Add a Bluetooth terminal to your Kindle

posted Jan 31st 2010 9:03am by Mike Szczys
filed under: handhelds hacks

This is an Amazon Kindle DX with a Sparkfun Bluetooth Mate stuck in it. [Darron] hacked the two together in order to have a wireless serial terminal on the device. There are three big pads in the middle of the Kindle PCB labelled GND, RX and TX, making it easy to figure out those connections. Getting voltage was a bit more difficult. He managed to find 4V coming off of one side of the Kindle’s wakeup switch which works well because the Bluetooth Mate has a voltage regulator on board. To protect the Bluetooth module he modified it to pull-up the TX from the on-board regulated 3.3V rather than the 4V coming in from the Kindle.

He’s also been doing some software work on the device now that he has easy access to it. Along the lines of the Ubuntu-on-Kindle hack from September, he’s compiled QT for the Kindle and written a couple of programs such as Sudoku to show that it works.

Comments [6]

tagged: bluetooth, Bluetooth Mate, kindle, kindle dx, qt, sparkfun

6 Responses to Add a Bluetooth terminal to your Kindle

blah says:

January 31, 2010 at 1:38 pm

First, also this is bad ass.

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tim says:

January 31, 2010 at 6:42 pm

kudos, finally a real hack, not a adrunio blinking led

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Chris Rojas says:

January 31, 2010 at 11:02 pm

damn good hack.

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Whatnot says:

February 2, 2010 at 6:58 pm

Risky business hacking such an expensive bit of hardware.

@blah Die in a fire, TIA.

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signal7 says:

February 5, 2010 at 10:38 am

One big problem I see here is the power draw of that bluetooth module. I have a project I’m working on that can use either a simple level shifter for wired RS-232 connection or it can use one of these firefly modules. The firefly adds about 50mA to the power draw of the project necessitating a heat sink on my voltage regulator. I’d bet the battery life of the kindle after this hack is terrible.

It would be better to see if there was a way to turn it on/off so that it doesn’t burn up the batteries when it’s not needed.

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Mr_Bishop says:

June 26, 2010 at 10:46 pm

I know its probably stupid to even ask but I have to, is it possible to do this with the original Kindle? I would love Bluetooth :3

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