I’ve been eyeing the TRMNL X - it looks like some sweet hardware. But I’m frugal to a fault. When I learned it was possible to transform an old Kindle into a TRMNL, I decided to try that before ponying up for the real thing. I had an old Kindle sitting on a shelf, so off I went. Here are my notes on the process.
Things That Didn’t Work Well
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usetrmnl/terminus - TRMNL’s open source Bring Your Own Server (BYOS). After spinning it up, I discovered it doesn’t currently support plugins, which was a dealbreaker for me.
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usetrmnl/trmnl-kindle - This code kind of works, but the Kindle OS kept drawing its clock over my dashboard.
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usetrmnl/trmnl-koreader - A TRMNL display plugin for KOReader. This code works reliably, but its battery life wasn’t great.
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nicell/trmnl-umami - Following the longstanding tradition of blogging about blogging, I wanted to display my web analytics on my dashboard. Nick Winans’ plugin was a great starting point, but it didn’t seem to work with Umami Cloud.
What I Landed On
After quite a bit of tinkering, I settled on three open source tools that now power my setup:
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usetrmnl/larapaper - A TRMNL BYOS that supports plugins.
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amarder/ktrm - A custom TRMNL client that takes battery efficiency to the max. After the client fetches and displays the dashboard, it immediately puts the Kindle to sleep. Pressing the power button wakes the device, updates the dashboard, and puts it back to sleep. By requiring a manual button press to refresh, this approach dramatically extends runtime on a single charge.
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amarder/trmnl-umami - A custom Umami Analytics plugin, built on Nick’s work.
Overall
I’m very happy with my new dashboard. It gives me a dedicated place to get a feel for reader engagement. By pressing a button, I can quickly see my latest web analytics.