Adapter to upcycle an old Kindle4 into a photo frame.
Done with openscad, could be adapted to different frame sizes. Kindle is centered in the frame.
Kindle resolution is 600*800 pixels, 4 bits per pixel. Not exactly photo friendly, but still a good way to bring back memories ! The eips tool used to display images on the e-ink screen requires an image with exact size, otherwise it will be cropped.
Pictures are resized and converted to grayscale PNG using imagemagick, using the convert-images.sh script.
The images are stored on the kindle, as it has plenty of space (1.2 GB) available.
The init.sh script will be called whenever the Kindle reboots, disabling the UI and powersaving, to allow cron jobs to run.
The display.sh script will update the screen with a random image. A bit fun since only sh is available on the kindle, so I had to resort to awk to pick a random file. The display.sh script will be called 3 times per day to update the picture.
Disclaimer : you can break your kindle. proceed at your own risk !!
Preparing the kindle is a bit more involved.
After having enabled ssh access, and intalled kite, the required scripts are copied onto the kindle using deploy.sh.
The 3d printed frame
With the Kindle
With the back
Here you can see the artefacts of 4bpp conversion (on the top of the image).
- Original tutorial here : https://fnordig.de/2015/05/14/using-a-kindle-for-status-information/
- Picking a random file using awk : https://stackoverflow.com/a/35389210/971