Revive Your Old E-Ink Tablet For Timetable Helper Duty

In our drawers, there is gonna be pretty a couple of aged products that we’ve neglected about, and possibly we ought to make them work for us as a substitute. [Jonatron] observed a Nook Straightforward Touch in his drawer – with its E-ink display, wireless connectivity and a workable Android variation, this e-reader from 2011 has the guts for constantly-on display duty. Unfortunately, the soft contact covering on the back disintegrated into a sticky mess, as smooth touch does, the LiIon battery has absent flat, and the software support’s lackluster. Each of these are likely to transpire for a large amount of tablets, which is why we’re happy [Jonatron] has shared his story about this e-reader’s revival.

The smooth contact layer on the again didn’t go absent with enable of alcoholic beverages, but by sheer luck, an acetone bottle was nearby, and an acetone scrub assisted get rid of the uncomfortable stickiness. The tablet’s charging circuitry turned out to be unsophisticated – the tablet wouldn’t boot from MicroUSB enter, and [Jonathan] wired up 5 volts from a USB cable straight into the battery input. Thoughts you, this could possibly not be advised, as Lithium-Ion battery selection is from 3 volts to 4.2 volts and a regulator would be known as for, but [Jonatron] claims it is been doing the job just fantastic.

Ordinarily, you could just place a webserver on your nearby network and provide a web site with valuable information, incorporating code to refresh the web site periodically – but the Nook’s browser didn’t assist automatic refreshes. Not to be stopped, [Jonatron] wrote an app for the Nook’s Android set up as an alternative rooting was necessary but went seamlessly. The Android put in is old, and Android Studio for it is no for a longer period downloadable, so he utilised an more mature improvement toolkit somehow even now offered on-line. There is nevertheless a compact Python-penned webserver working on a spare Pi, conditioning the details for the application to fetch. Following greatest hacker traditions, both the app and the server are open up-sourced! With assistance of a 3D printed stand, this pill now displays educate departure schedules – fantastic application for an previous e-reader like this.

Received a Nook Uncomplicated Contact in a drawer? Now you know you can effortlessly convert it into a hackable E-ink display! We have viewed many pill restorations ahead of, changing charger ICs and eMMC drives, turning them into videophones to chat with our family and clever property controllers, and there is even repair service databases to aid you in your revival initiatives. We have been getting quite a handful of tasks like these in our very last Hackaday Prize installment, Hack It Back again, and we hope to see much more these kinds of rebuilds for our Wildcard round!