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We’ve seen a fair number of hacks like this one that reuse a Kindle basically just for its ePaper display. [HaHaBird] has this device hanging on his refrigerator to display the weather and remind him about recycling day. It kind of make us wonder why we’re not seeing cheap ePaper modules on the hobby market?

The concept isn’t new, but [HaHaBird] does move it along just a little bit. He started by following the guide which [Matt] wrote after pulling off the original Kindle weather display hack. It uses a separate computer running a script that polls the Internet for weather data and generates a vector graphic like the one seen above. The Kindle then loads the image once every five minutes thanks to a cron job on the rooted device. But why stop there? [HaHaBird] tweaked the script to include a reminder about his municipality’s irregular recycling schedule.

Don’t overlook the quality of the hardware side of this hack. With its prominent place in the kitchen he wanted a nicely finished look. This was achieved by building a frame out of cherry and routing passages on the back to make room for the extension cable (so it could hang in landscape orientation) and a toggle to hold the Kindle firmly in place. Additional information on the build is available here.

I really wanted something like this to be part of Tabletop Day, so I commissioned these awesome print-and-paste-and-cutouts from my friend Lar Desouza (of Least I Could Do and Looking For Group fame, among other things).

Click to download a PDF of this image.

Click to download a PDF of this image.

These images are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license, so feel free to print them out, share them with people, and most of all … take pictures of them in action and submit to As Seen On Tabletop!

This amazing Boba Fett helmet lamp was made by the guys from Major League Mods, who had the great idea of providing instructions on how to build one yourself over at Instructables.com.

[Major League Mods | Instructables.com]

A company called Lumilor has announced a permanent electroluminescent paint that can be selectively illuminated by applying a charge to it. Burning Man attendees are already familiar with the ubiquitous, cheap EL wire, but this takes things to a new level:

The LumiLor TM electroluminescent coating system is a patent-pending, practical, durable and affordable technology that can be illuminated with a simple electrical current.

Used in conjunction with simple driver electronics, LumiLor will illuminate any surface brightly, and is capable of being custom-animated to flash in sequenced, strobed, and sound activated modes.

The potential for customization is practically limitless!

ABOUT LUMILOR (via JWZ)

If hardware manufacturers want to keep their firmware crippling a secret, perhaps they shouldn’t mess with Linux users? We figure if you’re using Linux you’re quite a bit more likely than the average Windows user to crack something open and see what’s hidden inside. And so we get to the story of how [Gnif] figured out that the NVIDIA GTX690 can be hacked to perform like the Quadro K5000. The thing is, the latter costs nearly $800 more than the former!

[Gnif] wanted the card for gaming and to support multiple monitors. It has no problem driving up to three screens under Windows. But the Linux drivers only allow this on the professional counterpart to the GTX690, the Quadro K5000. It turns out that the card responds to a device ID as assigned by a series of analog values. These can be tweaked by swapping, yanking, or adding resistors in just the right places. As with that Agilent multimeter unlock of his which we saw a few days ago, he somehow managed to figure out the secret sauce that unlocks the power hidden in this card.