A Rasberry Pi is a $35, hackable  mini-computer. An Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is a $119 eReader with long battery life and an outdoor viewable display. And if you poke around a bit, you’ll find it’s fairly hackable too.

So when developer Max Ogden was looking for a portable workstation that he could use outdoors, he decided to pair his Kindle Paperwhite with a Raspberry Pi to create a low-power workstation that could be used outdoors.

Kindleberry Wireless

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Kindle used as a Raspberry Pi display. But Ogden has posted instructions for using Amazon’s latest eReader with an E Ink display. He’s also created an entirely wireless system by adding WiFi and Bluetooth dongles to his Raspberry Pi.

That lets him pair both the Kindle and a keyboard to the Raspberry Pi using wireless connections (as well as a WiFi travel router).

Since all the components use low-power processors, everything can run for hours using a portable battery pack to power the Raspberry Pi.

You can find more details at Ogden’s website.

Theoretically it would be cheaper and easier to buy an OLPC XO Laptop for use on the go. But this is a pretty neat hack for anyone who already happens to have a Kindle and Raspberry Pi, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying one of the few laptops around which have truly sunlight readable displays.

via Hacker News

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8 replies on “Kindleberry Wireless: Using a Raspberry Pi and Kindle Paperwhite as a portable workstation”

  1. hi friends,
    i found in the below link states that raspberry pi is working with AA battery.Its really cool.

  2. there’s a market for large eink displays for us software developers. Too bad no one seems to be servicing it.

    1. I wouldn’t want to write code on a black and white screen. Also, the software you’re writing may need a higher refresh rates or at least testing the software on a slow refresh rate screen will be very annoying.

      1. Dual displays? Nicer-on-the-eyes e-ink on the left for coding, full color monstrosity on the right for testing the application. I’d love that setup.

  3. The Nook Simple Touch already runs android, can be rooted and is about as powerful as a Pi. Get USB host support going so you can have the Bt dongle for the external keyboard and you would have basically the same computing power, and full daylight viewing, with a lot less to carry around.

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