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).
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.
I've never really had the patience to fiddle a lot of with the hardware but have always wanted to use e-ink screens for working, specially on the move. (Tried the hacks for remarkable pro with a friend's recommendations, ultimately never kept using it).
The boox palma with android + (obsidian | termux + tailscale) when I need it has actually worked out well for me for writing | programming with a portable keyboard (nuphy). I even did this year's Advent of Code on it. (https://knlb.dev/logs/aoc25 has some photos)
Serial might have been a bit unnecesary here, since there are USB hacks you can exploit to achieve the same over at mobileread.
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.
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.
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).
Limited hardware is exactly why it is usable. Many e-ink devices exist now so limiting factors such as refresh rates etc, need to be considered when developing apps for android etc nowadays.
They might be maining that it requires a specific ereader model rather than being generic, but I'm not sure that really applies either. Kindles, even any specific single model of kindle, are generally readily available.
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).
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.
I've never really had the patience to fiddle a lot of with the hardware but have always wanted to use e-ink screens for working, specially on the move. (Tried the hacks for remarkable pro with a friend's recommendations, ultimately never kept using it).
The boox palma with android + (obsidian | termux + tailscale) when I need it has actually worked out well for me for writing | programming with a portable keyboard (nuphy). I even did this year's Advent of Code on it. (https://knlb.dev/logs/aoc25 has some photos)
Serial might have been a bit unnecesary here, since there are USB hacks you can exploit to achieve the same over at mobileread.
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.
https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash/blob/main/src/dash.sh
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.
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
https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash/blob/c83842e7561340e9...
(2021) At the time (373 points, 95 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26073463
In 2022 (159 points, 24 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32293238
I broke my old kindle when trying to open it. His nice description on how to get inside would have been a big help…
While cool, ultimately not usable due to the very limited hardware.
Limited hardware is exactly why it is usable. Many e-ink devices exist now so limiting factors such as refresh rates etc, need to be considered when developing apps for android etc nowadays.
They might be maining that it requires a specific ereader model rather than being generic, but I'm not sure that really applies either. Kindles, even any specific single model of kindle, are generally readily available.
Usable enough to run a Linux DE on it! I did so on my blog: https://nns.ee/kindle
*an eink development platform c:
Would be nice to use as an interface to interact with Claude Code.