kvncviewer - a VNC viewer (not only) for Kobos

[Rizla]

hawhil, is it possible to use two ereaders at the same time on the same pc to cover twice the screen space? This would make for a bigger e-ink monitor.

[hawhill]

Probably. Either by having vncviewer only show a part of the provided framebuffer or by having two framebuffer servers.

Warning: I currently lack the time to do any work for this. I'll happily take Pull Requests and Patches, though.

[Rizla]

>>./kvncviewer/luajit vncviewer.lua 192.168.2.1:1
returns the error
Segmentation fault
luajit does not ask for any libraries. I think sudo returned command not found.

Maybe the issue is FW 3.15? I'll try downgrading to the latest documented functioning FW (3.0.1).

[hawhill]

The attached version looks a bit old/outdated. Unfortunately, I don't have much time at hand right now, so it will take some time till I get around to compile a new version for Kobos.

It most likely has nothing to do with firmware version.
First, try running it with the kvncviewer directory being the current working dir.

[Rizla]

I get the same result when I run it in its base folder.

Unfortunately I will be on the road for two weeks so I won't be able to test it until then. If you can find time to recompile, I would appreciate it, and I will test it when I get back.

[Rizla]

If the version you attached in your first post is the same that others have successfully used (and the date stamp suggests it is), then I don't see why downgrading the firmware to a version proven to be compatible with kvncviewer wouldn't still work. I plan to go ahead and try it this week.

[Staphoent]

can somebody please tell me how to do the following as I do not have programming experience.

Originally Posted by hawhill

I just added a commit to the sources that will allow to pass "0" as an option to the "-refreshFullAfterPixels" switch in order to disable full refreshes completely. l.

Using the following script what do I have to change/ which figures do I change to '0' to disable the full refresh?

local waitRefresh = 250
local rotateFB = 0
local reconnecting = false
local debug = false
local blitfunc = nil

local update_x1 = nil
local update_x2 = 0
local update_y1 = 0
local update_y2 = 0

local refresh_full_every_256th_pxup = 512
local refresh_full_ctr = 0

-- this is just an ID value
local TIMER_REFRESH = 10

local function do_refresh_full(w, h)
refresh_full_ctr = refresh_full_ctr + w*h
if refresh_full_ctr >= bit.rshift(fb.bb:getWidth() * fb.bb:getHeight() * refresh_full_every_256th_pxup, 8) then
refresh_full_ctr = 0
return true
end
return false
-refreshFullAfterPixels <n>
after updating <n> times the screen's pixels, a full eink
refresh is issued. Default is 2.0
elseif value == "-waitRefresh" and arg[i+1] then
waitRefresh = tonumber(arg[i+1])
arg[i+1] = ""
elseif value == "-refreshFullAfterPixels" and arg[i+1] then
refresh_full_every_256th_pxup = 256 * tonumber(arg[i+1])
arg[i+1] = ""

[eReader fan]

It's time to take back to live this thread!

I am absolutelly in need of this function for my Kobo Aura HD so I will start to try it. Unfortunatelly, first I have to learn about how to do the telnet stuff and other things you all mentioned and this will take some days of learning and trying.

Hawhill, I really encourge you to recompile your kvnc to version 3.19, the actually, and can have your marvelous tool updated. Thank you a lot for you idea and your work.

Does anyone tried this in the Kobo Aura HD or in a newer firmware version than 3.15?

[dnastase]

Just wanted to share that this works on Aura One (any firmware probably but I have the latest).
Was able to tweak the lua code a bit so it made the performance smoother: 8bpp connection.
I am actually surprised how smooth it works considering the huge resolution and weak hardware ...

[dnastase]

Originally Posted by eReader fan

It's time to take back to live this thread!

....

Does anyone tried this in the Kobo Aura HD or in a newer firmware version than 3.15?

Yes, it works nicely on Aura HD.

[Nemo1984]

Is it possible to use this with vlasovsoft (AKA pbchess) launcher? If so, what about wifi?

[dnastase]

Originally Posted by Nemo1984

Is it possible to use this with vlasovsoft (AKA pbchess) launcher? If so, what about wifi?

If you mean start it up via vlasovsoft menu ? yes, I guess it's possible. I start mine manually when I ssh into the Kobo.

And what about wifi ? I start my wifi from the KSM, again manually ...

[Nemo1984]

Originally Posted by dnastase

If you mean start it up via vlasovsoft menu ? yes, I guess it's possible. I start mine manually when I ssh into the Kobo.

And what about wifi ? I start my wifi from the KSM, again manually ...

Thank you very much! I'm going to fiddle a bit with it then.

[evanrmurphy]

From the kvncviewer README:

In order to build kindlevncviewer, you can use GNU make. Specify a toolchain prefix as "ARCH" variable:

make ARCH=arm-linux-gnueabihf

and it should build luajit, zlib, libjpeg and finally libvncclient.

How do you find the toolchain prefix that your device requires? I've searched around for this with no luck. I'm trying to install this on a Kindle PW1.

When I try to just run the make command as above on my Mac from kvncviewer-arm-linux-gnueabihf-v1.0.0-1-g38f1188.zip in the OP, this happens:

evan@Evans-MacBook-Pro:~/Downloads/kvncviewer$ make ARCH=arm-linux-gnueabihf
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

Good point make, I don't see any makefiles in the project I think I'm missing some important step here...

Back on my PW1, if I just try using the luajit executable included in the zip, this is what happens (you can skim just the bolded part, rest is for context on my setup and the file permissions):

evan@Evans-MacBook-Pro:~$ ssh root@192.168.15.244

Welcome to Kindle!

root@192.168.15.244's password: 
#################################################
#  N O T I C E  *  N O T I C E  *  N O T I C E  # 
#################################################
Rootfs is mounted read-only. Invoke mntroot rw to
switch back to a writable rootfs.
#################################################
[root@kindle root]# cd /mnt/us/kvncviewer/
[root@kindle kvncviewer]# ./luajit vncviewer.lua 192.168.15.245:1
-sh: ./luajit: not found
[root@kindle kvncviewer]# ls -l luajit 
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        270304 Dec  1  2013 luajit
[root@kindle kvncviewer]#

Stepping back, my goal is to try out this Kindle PW1 as an external e-ink monitor because I've been experiencing a lot of eyestrain. I don't expect a snappy UI, but I'm hoping it might work well enough to use for emails, coding, maybe web browsing. Is kvncviewer a good bet for this or are there other tools/approaches you'd recommend?

[evanrmurphy]

When I try to just run the make command as above on my Mac from kvncviewer-arm-linux-gnueabihf-v1.0.0-1-g38f1188.zip in the OP, this happens:

Code:
evan@Evans-MacBook-Pro:~/Downloads/kvncviewer$ make ARCH=arm-linux-gnueabihf
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
Good point make, I don't see any makefiles in the project I think I'm missing some important step here...

Ah I think I realized my mistake here. The zip file attached to the OP is already made/built. hawhill's instructions to make it were for the source at https://github.com/hwhw/kindlevncviewer I'll give that a shot...