Modern e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle are incredible pieces of engineering, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. A device custom-built to your own specifications is always going to provide a more satisfying experience than something purchased off the shelf. That’s why [fel88] put together this custom e-reader which offers a number of unique features, such as a solar panel on the back and button-free operation.

One issue with modern e-readers, at least as [fel88] sees it, is that they have a lot of unnecessary features. This project removes most of them, stripping down the device to its core functionality: a straightforward menu for selecting books and gesture-sensing for navigating the menu as well as changing the pages. The only physical input on the device is a small reed switch to turn the device on. A 3D printed case holds the e-ink display and encloses the inner workings, driven by an Arduino Mega 2560 and powered by three lithium-ion capacitors (LICs) and a small solar panel.

By dropping all of the unnecessary features, the device doesn’t need to waste energy with things like WiFi or Bluetooth and can get around 880 pages on a single charge, not counting any extra energy coming in through the solar panel while it’s operating. The LICs will also theoretically improve its life cycle as well. If you’re still stuck with a paperweight when you formerly had a working e-reader, though, there are plenty of ways to bring old devices back to life as well.

In the rush to always have the latest and greatest, it’s not uncommon that perfectly serviceable hardware ends up collecting dust in a drawer somewhere. If you’ve got an old Kindle laying around, you may be interested in this write-up from [Hemant] that shows a practical example of how the popular e-reader can be pushed into service as a weather dashboard.

The first step is to jailbreak the Kindle, providing the user with root access to the device. From there the Kindle Unified Application Launcher (KUAL) is installed along with USBNetwork which allows you to connect to the reader over SSH. With root access and a network connection, the real project of converting it to a weather dashboard begins. [Hemant] split the project into two parts here, a Node.js server that scrapes weather data from the internet and converts it into an image, and a client for the Kindle that receives this image for display.

The Kindle has a number of quirks and issues that [Hemant] covers as well, including handling image ghosting on the e-ink display as well as a problem where the device will hang if the Internet connection is lost. For those with jailbroken Kindles that want to put their devices back into useful service, this is an excellent guide for getting started and [Hemant] also provided all of the source code on the project’s GitHub page.

There has been a long tradition of using Kindles for things other than e-readers, and even devices with major hardware problems can still have useful life in them thanks to this project which allows the e-ink display to have a second life on its own.