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Kindles | |
January 13th, 2018 | |
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I was researching Raspberry Pis as a potential off-grid computer | |
hook-up. I wanted a wifi enabled, solar powered, ruggedized | |
system. Preferrably it would have a local keyboard and display, | |
but a model that I could only access over local wifi would be | |
sufficient. Seriously air-gapped, like in-the-woods, style. That'd | |
be neat. | |
Anyway, I got sidetracked when I saw someone using a Kindle as | |
a display for their pi. I had the first generation Kindle and | |
I jailbroke it and was able to get a shell running at one time. It | |
was neat, but pretty useless. The new ones, like my Kindle Voyage, | |
have a much better display and faster refresh. It's actually | |
useful as a terminal. | |
So I went looking down that rabbit hole. I documented my process | |
[0] but I wasn't able to get it working with the research I did so | |
far. My Voyage is running a firmware that's too far upgraded to | |
work with the published tricks. I've got a Kindle Touch downstairs | |
that's not in use which I might try instead. I'll keep an eye out | |
for new rooting methods too. | |
I don't even care about the Pi part anymore. I just want to have | |
a Kindle as a terminal screen. That will be fantastic! | |
EDIT: | |
I've switched to my Kindle Touch and we're getting progress. The | |
jailbreak was easy but I struggled for a bit getting networking | |
working properly. There's again 7,000 versions of advice for | |
configuring this thing online, but I didn't find the key info | |
until reading a readme inside a zip. The Kindle's system mounts | |
read-only and the root password is jibberish by default. To get | |
logged in, I had to set up an authorized key. With that done it | |
was just a matter of connecting. I did get both USB networking | |
and Wifi working. In the end, Wifi was way easier. | |
I'll document all this new effort in the explorations notes, and | |
I'll continue to share as features are added. Next up: app | |
launchers. | |
[0] Kindle Explorations |