KOReader plugin

A dashboard for your e-ink Kindle

Tinta turns an e-ink reader into an app dashboard: a home of widgets, a notification centre, and a sleep page that stays on screen and wakes only to refresh. Black and white, no animations. The demo below is the real layout, with made-up data.

GitHub Install

Tested on Kindle Basic 2Open source, AGPL-3.0

Kindle KT3 · 600 × 800 · portrait

Screens

Dashboard

Bundled apps

Sample apps for developers

Simulate the device

Orientation

Clock style

How to use

Tap the widgets, the bell, the clock or the bottom bar, as on the device.
Menu › Apps opens the launcher; Menu › Organize home opens the organizer.
Rows with several options (System › Sleep) open a choice popup. Tap outside it or press Esc to cancel.
Full screen shows only the device, as large as your display allows. Esc leaves it; ← → change screen.
The time is fixed (Friday, October 16, 14:32) so every screenshot comes out the same.

URL parameters

view: home yourapps central apps sleep sistema sleepcfg organizar relogio timer nota contagem bateria clima servidor modelo
land=1: Landscape.
style: Clock style, e.g. style=analogico.
samples=1: List the sample apps in Apps.
popup: idle after wake titles with view=sleepcfg; hidden with view=organizar (and org=sleep for the Sleep tab).
menu=1: Open the menu.
focus=1: Open straight into full screen.
shot=1: Only the screen, in real pixels, for the screenshots.

What Tinta is

Widgets, notifications and a sleep page

A platform on top of KOReader, which already handles the screen, touch, Wi-Fi and suspend. It is not an operating system.

A home of widgets

Clock, battery, notes, timers and countdowns in several sizes, from 1×1 to 4×4. Hold a widget to reorganize.

Notifications

A banner, a notification centre and a priority per app. The same message fires once, not on every refresh.

One Wi-Fi connection

Every app that is due refreshes over a single connection: Wi-Fi turns on, the apps run, Wi-Fi turns off.

A sleep page that wakes to refresh

The page stays on screen while the Kindle sleeps and wakes on its clock only to refresh. Measured on the KT3: about 4 to 5 mA suspended.

Write your own apps

An app is a small Lua folder. Tinta provides scheduling, settings screens, storage, network and widgets. See the SDK guide.

Battery estimates

A battery log with two estimates of the time left: at your recent real pace, sleep included, and awake with Wi-Fi.

Screenshots

Straight from the prototype

Every image is this page rendered at the real 600×800 pixels of the Kindle KT3.

Battery screen with two estimates — Battery

Home with three sample apps — Sample apps

Compatibility

Which devices work

Tinta was built for, and tested on, one device. The rest is expected to work but nobody has checked yet.

Kindle Basic 2 (KT3, 600×800)TestedComplete sleep and wake on the clock.
Other Kindles with KOReaderUntestedShould behave like the KT3 if the device accepts rtcWakeup.
Kobo with KOReaderExperimentalNot tested on hardware. Uses KOReader's own suspend and RTC support.
Other touch devicesUntestedGeneric backend: no scheduled wake-up, so the sleep page does not refresh by itself.

Apps run inside the KOReader process with full access to files, network and the device. Install only apps you trust.

Install

Four steps

Install KOReader on the device and check that it opens. A Kindle needs a jailbreak first; see the KOReader wiki.
Download tinta-<version>.zip from Releases and unzip it.
Copy the tinta.koplugin folder into koreader/plugins/ on the device, by USB or SSH.
Restart KOReader. Tinta appears in KOReader's main menu.

Get the latest release