Literary Clock

An old Kobo eReader repurposed as a literary clock: every minute it shows a book quote containing the current time, plus the local weather. Tap the screen for a different quote for the same minute.

Nothing is permanent — remove the startup hook and reboot to get the stock Kobo back.

The dead pixels in the center are from a drop, not the software.

Device

Kobo Touch N905C (i.MX507 ARMv7, 600x800 eInk, Linux 2.6.35, BusyBox), with an SD card holding the scripts and data.

How it works

On boot, a udev hook (stuff.sh, from NiLuJe's usbnet package) launches litclock-start.sh, which waits for the SD card, stops the stock Kobo UI (nickel), rotates the screen to landscape and starts the daemons under the litclock-run.sh respawn supervisor:

• litclock.sh — the clock loop. Picks a random quote for the current HH:MM from quotes.csv, renders it with FBInk, refetches weather from wttr.in hourly, inverts the screen at night, and does a full refresh every 5 minutes to clear eInk ghosting.
• touch_watcher — compiled from touch_watcher.c; signals the clock to redraw when the screen is tapped.
• litclock-drain.sh — reads nickel's hardware-status FIFO so stock event handlers don't hang once nickel is gone.

Setup

1. Install NiLuJe's USBNet/SSH package (copy KoboRoot.tgz to /mnt/onboard/.kobo/ and reboot). It provides SSH, FBInk and the boot hook.
2. Put the FBInk binary and NotoSerif fonts under /mnt/sd/koreader/ (both ship with KOReader).
3. Replace /usr/local/stuff/bin/stuff.sh on the device with usr/local/stuff/bin/stuff.sh from this repo, which adds the clock launch.
4. From your computer: make deploy KOBO=<ip> (copies everything else, including litclock-start.sh).

Set CITY in litclock.sh for your weather; the font variables at the top of the same file control the typeface.

Development

make check     # syntax-check scripts and validate quotes.csv
make preview   # run the clock loop in your terminal with a stub fbink
make deploy KOBO=<ip>
make watcher-docker   # rebuild touch_watcher (static musl ARM) without a toolchain

Changes take effect on the next minute, no reboot needed. quotes.csv is pipe-delimited:

HH:MM|time phrase|full quote text|Book Title|Author Name

On the device

The SD card mounts read-only; run mount -o remount,rw /mnt/sd before editing anything on it. To restart the clock by hand (kill the supervisor first, or it restarts whatever you kill):

killall litclock-run.sh litclock.sh touch_watcher litclock-drain.sh nickel sickel sickel-launcher 2>/dev/null
mount -o remount,rw /mnt/sd
setsid nohup /mnt/sd/litclock-run.sh /mnt/sd/litclock-drain.sh > /dev/null 2>&1 &
setsid nohup /mnt/sd/litclock-run.sh /mnt/sd/touch_watcher > /dev/null 2>&1 &
setsid nohup /mnt/sd/litclock-run.sh /mnt/sd/litclock.sh 2>> /tmp/litclock.log &

Logs go to /tmp/litclock.log.

Warnings

• Never press Home + Power together — it triggers a recovery reformat that wipes your changes.
• Don't install untested KoboRoot.tgz packages — a bad rcS means a boot loop.
• Don't delete hindenburg — it's nickel's watchdog; the device reboots about a minute later.

Old firmware for recovery: pgaskin.net/KoboStuff.

License

The code is MIT. The quote dataset descends from the Guardian's crowd-sourced collection and stays under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 (non-commercial, share-alike, attribution required). See LICENSE.

Credits

• FBInk and the usbnet package by NiLuJe
• Quotes from Jaap Meijers's dataset (originally the Guardian's), with gaps filled from JohannesNE, cdmoro and kapoorankush
• KOReader for the prebuilt FBInk binary and NotoSerif fonts