Kindle Weather

STOP, THIS WILL BRICK YOUR KINDLE, ONLY FOR LINUX GEEK.

UNLESS YOU KNOW ALL THE FOLLOWING LINUX COMMANDS, GO AWAY, THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

Big Thanks to Matthew Petroff for his sharing.

This project is fully based on the project shared by Matthew Petroff: http://mpetroff.net/2012/09/kindle-weather-display/

Without his kind share of this great work, my kindle 3 might still sleep in the dust.

The changes I made:

• Use crontab instead of kite or stop powerd by changing the suspend_levels.

• Reorganized the weather_script.py by spliting weather API out.

• Change weather-script-preprocess.svg to fit the weather API.

• Warn user when low battery(less than 10%)

• I tried to change weather-script-preprocess.svg to use <image> tag for external image which allow me to easily change the icon, but I failed to at the rsvg-convert point. So still in embedded way.

License

• The code is in MIT license.
• The weather_script.py file is based on the work of Matthew Petroff 2012, MIT license.
• The weather-script-preprocess.svg and its embedded icon are under CC0 Public Domain Dedication license by Matthew Petroff also. I(Gris Ge) did small change to fit the weather.com API.

Pre-requirements

• Kindle 3 wireless (Only tested on this one).
• The API key from weather.com
• Kindle Jailbreak and USB network.
• A kindle WIFI accessible Linux server with python2 pngcrush librsvg2-tools.

HowTo

Kindle Side

Jailbreak your Kindle and install USB network.

• The above wiki pages works on me. The tips would be disable wifi at the initial login, then change root password, change ssh config to allow wifi login, set as auto start, reboot.

Install weather display script

• Edit the URL in display-weather.sh by pointing to your own http server.
• Create folder mkdir /mnt/base-us/weather.
• Make sure kindle root mount point is writeable mntroot rw
• scp display-weather.sh root@k3w:/usr/bin/
• Make sure display-weather.sh is executable via chmod +x on kindle.

Setup crontab

• Execute mntroot rw.

• Add this line into /etc/crontab/root

  5 6-22 * * * /usr/bin/display-weather.sh
  

• Changed above line to suit your needs.

Keep your kindle connected to a USB power during use.

• I(Gris Ge) don't suggest your to hack kindle in order to stop the auto suspend, you might face batter drain. Please collect your kindle to a USB charger always.

Reboot your kindle via reboot command.

Server Side

Install httpd daemon.

• sudo yum install httpd pngcrush librsvg2-tools python2 -y
• sudo systemctl enable httpd
• sudo systemctl start httpd

Create weather output folder with correct permission.

• sudo mkdir /var/www/html/weather
• sudo chmod 777 /var/www/html/weather/ or use chown.

Setup crontab

• Create a script named as kindle_weather.sh like below:

export KW_INCLUDE_SCI=1

^ Include China Shanghai Composite index.

export KW_LATITUDE=30.6586 export KW_LONGTITUDE=104.0647

^ If you have airport in your city, use something like KW_AIRPORT=CTU

instead

export KW_WEATHER_KEY="<I_WILL_NOT_TELL_YOU>"

^ Weather.com API key

export KW_AQI_CITY="chengdu"

^ aqicn.org city name.

export KW_LANSCAPE_LEFT=1

^ Lanscape left mode(usb port at your right side).

KW_LANSCAPE_RIGHT for usb port at your left side.

export KW_OUTPUT="/var/www/html/weather/weather.png"

/home/fge/Source/kindle-weather/weather_script.py ```

• Add this line to crontab -e to refresh weather every 30 minutes during 6AM to 10PM:

0,30 6-22 * * * /home/fge/bin/kindle_weather.sh 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null ```

Create initial weather PNG

• Invoke <PATH>/weather_script.py <API_KEY> <LAT> <LON>.
• Check whether you can get the weather png via: http://<your_server_hostname>/weather/weather.png

TODO

• Include a TODO list or note.

Contact

• https://github.com/cathay4t/kindle-weather/issues