Kobo WiFi - a couple questions

[rcentros]

I won a Kobo WiFi at auction (no one put a bid over $5 on it, so I got it unexpectedly) and I kind of like it. I'm reading one of the included books "Irish Fairy Tales" – and the Reader is pretty comfortable to hold and read on.

I've haven't been able to find out anything about upgrading the WiFi. Is it pretty much "you get what you get?" It's running release 1.9 and seems pretty good (for what it is). Also curious if you can use the Full Screen hack on it (I'm guessing not). But the thing I would really like to be able to do is download the books on it to Calibre so I can change the font to Constantia. Obok throws an error – something about a series not found, so I'm guessing it's too old for that also. I'm pretty sure all these books are in the public domain anyhow, so even that's not a really big deal – and the built-in font really isn't that bad anyhow, but it would be nice to narrow the margins a bit.

Sorry to ramble (again). I like the old Readers (used in conjunction with Calibre), but I think I've got too many of them.

[davidfor]

The last firmware released for the WiFi was 1.9.12. That was several years ago. Before that it was 1.9.11 and that was at least two years before that. Obok is failing because the series info is not in the database. This was added to the firmware somewhere in middle of the 2.x versions. The full screen mode was added to the firmware after that. I doubt that any of the hacks will work as they are firmware version dependent and the hack creation didn't really start until well into the 2.x versions.

These books should be in the directory ".kobo/kepub". The file names will just be random letters with no extension. You can try copying these and adding .epub as an extension and then adding them to calibre. If they don't have DRM, they should be added successfully.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The last firmware released for the WiFi was 1.9.12. That was several years ago. Before that it was 1.9.11 and that was at least two years before that. Obok is failing because the series info is not in the database. This was added to the firmware somewhere in middle of the 2.x versions. The full screen mode was added to the firmware after that. I doubt that any of the hacks will work as they are firmware version dependent and the hack creation didn't really start until well into the 2.x versions.

Okay. Pretty much what I thought. Mine is at 1.9 (xxxxx) March or May, 2011 (can't remember exactly when).

Originally Posted by davidfor

These books should be in the directory ".kobo/kepub". The file names will just be random letters with no extension. You can try copying these and adding .epub as an extension and then adding them to calibre. If they don't have DRM, they should be added successfully.

I saw the books in that directory, but it never occurred to me to try adding the .epub extension (though I think they may be kepub as they have the title at the top and my side-loaded epubs don't).

Thank you for the answers. That was fast.

[rcentros]

I turned on WiFi and let the Kobo WiFi update itself to 1.9.12. Much nicer, except (there's always something) now Calibre has trouble with it. Error message says that the device has been updated to a newer database that Calibre can't understand? Huh? This firmware is from 2014? (But I'll take this to the Calibre (Device) forum.) Calibre will still let me send a book to the device, it just won't show (with a green check mark) that's it's there, nor will it let me delete any books from the device (which, for now, I'm just doing directly through my file manager). As I said, otherwise the new firmware displays much nicer. I don't need the full screen as the WiFi seems to handle full screen fine without the hack. Constantia looks great on it. I kind of like Kobo WiFi (now that I know how to embed fonts in Calibre -- I had one before that I didn't like at all).

EDIT: Meant to add, now the Kobo WiFi respects my margins from Calibre. The original firmware (1.9) didn't.

[davidfor]

There are a couple of strange things in the versions on the Kobo devices. While the firmware on the WiFi is 1.9.12, if you connect the device to a PC and run the Kobo Desktop, it will update the database to the latest version. This is OK for running the device as the database is very backwardly compatible. The Kobo drivers check the database version and display the unsupported firmware message. Unfortunately, I appear to have forgotten to update the supported database version in the Kobo ereader driver for a while. I'll fix that. Or I might just drop the test for the WiFi and the original Kobo.

In the meantime, if you press the details button and read the full message, it gives instruction on what to do: in the driver configuration, select the option "Attempt to support newer firmware". While there is a warning in the message, it is completely safe.

And for my curiosity, the warning should have the database firmware versions at the end of the message. Can you post them?

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by davidfor

In the meantime, if you press the details button and read the full message, it gives instruction on what to do: in the driver configuration, select the option "Attempt to support newer firmware". While there is a warning in the message, it is completely safe.

And for my curiosity, the warning should have the database firmware versions at the end of the message. Can you post them?

Sure ...
Device database version: 143.
Device firmware version: (1, 9, 12)

I scanned the error message but didn't read it carefully. I thought it was telling me that I had to do a Factory Reset. Now I see that's now what it's saying at all. It's just saying that "if" something goes wrong, I'll have to do a factory reset. I'll edit this post and let you know if the fix worked.

EDIT: That worked! Thank you. And, as an extra bonus, I can now use Obok DRM to download the 100 (public domain) books Kobo supplied with this device, so I can change their fonts. (Even though they're all public domain, they're all DRM protected.) Thank you very much!

EDIT 2: Correction. Obok now shows the books, but it throws a "can not decrypt" error when I try to use it. It won't accept the 15 character Kobo Serial Number (wanting a 13 character one instead). Still not that big of a deal.