Is a jailbroken Kindle a good monitor?

[beschizza]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/08/05/is-a-jailbroken-kindle-a-good-monitor.html

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[lastchance]

Article content:

_{Screenshot: Adhityaa Chandrasekar}

Adhityaa Chandrasekar broke his laptop’s monitor, somehow, but came up with a cunning plan: jailbreak his Kindle Paperwhite 3 and use it as a USB monitor. The monochromatic e-ink device offers about 3-4 frames per second, all of them delightfully easy on the eyes. Watching Rickroll on it (embedded below) is a psychedelic experience.

I wrote a script to use screencapture on macOS to repeatedly capture the screen into a png file, which is then converted into a shape, size and color the Kindle likes using imagemagick, and then transferred over usbnet using netcat

/usr/sbin/screencapture -C -x /tmp/orig.png convert /tmp/orig.png -rotate 270 -resize '810x1448!' -type GrayScale -depth 8 -colors 256 /tmp/gray.jpg cat /tmp/gray.jpg | nc -w 0 192.168.15.244 8000

change the resolution to match your device and port to match the listener server

Chandrasekar thinks the frame rate can be optimized further—"I think 10-ish is pretty easy’—and considers options for further brutalizing the Marvell SoC within.

[Enochrewt]

I’d absolutely take an e-ink documentation monitor in my setup. I’ve thought about it for awhile, and there’s no easy way to just do it.

Edit: specified e-ink. I already have an iPad that does this function.

[joed]

tragedy of the commode

I encourage each and every one of you to use this phrase as often as possible.

[HaroldHill]

Betteridge's law of headlines

[dculberson]

And the Youtube video looked just as good as I would expect it to on a Kindle Paperwhite.

Reading the headline I assumed a Kindle Fire. I was happily mistaken. That was gloriously terrible, though it might be great for certain things.

[PsiPhiGrrrl]

@dculberson

I assumed a Kindle Fire. I was happily mistaken. That was gloriously terrible, though it might be great for certain things.

I had the same first thought. It’s still good for old books and accessing social media in a controlled environment - far, far away from my laptop and flip phone.

[mnem]

@Enochrewt

I’d absolutely take an e-ink documentation monitor in my setup.

Agreed. There are plenty of tasks I do on my PC that would benefit from having an e-ink display as a 3rd monitor in my setup. Ideal would be something ~20" size in 3:4 aspect ratio that approximates a Letter / A4 page but there’s just nothing on the market remotely like that.

[anothernewbbaccount]

Ummm - “tragedy of the commode”?

Yeah, that’s what enshittification is all about!

PS - this kindle as a monitor thing IS a wonderful thing, too.

[Shuck]

I just saw someone talking about how e-ink displays are kind of annoying for typing, just because of the slight lag in refreshing the display, so I was expecting something more straightforward and functional from the headline. This, though? This hilariously perverse implementation of a Kindle as a monitor is

[smulder]

@lastchance

cat /tmp/gray.jpg | nc -w 0 192.168.15.244 8000

Useless use of cat