It’s definitely worth a close look, even if you just take some of the concepts of this project to get your own Kindle repurposing idea off the ground. But the fact that you can plug any HDMI device into the “base station” and have the video sent out to one or more Kindles is undeniably impressive. In the video after the break you can see that the end result looks pretty impressive, even if there is a considerable delay involved.ĭespite the demonstration has put together for OkMonitor, we can’t say we’d watch many films over this setup.
The converted video is streamed over WiFi to the jailbroken Kindle with netcat, where it’s displayed by a native video player. But the high-level idea is that a Raspberry Pi 4 with a simple USB HDMI capture device takes the video input and converts it on the fly to a scaled down Kindle-friendly format. There’s quite a bit going on behind the scenes in OkMonitor, which describes through a slideshow on the project page. As the name implies, the best you can hope to get from this solution is an OK monitor.
HOW TO USE A KINDLE FIRE AS SECOND MONITOR SOFTWARE
Using a somewhat dizzying combination of software and hardware, he’s figured out a way to turn an older Kindle Paperwhite into a plug-and-play HDMI monitor. Bending the Kindle software to your whims introduces its own unique challenges of course, but with a little tweaking, an old e-reader can live again as whatever you wish it to be.Ĭase in point, the OkMonitor project by. Especially when you consider the Kindle includes a battery, case, and electronics to drive the display. Even with the recent price reductions on stand-alone panels, picking up a used Kindle is still arguably the most cost effective way to get your hands on a large electronic paper display.