Glo HD Kobo as a photo frame

[ovr11325]

Hello,

I'm just starting out with my Kobo and I'm delighted to discover this forum!
I'm surprised not to see more projects similar to a photo frame.

I'm trying to reproduce the following post from a blog:
https://sandropaganotti.com/2023/10/...al-photo-frame

My local server that processes my images is ready,
I'm just trying to make a script, which runs on the kobo, to download the image from the server, and display it on the screen.

According to what I read, the line of code "echo "1" > /sys/class/graphics/fb0/rotate" was functional on a kobo glo, but not on HD models with 32-bit screen.
I'd like to know if anyone knows how to display a photo from a local server on the kobo screen (on standard firmware, patched for telnet).

Thanks in advance for your help

[NiLuJe]

FBInk also ships with an utility that will allow you to painlessly deal with the insanity that is framebuffer layouts on Kobo.

e.g., at a glance at what's happening here, something like `fbdepth -R CW`.

On the upside, fbink itself will also allow you to display an actual sane image format (i.e., PNG) without having to do the insane and messy conversion to the matching raw pixel format that's happening in that link.

(Which, btw, is not "proprietary", it's RGB565 ;p [for the device in question; all Kobos still boot @ 16bpp, but it's been quite a few years now since Nickel itself moved to RGB32 @ 32bpp. Since pickel is designed for that early recovery & boot progress bar stage, it still targets that legacy layout, though. TL;DR: Don't, just use fbink )

[NiLuJe]

Originally Posted by ovr11325

patched for telnet

Because this also made me fear for whatever legacy horror you might have put your device through, you don't need *any* patching for *telnet* access, Nickel itself enables that on its own once in Developer mode (enter devmodeon in the search bar).

(IIRC, there are also a few NickelMenu snippets in the NM thread for a "telnet only" standalone toggle).

[elinkser]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Because this also made me fear for whatever legacy horror you might have put your device through, you don't need *any* patching for *telnet* access, Nickel itself enables that on its own once in Developer mode (enter devmodeon in the search bar).

(IIRC, there are also a few NickelMenu snippets in the NM thread for a "telnet only" standalone toggle).

Maybe I was imagining things but I thought I saw a "EnableDebugServices" in DeveloperSettings], in the /mnt/onboard/.kobo/Kobo/Kobo eReader.conf file, that enables automatic starts of telnet, EVEN IF DEVMODEOFF.

The weird thing is - when did that setting get there? Is it possible it was always there and I just never noticed?
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=353810

* Edit: Mobileread wiki explained it:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...44&postcount=5

I hadn't even realized that ForceWifiOn waa now possible in DEVMODEOFF until Sublipri mentioned it a few days ago.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...7&postcount=31

[NiLuJe]

I wouldn't know anything else about the actual behavior of the native telnet support, as I always have SSH running instead. (and that includes a telnetd that takes precedence over Nickel's).

But, yeah, ForceWifi is standalone, that I can confirm .

[ovr11325]

Ok thanks, I will go for FbInk! It seems quite documented. And I guess, I may find others photo frame projects using FbInk :-)

[Fardenco]

I'm also interested, if you manage to make it work please tell it to me.
What I want to do is really similar from the technical point of view, but the end goal is different.
What I want is to use my Kobo as a dashboard for my home automation system. Since the integrated web browser is not able to render the dashboard for some reason, I'm generating some kind of screenshots of the dashboard directly on the server, and now I only need to display them on the kobo.
My first idea was to create a really simple web page on the server with just the image taking all the screen and some js to make the page reload every 30sec to get the last version of the screenshot. It worked, I was able to display the page in fullscreen, everything looked great, but for some reason the kobo seems to always crash after some time when doing that, so I need to find another solution

[ovr11325]

Hi Fardenco,

I never finished this project but I'm quiet sure I have everything to do it.
In the end, my setup is:
A daemon that runs on a raspberry pi, transfer an image by sftp to the internal memory of the reader, and the execute via ssh a command Fbink the display the image.

It's quiet simple, the kobo just follow the instruction from the server.
The issue: the kobo can't go into low energy mode (can't turn wifi off,...)

for the code that runs on servers, some GPT model can generate if for you (but I can provide you a copy if you want)

[Fardenco]

Hi, I got something working, I'm able to display any image I want in fullscreen, but my issue is that some background items like the clock are refreshing parts of the screen, ruining my images until the next time I call fbink
Did you run into the same problem ? Did you find a workaround ?
Thanks

[ericcastro]

hey, maybe you already figured this out, but killing these processes will stop kobo from refreshing/adding anything on the screen:

killall -q -TERM nickel hindenburg sickel fickel strickel fontickel adobehost foxitpdf iink dhcpcd-dbus dhcpcd bluealsa bluetoothd fmon nanoclock.lua

stole from koreader.sh in koreader github. note you can't just kill nickel because one of these other processes seems to be acting as a watchdog restarting the device if nickel is unresponsive

NiLuJe probably knows which one that is, but using that was enough for me

(I have my own photo frame that refreshes with silly randomly AI-generated characters with my face on them )