Kindle Touch hardware modding

[leonard.pitzu]

edit1: if somebody is want's to do this please contact me and i will post/send detailed instructions on how to do it (or at least how i did it).

edit2: i have reuploaded the *.zip file with the corrected index.html (i've removed a useless line - thanks for pointing that out). also i have uploaded a small guide on how to make this whole thing happen. please point out the sections which you all think are worth of elaborating.

This is my first post so please bear with me :-)

I've got a Kindle Touch (Wifi version) and after some playing around with it had an crazy modding idea. It's useless but it's still nice to do so here i am sharing this ideea.
A while ago i built a weather station (complete with all kinds of sersors, logging, graphs, symbian, android, google chrome and mozilla firefox apps, etc.). Cool but what if i am somewhere remote and i want to see the temperature or the pressure. Maybe altitude? What if i could do this using my Kindle. Now i can (and hopefully You will also do :-) )!
The basic idea behind is to have a sensor and a small microcontroller that reads the sensor data. On request this data is sent to the Kindle which displays it on the e-ink screen. I have choosen a BMP085 pressure/temperature sensors. Out of this data i can also compute the altitude. The sensor is hooked on to a modified Arduino Pro Mini board (i ripped aff the power supply and the LED's in order to get a "low power" gadget. No the tricky part was the communication with the Kindle. The Touches have a serial port but this one is the linux console. I took a radical approach and disabled the console (just remove /etc/init/console.conf) leaving the kernel debug messages (i just ignore this messages).
From the functional point of view the small bard i designed is almost all the time in power down. When a byte of data is received on the serial port the bard wakes up and checks if the message received has a known format (e.g. data request). If it does it sends the sensor data and then goes back into power down. On the Kindle side this process is triggered using a WAF application. This launches a bash script which does all the communication part with the board. The received data is saved to a local file which is then opened by the web app itself, parsed and graphicaly displayed.
I hope that someone will find this modification as fun as i did and maybe come up with a better, cooler idea.

Attached are some pics and the code. It's free to use/reuse but keep in mind: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BRICKING YOUR DEVICES. YOU NEED TO KNOW HARDWARE, SOFTWARE AND TECHNICAL STUFF IN GENERAL TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS MODIFICATIONS!!!!

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by leonard.pitzu

edit1: if somebody is want's to do this please contact me and i will post/send detailed instructions on how to do it (or at least how i did it).

This is my first post so please bear with me :-)

I've got a Kindle Touch (Wifi version) and after some playing around with it had an crazy modding idea. It's useless but it's still nice to do so here i am sharing this ideea.
A while ago i built a weather station (complete with all kinds of sersors, logging, graphs, symbian, android, google chrome and mozilla firefox apps, etc.). Cool but what if i am somewhere remote and i want to see the temperature or the pressure. Maybe altitude? What if i could do this using my Kindle. Now i can (and hopefully You will also do :-) )!
The basic idea behind is to have a sensor and a small microcontroller that reads the sensor data. On request this data is sent to the Kindle which displays it on the e-ink screen. I have choosen a BMP085 pressure/temperature sensors. Out of this data i can also compute the altitude. The sensor is hooked on to a modified Arduino Pro Mini board (i ripped aff the power supply and the LED's in order to get a "low power" gadget. No the tricky part was the communication with the Kindle. The Touches have a serial port but this one is the linux console. I took a radical approach and disabled the console (just remove /etc/init/console.conf) leaving the kernel debug messages (i just ignore this messages).
From the functional point of view the small bard i designed is almost all the time in power down. When a byte of data is received on the serial port the bard wakes up and checks if the message received has a known format (e.g. data request). If it does it sends the sensor data and then goes back into power down. On the Kindle side this process is triggered using a WAF application. This launches a bash script which does all the communication part with the board. The received data is saved to a local file which is then opened by the web app itself, parsed and graphicaly displayed.
I hope that someone will find this modification as fun as i did and maybe come up with a better, cooler idea.

Attached are some pics and the code. It's free to use/reuse but keep in mind: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BRICKING YOUR DEVICES. YOU NEED TO KNOW HARDWARE, SOFTWARE AND TECHNICAL STUFF IN GENERAL TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS MODIFICATIONS!!!!

Awesome! Why don't you place the details into a mobileread wiki page?

This earned the 2600 "geekmaster creativity award" karma upgrade. Hmm... I thought I saw "karma = 10" before posting this, but when I went to add karma, it was already over 1900, so I just gave the max karma that I can, instead.

[NiLuJe]

I broke GM's shiny 2600 karma total, sorry .

But I concur, crazy HW modders make me happy .

[silver18]

Awesome!!!!
Would it be possible to use USB port instead of serial?
It could become a pluggable device...

PS in index.html there is "fillSelect()" probably from ImageGallery. as you don't use it, you can remove it!!

[leonard.pitzu]

Howdy guys :-)

Great to see You are like this modd. I'll post ASAP on the wiki page a long detailed guide. I hope i'll be able to do it this evening or latest tomorrow morning.

If You have any ideas, comments or something to ask please feel free to write me an email.

[leonard.pitzu]

Originally Posted by silver18

Awesome!!!!
Would it be possible to use USB port instead of serial?
It could become a pluggable device...

PS in index.html there is "fillSelect()" probably from ImageGallery. as you don't use it, you can remove it!!

correct. it's a left-over. i have removed it and will upload the new "stuff" on the wiki when the guide will be published.

regarding the usb... would be nice but the Kindle does not have "host" capabilities - that is i cannot "read" data from an external device; the kindle is the "stick" and not the "computer". i sadly don't have o clue on how to make the kindle a host device - would probably need heavy kernel modification, that if the hardware supports it.

[silver18]

I suspected it...It should involve writing a kernel with usb host capability (best thing would be adding the possibility to switch from standard kernel to usb host kernel).
But this could become a pain with firmware updates...
On the other hand, it opens loads of possibilities (read and write to usb flash drives...)

[knc1]

Originally Posted by silver18

I suspected it...It should involve writing a kernel with usb host capability (best thing would be adding the possibility to switch from standard kernel to usb host kernel).
But this could become a pain with firmware updates...
On the other hand, it opens loads of possibilities (read and write to usb flash drives...)

I think that is already present, just rmmod/insmod the correct drivers and use a micro-USB host cable. The cable that comes with the Kindle is a micro-USB device cable.

[silver18]

Originally Posted by knc1

I think that is already present, just rmmod/insmod the correct drivers and use a micro-USB host cable. The cable that comes with the Kindle is a micro-USB device cable.

Something like this?

Shame there isn't a nice file manager....

EDIT: does the Kindle's usb board delivers 5v?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by silver18

Something like this?

Shame there isn't a nice file manager....

That may not have a standard USB socket on it, rather a mSDHC card socket.

Try this one:
http://www.amazon.com/SANOXY-Micro-U...ef=pd_cp_cps_0

Better buy it quick before Amazon discovers that it works on all Kindles and ups the price.

Edit: my bad, didn't page down enough, Kindles are already listed.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

I think that is already present, just rmmod/insmod the correct drivers and use a micro-USB host cable. The cable that comes with the Kindle is a micro-USB device cable.

Because you need a software app to switch the USB port to Host mode, you can just use a USB gender changer. A real host cable is only needed to trigger host mode on devices that detect a host cable.

But then, the host cables I got were only $0.99USD (including shipping) from a Chinese ebay store (plus a month or more wait time for delivery).

If you are in a hurry, you can make one (with no host cable signal) from a couple of other cables by cutting and soldering them.

We still need a USB mode switch software tool (perhaps we can adapt the one provided in the Nook Simple Touch forum at MR).

[knc1]

Originally Posted by knc1

That may not have a standard USB socket on it, rather a mSDHC card socket.

Try this one:
http://www.amazon.com/SANOXY-Micro-U...ef=pd_cp_cps_0

Better buy it quick before Amazon discovers that it works on all Kindles and ups the price.

Edit: my bad, didn't page down enough, Kindles are already listed.

I just ordered a pair of them.
Do not be in a hurry, shipping estimate: "Sometime this year" or something similar to that from HongKong to where I live.

[leonard.pitzu]

accodring to this the i.MX508 has usb host capabilities. and here comes the *but*... On Freescale's website there are schematics for a i-MX50 demo board which "fits" for allmost all i.MX508 family processors. there is also a usb host on the schematic but sadly it uses different pins then the usb otg. i am not 100% sure if this is also the case for the i.MX508 SoC but it seems so... i don't think a basic "wiring" adapter and some clever software will do the trick. even if the host pins are hooked up inside the kindle (i'dd doubt that as every hw company tryies to reduce cost even by cents and thus will not add every feature the SoC supports) we would still need an external power supply to power the external device - hosts need to do that. now please correct me if i'm wrong...
i'll check the kindle for usb host capabilities (i'll take it appart, again, to see what's on the PCB) and come back here to report my findings.
by the way, does anybody have a "schematic" for the touch. or anything that resembles one :-)

[leonard.pitzu]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Awesome! Why don't you place the details into a mobileread wiki page?

This earned the 2600 "geekmaster creativity award" karma upgrade. Hmm... I thought I saw "karma = 10" before posting this, but when I went to add karma, it was already over 1900, so I just gave the max karma that I can, instead.

where in the wiki pages? is this ok?

thanks for the help!

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by leonard.pitzu

where in the wiki pages? is this ok?

thanks for the help!

That page is already getting big, and is for more general stuff.

You can create a new page by changing the end of the URL. Then click edit. You can copy contents from other wiki pages to it. To learn about editing, go to a page in the master index and click Edit in the index menu.

Then we can link it into the index.

You CAN post details here if you want, in a forum posting...

Or just put everything in a PDF and post that here.

Whatever is easier for you.


P.S. The host mode pins are reserved for the 3G modem, in kindles with 3G.