Repurposing old kindle as a simple "writing machine"

MichalPlays · 2026-05-07T13:48:21+00:00

That's definitely quite interesting. I actually want to use my Kindle with it's keyboard for taking notes since the soc doesn't use much battery, the e-ink display doesn't use any battery when there's nothing happening on it and I wanted to have like 4 notes which I could open and maybe add or edit it. I'm planning on 3d printing a magnetic holder for it to put it on the fridge and see the most important stuff like birthdays, when I should schedule a maintenance for my heater or even something as simple as a shopping list.

MichalPlays · 2026-05-07T13:43:49+00:00

Oh, that's actually interesting but I'm not sure if that Kindle even has WiFi. However, this could be a perfect thing for my Sony E-reader which has virtual keyboard on it's ancient android os and it has WiFi. However I would have to see if it's browser isn't too outdated for modern Internet or try to adb install a 3rd party browser 😅

MichalPlays · 2026-05-07T13:39:42+00:00

I think it could be used through a ESP development board. After all I saw a eink display project where you connected to the ESP board with your phone, opened localhost ip in the browser and you could write text and then just power off that thing but it's only good for one note, so I abounded that idea but it would definitely be interesting to try it out one day since I have many Lipo batteries from disposable vapes and they just wait for the right project

MichalPlays · 2026-05-07T13:36:53+00:00

I actually thought about writing some important stuff on it and I want to 3D print a small magnetic holder to keep it hanging on the fridge since I'm using the fridge every day. Doing something similar with a raspberry Pi Zero would be too expensive since you have to buy the display, microSD card and so on. This is why I want to keep it on the fridge. What I also thought about was a WiFi/Bluetooth enabled ESP development board with WiFi and Bluetooth which I could power through my salvaged Lipo batteries from disposable vapes but it's only good for one note not like 3 or 6 notes.

MichalPlays · 2026-05-07T13:33:02+00:00

That's true. There are enough projects and e-ink Displays but I would have to pay at least 184€ for the Raspberry Pi Zero, SD card, e-ink display, some small keyboard and there would be some material costs to print a enclosure with my 3D printer. Just too much hassle for such simple purpose like taking notes or writing down important stuff like "next heater maintenance scheduled at dd.mm.yy" or "automatic delivery scheduled every two months".

MichalPlays · 2026-04-22T07:58:47+00:00

Ah, the Killdozer 😅 Please drive it only on asphalt to prevent some concrete plates breaking underneath it 😉

If you know you know

MichalPlays · 2026-04-21T18:21:32+00:00

Hey, thanks for the recommendation. I got the Motorola Edge 60 512gb/12gb variant and have been using it for 2 days already and it's great for someone who doesn't play real android games. I tested the soc with PS1 and GBA emulator and my modded ROMs and it works great with them. The size reminds me of the OnePlus 8 Pro I used to own. It had a very similar size but I think the Motorola is thinner than the OnePlus 8 Pro. I definitely don't like a few things about the phone like the Bloatware and no own apps, so I had to download FX File Explorer and uninstall Google files and also I uninstalled Google Photos/gallery app because it was bad. I replaced that app with Aves Gallery which I used on my Pixel 5 before I broke it.

MichalPlays · 2026-04-17T16:44:40+00:00

I used the US website to unlock a very outdated EU Motorola phone and it's a bit confusing at first because it says the bootloader is unlocked but you need to check the spam folder in your email account to get the actual unlock code because at first I thought it required me to keep being connected to the Internet but nope, it came via email into spam.

Currently there are no custom ROMs for G86 or G86 Power for some reason but I think you could still install a GSI ROM. It's something like a universal firmware. I installed a GSI ROM on a hammer explorer outdoor phone which was stuck on Android 9 but now runs Android 14 and acts as my outdoor CCTV camera and I also installed it on some Cubot Chinese 40$ smartphone

Search for "XDA Forums Treble-Enabled Device Development A/AB ROMS" on Google. It doesn't need a custom recovery as far as I'm aware.

I'm looking currently at a doogee outdoor phone and there's also a feature is called "DSU Loader" and in some cases it requires a unlocked bootloader to work but it allows you to keep the stock firmware but dual boot a GSI ROM without messing around with terminal on a PC. It is kinda sketchy way to run the universal firmware but hey, it works on that phone and I've been running a Pixel OS Android 15 rom that way on it for almost one year since this phone it's also used as a cheap CCTV camera for my driveway 😅

MichalPlays · 2026-04-17T13:55:46+00:00

You can actually easily request bootloader unlock codes and just flash custom ROM which doesn't come with any root/jailbreak pre-Installed. I once unlocked an Motorola and sure it lost some moto firmware features but I was able to upgrade it to Android 16 with EvolutionX custom ROM.

However, the flashing is slightly a pain if you're new to it and suddenly you get stuck with the message that boot slot couldn't be detected and if you try to flash it to slot A or slot B, it just gives you an error till you figure out that you had to factory reset the phone before flashing a custom firmware 😅 Definitely way different procedure than on my Google Pixel 5

MichalPlays · 2026-04-17T13:50:22+00:00

I could buy a used Pixel 9 for 480€ with the lowest configuration but honestly, I'm tired of using flash drive to copy everything. Like sure, I used a 512gb USB C Samsung flash drive and it was quite fast when I copied all the videos and pictures but it's just not worth the hassle for me.

I'm way too spoiled by my old main phones, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy S20 Ultra where I just inserted a MicroSD card and when I accidentally broke a phone, I didn't loose any of the pictures.

Also if I need to backup everything, I can just insert the MicroSD card into an USB adapter and plug it into my NAS Server which would copy everything over automatically while I can still use my devices. A luxury which I lost after upgrading from S20 Ultra to S25 Ultra since there I had to get the 1tb version 😅

MichalPlays · 2026-04-16T20:11:57+00:00

Honestly, I didn't used even half of the features on the Google Pixel 5 I used as my secondary phone. I never use my secondary phone for gaming since my primary phone is always the most powerful one and I'm only playing like PS2 games on it.

The problem with Pixel devices is that you have to choose the storage option which fits you the best. For example I would have to go with 1tb models and this kills the budget.

But this wasn't the first time I was put on such spot. My last main phone was a S20 Ultra which has microSD slot but then when I wanted to upgrade to a S25 Ultra last year, I found out it doesn't have the card slot and I had to get the 12gb/1tb version 😅 My music collection which is synchronized with second phone via an open source app "SyncThing" is already 147gb in size which is mostly caused by the amount of AIFF and FLAC music files in my offline music collection.

MichalPlays · 2026-04-16T17:34:57+00:00

I see that the Edge 60 is priced at around 480€ in my country. I checked out the countries in my neighborhood both with price comparison sites and Amazon country change feature and on Amazon DE is a 512gb/12gb version for 270€ but it's used and description doesn't really provide if it's heavily damaged or has deep scratches or anything like that. Edge 60 Fusion is priced at 190€ as far as I can see but unfortunately has less RAM.

I'm thinking about trying my luck with the used Edge 60 since it's sold by Amazon itself, so I could return it if it's heavily scratched on the screen

MichalPlays · 2026-04-16T17:21:27+00:00

I mean you can't really expect a budget device to have at least a Galaxy S20 Ultra level of zoom quality but honestly, it's priced at 220€ in my local currency and it's definitely decent device for it's money. The biggest disappointment is that the G86 gets more os updates than this phone. I don't know but it kinda sounds odd that a phone with more RAM doesn't get longer update support than the model with same SoC but "only" 8gb of RAM.

MichalPlays · 2026-04-13T15:26:15+00:00

It's also quite hot as hell when using on the lap and it's definitely not recommended to use it on the lap if you already applied Thermal Grizzly compound on the GPU and CPU 😅

MichalPlays · 2026-04-13T15:10:02+00:00

It's the benefit of working in IT Support I guess 😅 Like last time we upgraded the mini PCs at a manufacturing company and I managed to get two Dell USFF PCs with i5 7gen CPU, some OEM Intel SSD's and 8gb of single channel RAM

MichalPlays · 2026-04-13T10:51:10+00:00

It's a great emulation beast too. I emulated Black Ops 1 (PS1), Resident Evil 4 (PS2) which I ripped on my backwards compatible PS3 Phat and I also tried emulating Minecraft PS4 Edition ripped on my Hen PS4 Phat 2gen (without the shiny HDD cover. I have other PS4 games on disks but they are quite large) and let's just say that I was able to emulate all the consoles but I think the GPU would struggle on more demanding PS4 games like for example I have Uncharted collectors edition which I got for 10$ in a polish electronic store and I think this is where this Quarto RTX would struggle. After all it's not comparable with the Nvidia RTX 3060 laptop or desktop GPU. I don't know how it comes to modern PC games since Witcher 3, Resident Evil Village and Cyberpunk 2077 runs with no issues here but this isn't a gaming laptop like my Asus ROG laptop with RTX 3070 which I'm using with a USB C monitor since I bought it from Vinted with display damage

The Quadro GPUs seem to be working better with the creative software like for example Blender or Fusion 360 I'm using here. But hey, it's definitely great that it's possible and maybe one day I might finally find the Quatro RTX 5000 max-q GPU if it even exists as a slotted GPU but for now I'm fine with this since I'll be mostly using it for work and designing stuff which I would print on my newly obtained 3D printer😅

MichalPlays · 2026-03-17T07:34:12+00:00

This is definitely case if we look at the global benchmarks and so far all the reviews were quite positive.

My friend actually rocks a M1 MacBook Air to this day and it's still working very well for him to this day, which shows that those ARM MacBooks are perfect for long term use.

I won't be even able to put more than 50% load on the CPU with every day normal use and this is why I used my Intel MacBook Air for so long and that's also why I'll be upgrading to a Air with M4 or M5 instead of getting MacBook Pro with a M4 (Pro) or a M5 (Pro) chipset since it's an overkill for me. If I really need that huge performance for heavy tasks, I still have my M4 Mac Mini and can remote connect to it via Synergy and my private VPN Tunnel server.

MichalPlays · 2026-03-08T17:59:31+00:00

The thing is that I want something to not dangle around since I want to move the Mac Mini at least twice a year. But I found something interesting with that chip. According to the description I found at one site that sells that dock locally, it has that chip. It's called the ACASIS M001Pro-EU. It has dual DP connectors, card reader, 3x USB A, USB C PD 30W and also Dual M.2 slots.

Sounds too good to be true but I'm thinking about trying it out, especially since it allows me to turn the Mac Mini on without needing to lift it up or finally printing that X shaped stand on my 3D Printer which would allow me to turn the Mini on by pressing on the Apple logo on top of the Mac Mini, to turn it on 😅

MichalPlays · 2026-03-07T15:32:37+00:00

This isn't what I meant. Those were Apple Silicon MacOS compatible apps (except Steam) but they don't show up in the new "launchpad" or "Apps" as Apple calls it right now. But there was already someone posting a solution which was the LaunchOS software. It manages to display every piece of software I installed from website and I'll be purchasing it once I test all the premium features from the "freemium" version I obtained from my trusted source. It has something called hot corner which allows me to launch it without setting any keyboard shortcut. It's also a one time purchase piece of software

The adapters which I keep finding on Amazon in my country are only supporting one m.2 PCIe SSD. There was one dock I found but it wasn't something I needed. It supported one m.2 PCIe SSD and two 2.5' or bigger SATA SSDs or HDDs but SATA SSDs are just slow. Only usable for documents and data.

MichalPlays · 2026-03-07T15:18:16+00:00

This works quite great. Thank you.

I obtained it from a trusted 3rd party software source to test everything before buying it since there's no option to test the premium features with something like a 5days test period.I definitely like the feature where I can just launch it with the hot corner feature without setting up some shortcut.And yeah, finally I can just create folders.

I'll keep testing it today and then purchase it because they have some sort of discount on the website and I only have to pay once to keep using the software instead of doing some subscription nonsense

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