E-Readers As Personal Digital Assistants!
The story behind the recipe
A few months ago I finally got around to Jailbreaking the Kindle I had stolen off of a family member who didn't use it, and I installed KUAL and more importantly KOReader, and while I haven't read as much as I have wanted to, I have certainly picked up reading more, and even more so, I have now picked up tinkering with the thing, and at one point it struck me while reading or watching something probably from Janus Cycle and his coverage of PDAs [1], hey, this can probably be hacked into doing most things a PDA does?!
I have been fascinated by making myself a PDA for a while now, I had a few years ago wanted to create myself a hackable desktop-esque computer inspired by the ScienceElf on youtube's propintosh [2], basing it off the rp2040, something I already owned, I could never secure the money or the designs to make anything of that but I kept the idea, and then starting college, I was stuck with my phone for managing my calendar, and contacts, and instant messaging needs, this made me want to instead make a Pi Pico based pocket computer there would be several similar projects like the PicoCalc, which were somewhat similar to what I wanted to do, but the kits for anything like this were always essentially unobtanium for me.
Then I had my phone stolen, and my reliance on my phone became clear, and I had to for a bit use my older phone, the OnePlus 3T, which I will hopefully write about to put its magic and the "era" it was made onto digital bits to be remembered.
Eventually I got another phone on loan which also had crappy battery, (at this point I assumed I am just a super heavy user?) and then that got stolen! ... Not my proudest moment in life last year.
All of that essentially wanted me to rid of having to carry one, i'd prefer to instead either have just one netbook that could tap into GSM maybe, or just my thinkpad T480 and a PDA.
And well, back around end of November, I swore in front of a group of friends when the Saanchar Saathi Controversy happened that if it ever went through I would just install the GSM addon onto my thinkpad and not look back.
Thankfully the government figured out surveillance isn't as popular as they assumed, dissent was possible! shock, horror! I am currently unable to acquire a GSM PCIe addon at reasonable rates to it all worked out :P
The Sausage
But much earlier on my Train Ride to Bangalore I had wanted to look at KOReader's code base, written in Lua which I was told is easy! To figure out how to write my addons for it maybe?
Inbetween scratching my head as I failed to grasp how the widget library for Koreader works, I stumbled onto Timothy Swenson's website and it's article called "Kindle as a PDA" (Circumstantially exactly what I had typed into duckduckgo!) [Note 1] [5]
The PDF covers using the Kindle as a PDA with its stock firmware, some of the use cases are prominently apparent, others had to be engineered and thought up such as the datebook I would have never figured out though to be fair growing up in the 2010s, I never kept one, and just use ICal
Overall, his PDF to me is amazing and gave me just about enough reasons to work on it, I would love to polish this experience, the hardware exists, and well, writing code on an existing fleshed out code base is easier yes?
Well, not for me, I have tried several times now, maybe its not having previous experience with Lua, maybe its never understanding Widget libraries, maybe its just how KOReader is written, I just haven't been able to figure out how to do anything to write an extension for KOReader that would do anything for me. I really want to, but the documentation being non existent, the one example plugin having no explanation attached to it, and the documentation asking the reader to consult all the other plugins, all of which I tried were more than 300 lines in scope and impossible to parse.
I gave up on that for a while, or well I have told myself I will try again once I have more time to butt my head into that wall, and well, thats where its sat, with my kindle in my bag, out for reading when I have time, and whenever I open the notes function I wish I could be using it for my daily notes instead of PTO [Note 2]
Today on youtube I got reminded of this E Reader that came out a bit back, I knew about this earlier from JVScholz [3], but I only knew that it was indeed just an ESP32 attached to an eink screen and several buttons, and well today's video was about the community run firmware, and even if the video's author talks about using AI to write the customisations BLEGH :{ I am still interested in this existing [4], well I am more familiar with cplusplus, I studied it for two semesters and I would like to imagine given its not carrying all the baggage KOReader is of being a complete polished reading application on Linux, Android, and all the eink readers, but I haven't actually looked at.
Living where I do, again, it remains unobtanium as I can't have it shipped here, neither do I have the resources to buy one really, but one can imagine?
I don't like writing in theoretical
I don't really maintain an image or standard for this blog either, I mean I just brain dump here about stuff once in a while, mostly writing when I can't sleep but I am obviously tired. That shows in the writing style I imagine, I wouldn't know, I don't ever go back to read my own stuff. Ever.
But one thing I don't like typing out is "hey would be cool if this exists" I would like to either offer criticism, knowledge, information, especially not if its an unfinished project that I personally seem to be the only one to care about, but I really think the XTeink x4 is in a formfactor and is probably for others a great jumping off point to start at a PDA project, it has all the wireless capabilities built already on it, its super small! Because its EInk, its super readable but also able to keep all the necessary details readable, I am not the best at MCU and embedded development, but I believe the ESP in there is slightly capable of cryptography stuff??? [unbased claim] but if so, it could even serve what some PDAs had, being able to get email on the go!
Most of what I need day to day is just my ICal calendar, my email, any sort of Instant Messaging, currently predominantly Jabber/XMPP (I assume implementing OMEMO would be a right pain, but rooms are usually always unencrypted so those might be less of a pain to port?) but thats not really necessary anyways, especially without a keyboard _though_ the chip does seem to support bluetooth! And even if clicks' commmunicator phone which I am also sceptically excited about falls through, I believe their bluetooth keyboard that attaches via magsafe might just be the perfect fit!
I have also been deeply getting into RSS feeds and have been curating my selection of blogs run by people I enjoy, and I would like to think that I would like to carry that over for a new device.
But yes, to end with, "it would be really cool if this would exist".
I don't like to think of myself as a techno optimist, I think most tech spaces currently don't care to solve the large problems of society and would rather fuel the capitalist systems they benefit from, which upsets me.
I would like to have an alternative, maybe even help build it, stop being at the beck and call of having to buy my next communications device from them and having to rely upon everything. That thought upsets me in having my phone stolen I had to buy yet another phone, my new one worse in almost every way, with AI slop, and android becoming more and more rigid. I would hope Linux on Phones comes through, but honestly, I don't want a phone anymore, I don't think its the device for me, or at least having only grown up in a time when growing up without it wasn't an option, I'd like to try and alternative where I don't have it.
[Note 1] Swenson, who, later looking him up, is a member of the board of Washington Township's Museum of Local History, writing a lot about "Union City" his work looks great and he also appears to be much of a computer nerd! He seems like someone I would grow into, I find it hilarious and if I ever complete this project, I would like for him to be the first person I ever show it to!
[Note 2] I'll quickly name drop PTO, "Plain Text Organiser", its an open source GPL app on Fdroid which I have come to really like, I like its approach, I like it very much, I do not know what in it makes me like it? maybe it is the simplicity in the sea of markdown note takers, maybe its the clean UI, but that would be likely one of the most important thing I would like from any thing I carried in my pocket, it or a similar version that was compatible with it's zip backup files. I do at some point have to figure out how to sync it with my desktop constantly so I can write notes from Vi-mproved like the Flying Spaghetti Monster Intended
[1] Janus Cycle's Playlist, all of them are worth a watch!: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZmL4nTglf2ilU4pKjcfB5-vySTW2tNYe
[2] I watched this for the first time when I was 13 or 14 I believe? I went crazy over this person making it, I have always wanted to live up to making something as cool as this since, my notions of cool have changed a lot since, so have what that thing is, but I have always been inspired by this a lot The Science Elf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoFCGh6wtUU
[3] JVscholz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBW8JeAaMZ8
[4] InsiderPhD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMoq17-1pJA
Addendum: Not to make this super long, but I would like to have my 2 minute hate for youtube, it sucks. please try moving over to peertube.
thats about it, its 03:35, and my brains going off now I think, I think one can interpolate my lines, if you cannot, please feed every piece of media, text, information, and everything I have ever credibly produced and train an LLM on that, its not much, but it should amount to something, please ask it to interpolate for you why I would think a massive platform run on money can suck, on why corporate nature shouldn't be the biggest way to interact with video content, and how creativity is stifled on it. I was never on youtube when it wasn't corporately owned, I don't ever remember people not complaining about youtube sucking, I can't ever really know that time, I can only hope for greener pastures.
Addendum 2: shit forgot to link the Kindle as a PDA blog, I am getting rusty with how to manage this blog
[5]: https://swensont.epizy.com/kindlePDA.pdf?i=1 Also look at his normal web parking https://swensont.epizy.com/ it has cool stuff!