Revive Your Old E-Ink Tablet For Timetable Helper Duty

In our drawers, there is gonna be quite a couple of aged equipment that we’ve neglected about, and perhaps we ought to make them perform for us alternatively. [Jonatron] uncovered a Nook Basic Contact in his drawer – with its E-ink screen, wi-fi connectivity and a workable Android model, this e-reader from 2011 has the guts for often-on display screen duty. Regrettably, the gentle touch masking on the back again disintegrated into a sticky mess, as gentle contact does, the LiIon battery has gone flat, and the computer software support’s lackluster. Each of these are probable to occur for a ton of tablets, which is why we’re happy [Jonatron] has shared his tale about this e-reader’s revival.

The smooth contact layer on the back did not go absent with assistance of alcohol, but by sheer luck, an acetone bottle was nearby, and an acetone scrub helped get rid of the unpleasant stickiness. The tablet’s charging circuitry turned out to be unsophisticated – the tablet would not boot from MicroUSB enter, and [Jonathan] wired up 5 volts from a USB cable straight into the battery input. Head you, this may possibly not be recommended, as Lithium-Ion battery selection is from 3 volts to 4.2 volts and a regulator would be known as for, but [Jonatron] suggests it’s been functioning just fantastic.

Commonly, you could just set a webserver on your nearby network and provide a site with valuable information, including code to refresh the web page periodically – but the Nook’s browser did not guidance automated refreshes. Not to be stopped, [Jonatron] wrote an application for the Nook’s Android set up alternatively rooting was required but went seamlessly. The Android set up is outdated, and Android Studio for it is no for a longer time downloadable, so he applied an older enhancement toolkit by some means nevertheless out there on the web. There is even now a smaller Python-prepared webserver managing on a spare Pi, conditioning the info for the application to fetch. Adhering to very best hacker traditions, the two the application and the server are open-sourced! With enable of a 3D printed stand, this pill now shows teach departure schedules – ideal software for an outdated e-reader like this.

Acquired a Nook Very simple Contact in a drawer? Now you know you can conveniently change it into a hackable E-ink display! We’ve witnessed several pill restorations just before, replacing charger ICs and eMMC drives, turning them into videophones to chat with our kinfolk and sensible home controllers, and there’s even fix databases to assistance you in your revival endeavours. We have been finding really a number of tasks like these in our very last Hackaday Prize installment, Hack It Back again, and we hope to see much more such rebuilds for our Wildcard spherical!