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[[!meta title="Productivity Dashboards with Emacs and Kindle"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2021 Mehmet Tekman"]]
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# Productivity Dashboards with Emacs and Kindle
Mehmet Tekman
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Since 2008, Amazon have released a new Kindle device every year,
supplanting each generation with a newer model that boasts highly
promoted incremental features which greatly devalues the price of
their older models. These forgotten models are sold on Ebay and
other secondhand websites at highly discount prices by owners who
do not see the true potential of these devices: Kindles are
excellent high contrast low-refresh display rate E-Ink devices,
with Wifi capability, that run embedded Linux in the
background. Depending on the model, an idle Kindle can last weeks
before needing a recharge. This makes them ideal as passive image
devices that can be configured easily using a few shell
scripts. Indeed, efforts have been made in dedicated hacker forums
to expose the Linux filesystem and to enable features such as
custom screensavers, SSH networking, and more. By exploiting these
features, and by carefully disabling the software/bloatware that
comes with the device, these Kindles have found new life as online
dashboard devices which can fetch and display information from the
internet at timely intervals.
Here we describe a tool to control multiple Kindle devices with a
single org-mode/shell-based tool, built initially to periodically
serve updated Emacs Org-Agenda views, but later expanded to produce
online local weather reports and work calendar, Emacs calendars
(calfw, org-gcal), daily dietary information (org-calories),
Org-Mode sparse TODO trees, miscellaneous image and text content
(via imagemagick), small messages, and much more.
In this talk, we show how to configure multiple Kindles with any
desired custom content, following any daily/weekly schedule, all
easily managed from Emacs within a single Org-Mode file.
# Outline
- 5-10 minutes:
1-3 mins
Talk about repurposing Kindles:
- Cheap second-hand wifi device, hackable
- Low-powered, long battery life, low refresh rate – perfect
for a dashboard
- Timely updated Org-Mode Agendas anyone?
- Reference to inspired projects (kindle-dashboard)
2-3 mins
Generate content
- A static text+picture image easily generated with imagemagick
wrapper
- An image of a sparse tree of org-mode TODO file
- An image of another emacs view (e.g. Calfw, or org-calories)
- Show post-processing for optimizing image for Kindles
1-2 mins
Configuration in a single org-mode file
- Defining Machines
- Defining Commands to generate content
- Defining Schedules to run Commands on multiple Machines at
specific points in the day
1-2 mins
Export and Run:
- Show exported shell configs and generated cronjobs
- Witness multiple Kindles producing desired content with wakeup
timers
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- 20 minutes:
4 mins
Repurposing Kindles
- Cheap second-hand wifi device, hackable
- Low-powered, long battery life, low refresh rate – perfect
for a dashboard!
- Reference to inspired projects (kindle-dashboard)
- Discuss Use Cases:
- Dynamic content: Org-Mode Agendas, Weather Reports, Web
Calendars
- Static content: Gallery, Motivational Messages
- Untapped potential
3 mins
Generate content
- A static text+picture image easily generated with imagemagick
wrapper
- An image of a sparse tree of org-mode TODO file
- An image of another emacs view (e.g. Calfw, or org-calories)
- Show post-processing for optimizing image for Kindles
4 mins
Configuration in a single org-mode file
- Defining Machines
- Defining Commands to generate content
- Types of commands
- Extending the commands with custom
- Defining Schedules to run Commands on multiple Machines at
specific points in the day
6 mins
Export and Run:
- Show exported shell configs and generated cronjobs
- Scripts and Design Considerations:
- Killing services (to keep amazon out)
- Iptables blocking (to keep amazon out)
- What SSH keys are shared and where (to keep amazon out)
- How the Sleep and Wakeup timers work
- Optimizing for longer battery life
- Eips and X
- Minimizing service checks
- Graph of number of screen updates per drop in battery life
- View many Kindles simultaneously in action
3 mins
Final Thoughts
- Limitations:
- Cannot interrupt a device's sleep, it wakes up only when you
last told it to
- Hard to see at night, invest in some LEDs maybe?
- Take back your devices!
- Name suggestions? "kindle-sync", "kindle-cluster",
- Something that won't be forced to change at a later date if
it becomes too notorious.
- Planned features
- Acknowledgments and Resources
- 40 minutes: N/A
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