Custom Screensaver

[PeterT]

Surely though there still has to be some process that reads the book's cover to display on the frame buffer, and I've yet to see any evidence of that in tracing

[tshering]

I am sure you have selected "show current book cover".

[PeterT]

Nod as I DO see the book cover being displayed (along with the % read info on it)!

[Ken Maltby]

Somewhere in the response to the powerslider event the suspend function or just prior to that there is code to the effect of: If the option is set to display book cover do (what is required to do that) else do (whatever is required to make the display that you see when the covers are not used). In the code to use the cover .png there would be a return value that points to the current cover to use. Would not it be possible to have it always point to a different, user supplied .png?

Luck;
Ken

[tshering]

In case somebody would like to try replacing the Mondadori sleep screen images, in FW 2.8.1b likely candidates in nickel are:

249619 (758x1014; 72dpi;4.962 Bytes)
261D5C (758x1024; 72dpi;10.391 Bytes)
270AA2 (600x800; 72dpi; 7.774 Bytes)
27DF32 (1080x1440; 72dpi;7.218 Bytes)

[tshering]

I tried replacing the mondadori sleep images by custom images. It works of course. However, one is severely restricted by the small file size of the simple mondadori images.

Therefore, I tried to replace the system calls of libnickel, cf. post #28, by a call to a user script which writes to the screen and then initiates the suspend state. It works as far as the sleep screen is concerned. However, after waking he reader up, it falls again sleeping after some seconds if I do not continually touch the screen.

[cosmo666]

well, at least that seems like the right path. well done, tshering! i hope you can solve that! sounds like a delayed recursive function is checking the waking state. does the device go do sleep normally if you push the sleep button before it auto-sleeps? also, i'd try to change the "go to sleep" time in the options back and forth once, perhaps some variables were messed up. just saying what crossed my mind, you probably tried that already.

i've tried to look for the 2.9.0 that's on the aura, but couldn't find it anywhere. i'm playing with a 2.8.1, but since i don't have a glow or similar, i can't do any tests.

btw, i noticed a "slideshow" folder (the one with kraken, etc) in 2.8.1, with some pictures that look like they were intended as sleepscreens. when do those appear? never saw them on the aura

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by cosmo666

btw, i noticed a "slideshow" folder (the one with kraken, etc) in 2.8.1, with some pictures that look like they were intended as sleepscreens. when do those appear? never saw them on the aura

There is a simple way to turn that demo loop slideshow on and off, but I don't
remember it right now. There is a post here that mentions how. I'll edit it in if I can find it.

OK; Just type "demo mode on" in the search field, using the Library setting. Tap the slideshow screen to return to the home page. Then while the demo mode is on it plays the slide show instead of sleeping. You need to type in "demo mode off", to return to normal.

I'll have to get around to making a set of pictures to replace those in the dragon folder.
Maybe someone more energetic could make it so we could select different folders when turning it on.

Luck;
Ken

[cosmo666]

awesome! that would seem like a great way to circumvent screensaver(if it also locks screen when it auto-enters it, it's just like we wanted. also, if we only keep 1 picture, it should not refresh the page, thus not draining the battery)

unfortunately, for the aura, this does not work. it seems the functionality is still here. when entering demo mode, a blank page is displayed and, as you mentioned, it returns to homescreen when tapped. but, sleeping it manually will still go to the normal screensaver, instead of the slideshow. i asume the slideshow folder is missing in the 2.9.0, but since i can'tget my hands on the fw, i can't say for sure. the screensaver may also appear because there is nothing in the slideshow folder, so it defaults to normal saver. could you please tell me if it enters slideshow upon manually sleeping it (with demo mode on) and if the screen is locked?

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by cosmo666

awesome! that would seem like a great way to circumvent screensaver(if it also locks screen when it auto-enters it, it's just like we wanted. also, if we only keep 1 picture, it should not refresh the page, thus not draining the battery)

unfortunately, for the aura, this does not work. it seems the functionality is still here. when entering demo mode, a blank page is displayed and, as you mentioned, it returns to homescreen when tapped. but, sleeping it manually will still go to the normal screensaver, instead of the slideshow. i asume the slideshow folder is missing in the 2.9.0, but since i can'tget my hands on the fw, i can't say for sure. the screensaver may also appear because there is nothing in the slideshow folder, so it defaults to normal saver. could you please tell me if it enters slideshow upon manually sleeping it (with demo mode on) and if the screen is locked?

If you use the power slider to suspend it has its normal suspend image, whatever it is, but a timer is running and the demo loop will start up after the timer ends. It may be related to the sleep setting you have set, I put mine to 5 minuets, for this testing. (The timer seems to be a little more than a minute.) The IR for the AuraHD is still running as well as all the page turns, so
it is not a mode that is saving power.

I was able to put my own pictures in place of the Kobo ones. I just opened one in Gimp2 and made a template from it. Then I make a grayscale image and scale it to 1080x1440 and open a new file in Gimp and select the template. Then it is just a matter of dragging and dropping the image file onto the new template displayed.

Luck;
Ken

[tshering]

I think, I have something.

In libnickel.so.1.0.0, replace

echo %1 > /sys/power/state-extended

by

sh /mnt/onboard/susptest/susp.sh %1

and the line

echo mem > /sys/power/state

by

echo "abc"\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00

Here each \x00 stands for a byte with the value 0. This call itself is meaningless. But since nickel does a system call, I think we have to fill in something here.

In the root of the reader, create a folder "susptest". Put in this folder a script susp.sh with the content

#!/bin/sh
# replace /usr/local/Kobo/slideshow/1.gz with the path to your picture
sleepPicture=/usr/local/Kobo/slideshow/1.gz

if [ $1 == 1 ] && [ -e $sleepPicture ]; then
 zcat $sleepPicture | /usr/local/Kobo/pickel showpic
fi
echo $1 > /sys/power/state-extended
echo mem > /sys/power/state

The line in the if ... fi block is just an example of writing something to the screen. I suppose that "/usr/local/Kobo/slideshow/1.gz" is on all kobo readers. If this is wrong, then that is a problem.

It is interesting to see, how long it takes for the original kobo screen image to be replaced by the custom image. This seems to indicate how much nickel has to take care of before calling it a day.

If you try this, DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!

I would recommend, using the patcher for modifying libnickel, because there is at least a control, that the patch goes to the correct address and has the correct length.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by cosmo666

i've tried to look for the 2.9.0 that's on the aura, but couldn't find it anywhere. i'm playing with a 2.8.1, but since i don't have a glow or similar, i can't do any tests.

See this post.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by tshering

See this post.

If you look into the update, it shows some demoloop script files with differing ways it is being done depending on the localization. (.\usr\local\Kobo)

Notice the JA one, it appears that a kobo\slideshow exists.

Luck;
Ken

[cosmo666]

thanks for the link, tshering!

nop, can't find any slideshow in the 2.9.0. the folder is completely gone,and there seem to be no .png files at all. also, ja seems to be tied more to dictionaries. it's both in the dictionary folder, and ja.conf has adresses mentioning dictionaries.

It is interesting to see, how long it takes for the original kobo screen image to be replaced by the custom image. This seems to indicate how much nickel has to take care of before calling it a day

if nickel needs to close down, can't we make use of the "killall nickel" function? found it while snooping in udev/usv, line 80, it's called if it finds a .tgz in root and thus shuts down for updating. though it might kill the sleepfunction too.

one more thing, what do you guys use to see code lines in libnickel.so.1.0.0? i'm using a hexeditor, but the output is far from lines of code such as i see you quoting.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by cosmo666

one more thing, what do you guys use to see code lines in libnickel.so.1.0.0? i'm using a hexeditor, but the output is far from lines of code such as i see you quoting.

Somewhere in this forum I posted a script that uses Python and scans through files looking for the signatures associated with zlib compressed sequences.