Serial might have been a bit unnecesary here, since there are USB hacks you can exploit to achieve the same over at mobileread.<p>You also might want to turn off some background scripts in /etc/init.rc/ such as the screensaver, unload the audio/mic, stop the window manager if you're not using it, and stop the webreader.<p><a href="https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash/blob/main/src/dash.sh" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash/blob/main/src/dash.sh</a>
I've tried these in the past but always found the software/firmware side of it too fiddly for the reward (against the grain for a lot of people, I know), which is a pity as the hardware side is really rewarding (for me).<p>Recently, doing it with Claude Code was a breeze. If you are more interested in the outcome than the process, then I'd say it's a great time to buy a few old Kindles and see what you can create with them.
(2021) At the time (373 points, 95 comments) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26073463">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26073463</a><p>In 2022 (159 points, 24 comments) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32293238">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32293238</a>
The kindle system is a joy to dig around in. The UI‘s based on X, awesome WM, GTK and a bunch of mostly unobfuscated shell scripts and JS.<p>One thing I‘d love would to find a way to make it wake up every once in a while to turn it into an auto-refreshing display. I haven’t found a way to do so without external hardware (which could save a lot of power by not having to wake the whole system, but I think the wakeup can’t be triggered via the serial port and other contacts aren’t as easily accessible).
the rtc clock can be told to wakeup at specific times from software, and the hardware buttons do usually.wake the device too<p><a href="https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash/blob/c83842e7561340e902812f358481f689cdec24a4/src/dash.sh#L102" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash/blob/c83842e7561340e9...</a>
While cool, ultimately not usable due to the very limited hardware.
*an eink development platform c: