Any way to keep a persistant clock while reading?

[screaminglemon]

So I'm coming from a Sony reader and bought a Paperwhite. Love the hardware, software is another matter.

The biggest thing I miss is the clock and battery display while I'm reading. Is there some hack or maybe a different software that allows this option?

[farfeduc]

Use coolreader or Duokan.

You will have a small clock displayed on to of the screen.

It may be possible to do something better with another hack, but there is none to my knowledge. (I new to this forum so it's not impossible).

Be careful, PW sometimes loses the clock (few hours more or less than the true clock).

It can be fixed by connecting on Wifi (careful of updates !) or by a command in the search bar : ;st (everything explained here : Paperwhite not keeping time)

Hope it helps

[Huku]

Hi screaminglemon,
did you find a solution to your problem? My situation is similar. Was on a sony reader few years ago and still cannot get used to the missing clock in kindle.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Huku

Hi screaminglemon,
did you find a solution to your problem? My situation is similar. Was on a sony reader few years ago and still cannot get used to the missing clock in kindle.

The Grayscale Kindles are designed to take maximum advantage of the meta-stable, e-ink display.
(Remove screen from device, screen continues to show the last display for years without power.)

The device only uses power (and the cpu runs) when changing the display (such as at "page turn").
That is how they get the weeks or months of use on a single battery charge - mostly, they are "off".

Keeping a clock updated in step with something close to "real time" would require waking the sleeping electronics that often and re-drawing the display (a power hungry operation).

This reduces your run time on a single battery charge from weeks to hours.
Possible, but not really practical for this device.
Use a device designed to tell the current time - like a wristwatch or clock.

Now if your reason for having a clock display is a single time, say;
three hours from now you must do something else than read,
that can be done with the help of the on-board, low power, hardware.
It would display the reaching that time by re-drawing the screen **once** at the end of the period.

[zxczxc]

even making it so at each page turn, the clock display is refreshed, would make a large inpact on battery life? that doesn't seem a bad idea to implement a clock (in my opinion)
maybe having it so if the page is not turned for 5 minutes, simply refresh the page once to update the clock to show something like '--:--', to symbolize that the time displayed is out of sync and won't be renewed until you turn the page.

the kindle is keeping track of the time already (isn't it?), so i would imagine that 'all' that needs to be done is redraw the clock, no extra processing/waking up needs to be done, at least for keeping track of the time, right?

(i agree having a clock on screen continuously updated would be overkill, that is why i think having it per page is not a bad idea, even so, i wouldn't think the seconds parts are very important to someone, so, already there, you are only updating once a minute.)

[knc1]

CR reader has a clock display that is updated on page turns.

[Huku]

Knc1,
thank you for explanation. Sony devices work this way - when you change page, clock is updated and it shows the last value even if it is the value from yesterday (when you turn on Sony device it refreshes the page so time is also updated). And this is good enough, because a page is usually read in less than a minute. My personal problem is that I forget to take a look at my clock (even though it is right next to my bed) and all of a sudden it is in the middle of the night :-) :-)

CR Reader == CoolReader ? Yes_it_is() : No_moron_its_not() ;

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Huku

CR Reader == CoolReader ? Yes_it_is() : No_moron_its_not() ;

My bad, a typo -
but you found the correct thread anyway I see.

- - - -

There is a thread or two around here where the internal scheduling ability of the hardware is used (that part(s) that run even when the cpu is sleeping).

Periodic weather displays, I think was the topic.

So a background app that would let you do:
Time for nightly read - I want to know when 3 hours have passed -
Then set the app to do something to let you know it is time to stop.

Probably doing an "erase all" would be a bit too much -
But just forcing the device "off" might be a big enough hint.

[Huku]

Originally Posted by knc1

So a background app that would let you do:
Time for nightly read - I want to know when 3 hours have passed -
Then set the app to do something to let you know it is time to stop.

Probably doing an "erase all" would be a bit too much -
But just forcing the device "off" might be a big enough hint.

That is awesome idea, that can replace the clock in this case :-)
I installed coolreader but it is a completely different "file explorer -> reader" solution and I think this is not what I need. I love the way collections manager orders things by collections in the default "file explorer" (I mean the book launcher but not sure what is the name of that). In fact I was hoping that in the coolreader there will be a "tweak" to show the clock in the default reader (which is also better than the coolreader). My bad to think such a thing :-)
So... still looking for a solution. Not sure, but is it at all possible to have a hack that changes the default reader to show clock, battery, etc. ?

[elchamaco]

I'm in the same situation. I miss so much the clock in the taskbar of my onyx A60. I don´t know why Amazon didn't give the posibility to put it in the taskbar as anption. The same yo can see position, timpe, page, one option coul be the clock. And update it when you change the page, no need to update by time change.

The thing is i read a lot before i go to sleep, and whe i'm reading an interesting book i can be reading till very late and then you must get up early in the morning..., and i'm not going to the menu to see the hour, i'll like to see it in the bottom so if i see it's very late i can go to sleep.

I hate Amazon so much, they have a good ereader, but the firmware is a real user shit. Margins are a joke, you buy a 6'' but they use like 5''... they re crazy. You have very few Font sizes. You can't start the book in the cover page. You can't use your favorite fonts, You can't use your own screensavers or the book cover.
At least a lot of this functions are avalieble with the great work of the people with knowledges to code them, and that you offer in this forum. Thanks for the hacks.

[Huku]

Still haven't found solution - anyone have idea?

[screaminglemon]

I gave up finding a solution long ago, but maybe I'll look into it again when I get a chance.

I also want to make something clear. The Sony I was using before had a custom firmware. This allowed me to display the clock whenever I was reading, just in the corner. The clock updated EVERY MINUTE whether or not you turned the page. It had NO perceptible impact on battery life! (Or at least I was only charging it weekly). I believe this was achieved by only refreshing the small portion of the screen that had the clock as I know they weren't refreshing the entire screen.

I really need a clock because I often read at work. I'm a driver, working nights, so I have several small breaks where I will read for 5-15min in dim light. The paperwhite is great but I'm getting sick of constantly checking my watch. I even bought a new watch that auto-illuminates when I turn my wrist. Still, checking it pulls my attention away from the book unlike when I used the Sony.

[twobob]

Jimmines. is this really still an issue?

why arent we just horribly mangling it onto the screen via eips and detecting page turns to enable it or something.

Has to be at least 2 or 3 easy horrible ways to do this before even considering the harder decent ones.

??

[elchamaco]

After the margins hack, and fonts, the clock it's one of my most desired feature that i miss so much from my onyx A60. And if the Onyx t68 it's as good as it looks the reason to kick amazon and change back to onyx and a free android os.

[twobob]

IIRC we did a "Hide Reading Progress" extension that triggered automagically every page turn.

Would take about 3 lines of code to make that into this surely.

 <SNIP>   {system("eips -d l=FFF,w=758,h=48 -x 0 -y 977")}   </SNIP>

WARNING. do not run that on the touch or lower. it may freeze your device!!

switch it for something safe. I'll have a quick look.

and the wiper.sh would need need programming. to match IIRC. or you could probably simplify this into one command now. with some clever size estimation. Niluje has documented excellent positioning logic before. worth a read.

replace the total wipe with something located to your liking involving the text part of eips.

something involving `date +"%T"`

EDIT: ok: and more specifically :

eips 20 0 `date +%T`

as in

PHP Code:

 awk '/.*PageTurnAction*./ || /.*JunoExecutionManager*./  {system("eips 20 0 `date +%T`")}  ' 


That might work.

if the date command has different options on different models think about maybe a fancy printf.

or even date | awk '{print $4}' in a pinch.

23:19:56

Careful that eips has all the chars you choose. It can be unpredictable and exhibit scary behaviour if properly prodded.
There are holes beyond basic punctuation IIRC so I would stay on the safe side.
stick to the basics. you should be golden,

Sounds like the perfect newcomers project to me. 99% on a platter. just a few man pages (dont look for man eips though... Geekmaster has documented the options lovingly so go there) to read or a google or two.

no compiler required


(QUIZ: How did I take the screenshot on a kindle touch?)

Spoiler:

Hold down home button for a sec, click on screen anywhere, release home button a few secs later.

arrives in sftp://root@<kindleIP>:/mnt/us/screenshot_YYYY_MM_DDTHH_MM_SS+0000.png