wifi and ssh up and working).

This post will greatly help me because I mostly need that: wifi and ssh working (and then make the pixels happen :), but I saw a solution for that on mobileread forums).

I suppose "development target" might be more apt. The whole purpose is to be able to write software for other people with minimal messing about with the kindle to see that it works.

So, for example, if you had an inclination to write various pieces of software that turn a kindle into a wall mounted device, this would be the meat of your pipeline. I could write a home automation panel, then later, a weather display, etc. The prior work means I can push those things and make sure they function well before releasing them to the public.

It's needed because it wouldn't be easy to replicate the Kindle environment on a normal PC. It uses old custom kernels, a very limited subset of userspace utilities, has an unusual display, etc.

I recently bought boox air, a 10.3 inch eink android tablet. I read much more now that i ever used to, i had completely given up doing any kind of even moderate reading. My eyes have hard time adjusting to reading on a screen but do amazingly well on an eink device. I use google play books to read and reference books and it works amazingly well on boox air.

I bought one recently as well, and I'm glad I chose it over Remarkable 2. The writing+note taking ability is amazing and I'm loving it so far. I can turn it into a full-fledged screen by connecting my Apple BLE Keyboard. The best thing is the customization due to it being and Android device.

Edit: One cool thing is I can borrow eBooks from Berlin libraries using Libby app and my local library card. That plus Audible has been a game changer for my kid, and she can read all she wants without straining her eyes.

Heh,at least Remarkable gives you the root password and ssh access to the device. I don't know how that other one fares on that front? More and more, I can't stand being locked out of my devices.

yea remarkable is the choice if those are important to you.

For me being able to use pocket, play books, kindle and libby apps was important that having root password. I don't know if I can ssh into my boox air but I don't really care about that.

I agree. I had a Boyue Likebook and it was an underwhelming experience with its slow processor, underspecified self-draining battery, Android "support" (stuck on 6, most apps didn't run well due to the poor processor, poor battery), and the vague feeling that I didn't feel comfortable sharing my real Android account credentials on this device given that I didn't know what all it was running. I now have a Remarkable 2, which I thought I would use just for reading, but I have now grown to love its note taking abilities along with the API for transferring content.

What do I do with root password and SSH access if the device and the ecosystem itself isn't what I need?

I am aware that the developer ecosystem around RM devices is top notch, however I had different needs from my device. To each their own.

Oh, I don't know yet. The remarkable does what it advertised for now, and I'm happy with such a basic usage.

However, if the company goes belly-up, if it stops supporting my device, if I get creative one day and have this awesome idea, I can implement it.

Of course, the Android ecosystem is quite open already, so this is a step-up from, say, a kindle. But having root access feels more like having the keys than sitting in a cab.

An idea I had for a while: draw simple schematics with the stylus, simulate them on the tablet with some SPICE implementation. Shouldn't be that complex :)

I love the boox products. The battery life is insane. I haven't been bored on a plane since.

Is it possible to read Kindle books on that reader? I unfortunately have invested a lot of money building up my Kindle library, and I now feel trapped on Amazon's small screen e-readers. I've been waiting for a large screen Kindle for some time.

Yes. Its a full fledged android device with play store. I use kindle android app on it to read kindle books.

A cool thing to note is that you can't read Kindle "Textbooks" on any first-party Amazon e-ink device but you _can_ read them on a Boox e-ink device precisely because it runs Android (read: eTextbooks are supported in the Kindle Android App but not native Kindle devices).

Not to mention you can read other textbook-like sources on e-ink like O'Reilly Books and Scribd as well through their Android apps.

Source: Bought a Boox Max Lumi and it's been the best device I've purchased in years.

I was trying to use orielly app but it doesn't seem very good on eink. Has crazy amount of ghosting.

> Bought a Boox Max Lumi

I was going back and forth between lumi and air. Are you finding bigger screen more useful for reading tech books?

You can turn on paged reading rather than scrolling (and fiddle with some of the other settings around color conversion which had bad defaults) and it's as good as any other app.

I read an endless stream of academic papers, which why I opted for the lumi. Most textbooks are less dense (in my experience), so would probably be fine on an Air.

I'm worried about sharing my Google credentials with this device. It's a little known company that seems to have a lookalike being distributed from Russia and the other from China?

You could also show Python docs on a Kindle using its experimental browser:

1. On the development machine: $ python3 -m pydoc -n 0.0.0.0 -p 8888

2. On the Kindle web browser: http://DOCS_MACHINE_IP:8888

It's slow, sometimes times renders with ghosting, ant-sized fonts, but hey, the docs' search works. I rarely (almost never) use this setup but is nice to use the Kindle for other uses apart from books

Wish I could buy this out of the box. I want my code on e-Ink and the render on my monitor.

The reMarkable2 runs Linux and offers ssh access via USB and WIFI out of the box. You can modify/install software on it without any jailbreak or hardware mod required.

Beyond that, it is a very pleasant device I love using :)

Waveshare sells these overpriced e-ink monitors that connect via HDMI https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/eink-disp...

DASUNG makes far and away the best E Ink monitor at present:

https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/

Do you know if that company licenses the E-Ink patents? Or is it a copy?

I generally don't trust the Chinese companies b/c IME they don't have any sort of return policy or useable warranty.

They source their panels directly from the E-Ink Company, like everyone else. Dasung also has two granted (and one pending) Chinese patents for their e-ink driver board tech, which actually works pretty amazingly well.

According to some YouTube videos, they plan to release a 23.5" monitor "soon".

Here you go!

https://www.banggood.com/M5Stack-p-1779386.html

I just picked up an InkPlate — a recycled Kindle screen on a PCB with an Arduino, Wifi, and an SD card slot. Supports C and Micro Python out of the box. https://inkplate.io

I did too, got mine a week ago or so and so far it's been a lot of fun!

I'm using the Micropython port, and while there's a learning curve it's working very well for my purposes.

Mighty device! Once rooted, a very capable ebook reader. Great for reading out of copyright epubs or scans from archive.org. The latter are best read in landscape orientation though. Absolutely not missing the touchscreen.

Using Calibre to convert the books to azw3 or mobi and side-loading them over USB seems like less of a battle than rooting.. and you keep the touch screen.

I reflashed a demo Kindle DXG to factory using pretty much the same technique some 7 years ago.

Hardest step was soldering connectors for UART to USB bridge. Luckily had a friend handy with a soldering iron.

After that I used a terminal program to get to uboot screen and simply upload new factory image (I think zmodem was supported).

I also got SHH access to the device. I vaguely remember some sort of weird process for obtaining password.

It seemed Kindle apps at the time were just a bunch of jars

Most of the information came from a collection of posts on mobileread forums.

At the time Kindle DX was selling for $200+ on eBay while demo(locked) versions were selling under $50 in quantities of 100. The demo Kindles were used as display models in some brick and mortar store(Best Buy?).

I briefly considered starting a small venture reflashing those Kindles but then decided against it.

Sony DPT-S1 came out and was so much nicer to use than Kindle.

I tried to get UART access in to my kobo ereader. I was starting to get some boot text coming over and then somehow I managed to kill it. Thing was complaining about some file being missing while booting. Wouldn't turn on with my USB uart thing removed as well. Kinda sucks but oh well.

I wish someone would just go make an eink boardgame company.

if anyone can sell these as "refurbished" boards, i would like to buy a few like that recent guy who bought like 200 Rpis and fixed them and sold them for charity. it would be a good thing to bring these old devices out of the trashcan

e-radionica on Crowdsupply are recycling old Kindle screens for their Inkplate 6 and 10 displays.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-radionica

...at $99 and $129 each (!)

this is nice. i will certainly look this up

Might be relevant for you: There also appears to be a way of reusing broken e-ink displays as DIY segment displays.

Summary on Hackaday: https://hackaday.com/2017/04/12/can-you-build-an-e-ink-displ...

and the russian-language article it refers to: http://we.easyelectronics.ru/HomeTech/izgotovlenie-segmentno...

I love these sorts of projects. I love the creativity, and better still, from an ecological perspective, it is nominally far better to reuse components or repurpose entire products, than it is to throw them away and buy something new.

The tragedy is that this project counts as "repurposing", and required days of a domain expert hacking on it. Imagine the resources we could save if displaying things on a display were easy.

This project could definitely be considered repurposing - there's pretty much nothing happening in this article that hasn't already been covered in much greater detail on the Kindle Developers Corner over at MobileRead: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150.

Well, actually it is.

I haven't found a way to setup wifi using command line on that forums. And also installing just ssh.

Featured in /r/eink

https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/lh14ug/turning_an_old...

I wonder what it would be like to develop on an e-ink screen? It would have to update at least 15 frames per second or typing would feel too laggy. I'd like to see a 600dpi 256-colour screen.

I have that exact model, collecting dust, and now I'm really tempted to go modding it.

Maybe I could create a useful and subtle e-ink "dashboard" somewhere around the house?

I mean, this looks totally doable.

If your Kindle 4 NT is not broken it's actually pretty easy to root it and use as a dashboard.

Shameless plug: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25939042

Really cool what you did there! One idea that comes to mind: Would it be possible to implement wake-on-(W)Lan so that the image updating can be triggered by the device that generates the image? Or would that be too battery intense?

I'm not familiar with this, sorry.