Kindlomino: A 'Now Playing' viewer for Volumio on a jailbroken Kindle

Code and instructions for an easy-on-the-eye ePaper display that talks to a kind-to-the-ear, bit-perfect music player. All of the musical heavy lifting is done by Volumio. The code sets up a socket connection, listens for changes and updates the information displayed on a jailbroken Kindle.

References

This project is based on the original palomino project and this blog post.

Logic of the script

The kindlomino.py script is using a socketIO library to listen to changes in the track information provided by the Volumio server. The information is then converted into a PNG with the respective resolution of the kindle display. This image is send to the kindle with scp using a USB network connection. After that the kindle native tool eips is used to display the image, which is triggered using ssh. Admittedly a bit hacky, but it gets the job done :)

Hardware

Volumio server: This is covered in detail elsewhere, but the tl;dr is

• Pi Zero2 and JustBoom Digi Zero pHAT

Track Viewer:

• Pi Zero2 (or essentially any recent Pi; the script can also be run on the Pi that is running the Volumio server itself)
• Kindle Touch (Kindle 5, 600x800 px) or any other Kindle that can be jailbroken to enable USB networking.

Prerequisites

• A Working Volumio server on your LAN
• A Pi Zero running Raspbian
• Kindle that can be jailbroken

Preparation of the Kindle

DISCLAIMER: When attempting a jailbreak you may brick your device. Do at your own risk.

This is a short overview which is specific to the Kindle Touch with firmware version between 5.0.x and 5.4.4.2 to install the jailbreak and enable USB networking. However, it is also possible to do with many other models and frmware versions. For more information it is recommended to dig into the mobileread wiki and forum. The most important point of entries are here, here, and here. All the important downloads are compiled in NiLuJe's snapshot thread.

Steps:

1. Install jailbreak (detailed info here)
   1. Connect your Kindle to your PC
   2. Download the K5 JailBreak package from here. Extract the content of the download. In the JailBreak dir you will find a kindle-5.4-jailbreak.zip. The content of this zip needs to be extracted and copied to the root diectory of the Kindle.
   3. Eject and unplug Kindle
   4. On Kindle go to Home -> Menu -> Settings -> Menu -> Update Your Kindle. Note that the updater won't run which is normal, but the info **JAILBREAK** will appear.
2. Install Jailbreak hotfix (detailed info here)
   1. Reconnect Kindle to PC
   2. Download and extract the K5 JailBreak Hotfix package from here
   3. Copy Update_jailbreak_hotfix_1.16.N_install.bin to the root directory of the Kindle
   4. Eject and unplug Kindle
   5. On Kindle go to Home -> Menu -> Settings -> Menu -> Update Your Kindle and the update should run successfully
3. Install KUAL to be able to install extensions (detailed info here)
   1. Reconnect Kindle to PC
   2. Download the package KUAL from here and extract
   3. Place the KUAL-KDK-2.0.azw2 file in the documents/ directory of the Kindle
   4. Eject and unplug Kindle
   5. KUAL should now appear in the Kindle library
4. Add MRPI as KUAL extension (detailed info here and here -> section KUAL extensions)
   1. Reconnect Kindle to PC
   2. Download MR Package Installer from here
   3. Extract and copy the extensions and the mrpackages directories into the Kindle root
5. Install USBNewtork using MRPI (detailed info here)
   1. Download USBNetwork Hack from here and extract the content. Then copy the Update_usbnet_0.22.N_install_touch_pw.bin file into the mrpackages directory created in step 4.3
   2. Eject and unplug Kindle
   3. Open KUAL from the library and click the Install MR Packages in the KUAL Helper menu
6. Finally to enable USB networking, on the home screen of your kindle enter ;un in the search bar and press enter

Note: it might be a good idea to turn off WiFi on the Kindle to prevent OTA updates to revert the jailbreak.

Connecting to the Kindle from the Pi

Note: Default configuration of the Pi and the Kindle are assumed here and the IPs 192.168.15.201 (Pi as host) and 192.168.15.244 (Kindle) are used and expected by kindlomino.py.

• Connect the Kindle to te Pi via USB

• Being logged into the Raspberry Pi you want to use to control the Kindle, open the terminal and type: ifconfig usb0 del 192.168.15.201

• The output of ifconfig should look similar to this:

usb0:0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.15.201  netmask 255.255.0.0  broadcast 169.254.255.255
        ether XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)

• Then try to connect to the Kindle: ssh [email protected]. You can then connect by entering any password and even an empty one. Note that to be able to connect with any password you might need to turn off WiFi on the Kindle.

• If the last step worked we need to write this configuration on every boot of the Raspberry Pi. To do that add the following line into /etc/rc.local:

(sleep 60; ifconfig usb0 del 192.168.15.201)&

Installation on the Pi

All of this takes place on dedicated Pi Zero2 or the Pi Zero2 running the volumio server.

First install some dependencies:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install sshpass

From your home directory, clone the repository

git clone [email protected]:pfille/kindlomino.git
cd kindlomino

then install the required modules using python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt then move to the directory and copy the example config file and tailor to your needs:

cp config_example.yaml config.yaml

You can then edit config.yaml file to set the name of your server. Once that's done, you can run the code using the command:

python3 kindlomino.py

After a few seconds, the screen will show the track currently playing on your Volumio server.

Add Autostart

Once you've got a working instance of the code, you will probably want it to start automatically every time you power up. You can use systemd to start the code as a service on boot.

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/kindlomino.service
[Unit]
Description=kindlomino
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 -u /home/pi/kindlomino/kindlomino.py
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/kindlomino/
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
User=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Now, simply enable the service you just made and reboot...

sudo systemctl enable kindlomino.service
sudo systemctl start kindlomino.service

sudo reboot

Licence

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3.0