Having jailbroken my Kindle, I wanted to see if I could use it for more than just reading books. I’d always liked the idea of having a simple E-Ink Home Assistant dashboard, and my Kindle seemed like the perfect fit.
I turned my Kindle into a Home Assistant dashboard
A dedicated dashboard served wirelessly
I have an ancient Kindle 4 that has served me well for many years. Amazon recently announced that it’s dropping support for many older Kindle models, meaning devices such as mine can no longer buy or download books directly from the Kindle Store or use features such as Send to Kindle. This was the push I needed to finally get around to jailbreaking the device.
Once jailbroken, I installed the Kindle Unified Application Launcher (KUAL) software that lets me launch custom applications, and installed the KOReader document viewer and eBook reader app. This app is far more capable than the standard Kindle app, especially when it comes to handling PDF files.
I wanted to see if I could get the Kindle to display a Home Assistant dashboard and discovered the hass-lovelace-kindle-screensaver add-on. It’s a simple but effective tool that takes regular screenshots of your Home Assistant dashboard, converts the screenshots to a grayscale format for the Kindle, and serves the images over Wi-Fi for the Kindle to fetch.
It took a bit of setting up, but it works really well. I built a simple dashboard in Home Assistant designed for the size and proportions of the Kindle screen, and it displays perfectly, giving me a clean E-Ink dashboard with useful information about my smart home.
- Storage
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16GB
- Screen Size
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6-inches
Even in the budget department, the Amazon Kindle is a stellar value, from its light and compact design, to its adjustable front light and 6-inch display.
I still wanted to use my Kindle
I read at night, but the Kindle is idle all day
The dashboard worked perfectly, but the way I’d set it up, it would automatically launch when the Kindle was booted and take over the screen completely. Pressing the buttons on the Kindle had no effect, so it meant that the Kindle was now a full-time dashboard and couldn’t be used for anything else.
It meant I had two ways to use the Kindle. I could use it as an eReader without running it as a dashboard, but since I only use it to read in the evenings, the device would just be sitting idle all day. I could use it as a dashboard, but doing so would mean that I couldn’t use the Kindle as an eReader, as the dashboard software completely takes over the device.
What I really wanted was a way to use the Kindle as a dashboard during the day and as an eReader at night, but disabling the dashboard software involved having to SSH into the device to kill the process, which wasn’t particularly convenient.
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It’s possible to launch the dashboard manually
The problem was that I had no way to kill it
I realized that I could set up a way to start the dashboard manually. KUAL lets you add your own menu items to the dashboard that you can launch by selecting them on your Kindle. With a little effort, I was able to add Start Dashboard and Stop Dashboard buttons in KUAL that would run the scripts to start and stop the dashboard software.
I disabled the autostart setting so that the dashboard wouldn’t start on launch and felt very pleased with myself. It was only then that I realized that I was an idiot.
The whole reason I’d set up the buttons was that I wanted a way to stop the dashboard software so I could use the Kindle as an eReader again. My Start Dashboard button worked fine; I could open KUAL on the Kindle, select the Start Dashboard button, and the dashboard would display.
Once the dashboard was running, however, there was no way to access the Stop button to use it. I couldn’t get back to the KUAL screen; if I were able to, I wouldn’t have needed the buttons in the first place. The Stop button was effectively useless, as I was never able to access it when the dashboard was running.
A simple reboot solves the problem
Now I can use my Kindle in two ways
The solution was one that I’m not proud of, but it does the job. Since I’d disabled the autostart for the dashboard, whenever the Kindle starts, it goes to the main screen, where I can run KUAL. At this point, the dashboard isn’t running, and won’t start running until I use the Start Dashboard button.
Once the dashboard is running, none of the buttons has any effect. Except for one: the power button. If the dashboard is running, I can use the power button to reboot the Kindle, and it will return to the main screen, allowing me to open KOReader and use the Kindle as an eReader again.
It’s a bit of a fudge, but I’m now able to use the Kindle as a Home Assistant dashboard during the day, and then reboot it when I want to read at night. The device is now twice as useful as it was before I was finally forced to jailbreak it. Thanks, Amazon.
Sometimes, brute force is all you need
There’s probably some clever way to get the buttons to respond when using the dashboard, but it’s not worth taking the time to figure it out. My Kindle does what I want it to, and the few seconds it takes to reboot the Kindle aren’t a huge issue. It’s a bit of a brute force solution, but my Kindle has never been so useful.
