Fake Night mode

[cronot]

This is a little KUAL extension that leverages the method on this thread to allow a sort of fake night mode on non-Paperwhite Kindles (i.e. ones where night mode is not officially supported on the stock firmware).

As it uses fbdepth and fbink, it requires USBNet installed.

Caveats:

• I've tested this only on my KT4, I'm not really sure how it'll behave on other models - worse case scenario, if it breaks horribly, like the screen blanks out, freezes, or doesn't seem to respond to touches, you may need to force reboot your Kindle. Feedback on working devices are welcome!
• When in night mode, ghosting effects are much more pronounced; you'll either have to force a screen refresh very often (by touching the status bar, then back at the center of the book) or just leave page refresh turned on all the time (Settings > Reading Options > Page Refresh), as the screen refresh clears up the ghosting. YMMV, of course, that was just my experience with the KT4;
• The night mode setting doesn't survive a reboot.

To install, just drop the contents of the zip file inside the extensions folder on the internal storage.

[Sol Arkite]

Works on my KV Firmware 5.13.2
I like that ability, but I don’t like the flashing between page turns. Koreader wins for nighmode.

Doesn't work for KV and PW2 firmware 5.10.3

[cronot]

Originally Posted by Sol Arkite

Works on my KV Firmware 5.13.2
I like that ability, but I don’t like the flashing between page turns. Koreader wins for nighmode.

Doesn't work for KV and PW2 firmware 5.10.3

Well, koreader alleviates the issue by actually doing a flash/refresh of the screen every few (about 5 I think) page turns. It does that even in normal (non-night) mode. It's hard to get any better than koreader, and seeing how powerful it is, I wouldn't be surprised if that behavior and the number of pages turns per refresh is configurable. Amazon's own reader unfortunately is all or nothing.

If you care about it, I could try to put together an alternate extension that generates some debug info that I could use to try figure out what is going on and hopefully fix it, although considering those devices are somewhat old, I suspect it may be a hardware limitation. But I'm not really sure what to think without more information.

Edit: (nvm, just realized you got two KVs with different FW versions, and apparently the KV and PW on older firmwares are not working, so it may be something related to the FW afterall)

Thanks for the feedback anyway!

[Sol Arkite]

Originally Posted by cronot

If you care about it, I could try to put together an alternate extension that generates some debug info

I'd be glad to run an extension to help.

[hius07]

Originally Posted by cronot

I wouldn't be surprised if that behavior and the number of pages turns per refresh is configurable.

Off, any number of pages, separately for day/night mode, every chapter.

[cronot]

Originally Posted by Sol Arkite

I'd be glad to run an extension to help.

aight, just attached the debugging extension to the OP. Overwrite the existing files and try pressing the toggle button on KUAL. It should generate a debug.log file inside extensions/nightmode/ , send me that file!

Thanks!

[NiLuJe]

I smell PEBCAK, because it should work on pretty much anything since the K5, no matter the FW version. (I'm pretty sure I did in fact try it on an old as hell K5, and, more relevant to the original report, a PW2 on 5.9).

Sidebar @cronot: Don't use fbset, it's broken as all hell (hence, well, fbdepth), and may not even be there in the first place. You can pull the screen resolution from an eval $(fbink -e).

EDIT: You don't actually need the resolution for a full-screen refresh anyway. An empty rectangle means FS already, i.e., fbink -q -f -s

[cronot]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

I smell PEBCAK, because it should work on pretty much anything since the K5, no matter the FW version. (I'm pretty sure I did in fact try it on an old as hell K5, and, more relevant to the original report, a PW2 on 5.9).

Sidebar @cronot: Don't use fbset, it's broken as all hell (hence, well, fbdepth), and may not even be there in the first place. You can pull the screen resolution from an eval $(fbink -e).

EDIT: You don't actually need the resolution for a full-screen refresh anyway. An empty rectangle means FS already, i.e., fbink -q -f -s

Thanks a lot for the insights @Niluje! That makes the script much more straightforward! I didn't really delve into much documentation to do this, I've only tried to generalize the concept on that other thread by fumbling around with the fb* utilities, initially I didn't even know fbset was unrelated to fbdepth/fbgrab/fbink, and I overlooked the -e and -f switches on fbink due to the sheer amount of switches that fbink has

Although: looking at the -f switch, it says "Note that on legacy einkfb devices, this may not always be honored by the hardware.". Wouldn't that be a problem, such that explicitly specifying the screen geometry would be needed afterall?

But anyway, it works for me, so I've updated the zips on the OP again following these suggestions. @Sol, try again, see if that works for you.

[NiLuJe]

Said legacy hardware (namely, anything <= K3, with the K4 in between), doesn't support this hack anyway, and ignore just means that: "ignore", not "horribly implode in fun and interesting ways" .

Also, it doesn't really has anything to do with the full-screen thing anyway, that's just to request a flash, which is necessary because the screen content may not have changed, so a non-flashing update will most likely not do anything.

[Sol Arkite]

Originally Posted by cronot

@Sol, try again, see if that works for you.

no joy on the latest fake night mode iteration.

[cronot]

Originally Posted by Sol Arkite

no joy on the latest fake night mode iteration.

Ok, did you try the debug variation? Did you get a log file?

[NiLuJe]

@Sol Arkite: Obvious question is obvious: are you actually running a recent (-ish) build of USBNetwork on your affected devices?

[Sol Arkite]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@Sol Arkite: Obvious question is obvious: are you actually running a recent (-ish) build of USBNetwork on your affected devices?

Good call. I tried it on my son's PW2 that didn't have an updated USBNetwork.
It is a success! Fake night mode enabled on all devices!

[Gaudi]

Hi all, thank you for the extension.
I have a KV on FW 5.13.6, Jailbroken with latest Jailbreak from katadelos (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=203326).
At some point, without doing anything I could replicate later, it went into "dark mode" (even though there is no switch in stock firmware/laucher).
I did some search and found this thread, so I went ahead to install USBNetwork + Dark Mode Extension, but they do not seem to do anything.

Can you please help me find out why it is not working?

I have also a KO2 I really like to dark mode to read at night.
Also, to enable dark mode with the extension, should it be inmmediate?

Thank you and regards

[Gaudi]

Originally Posted by Gaudi

Hi all, thank you for the extension.
I have a KV on FW 5.13.6, Jailbroken with latest Jailbreak from katadelos (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=203326).
At some point, without doing anything I could replicate later, it went into "dark mode" (even though there is no switch in stock firmware/laucher).
I did some search and found this thread, so I went ahead to install USBNetwork + Dark Mode Extension, but they do not seem to do anything.

Can you please help me find out why it is not working?

I have also a KO2 I really like to dark mode to read at night.
Also, to enable dark mode with the extension, should it be inmmediate?

Thank you and regards

I correct myself, I was using the wrong version of USBNet.
downloaded USBNetwork Hack | kindle-usbnet-0.22.N-r18897.tar.xz from Snapshots of NiLuJe's hacks and now it works as expected.

Hope this help other users


Regards