Use a Kindle as a WeatherFlow display

I found an Kindle around the house to use as a consoleimage

6 Likes

How do you keep the Kindle on so that it displays all the time?

Havenā€™t played around with it yet, but I think you can change the screen settings to stay on there. Like someone posted on this thread he is going to use an iPad he had. He connected a timer on it to let the battery discharge instead of keeping it on charge all the time, a good idea. I will find out more and get back too you! Hope to get my WF soon! Canā€™t wait!!

I use this free app from the Google Play store on my wall-mounted (hacked) Amazon Fire Tablet:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synetics.stay.alive

I set the brightness low, and the screen has been on 24/7 for almost a year now with no ill effectsā€¦

2 Likes

Good idea! It doesnā€™t take much work if we just take a look around the house! I did find an old iPad but itā€™s so far out of date WF app wouldnā€™t work on the OS, couldnā€™t even update the OS so thatā€™s really old!!

Too bad I donā€™t know how to hack a kindle

Only had to charge the kindle and it fired right up, lucky on that!

I used the tutorial linked below to ā€œhackā€ my Fire HD 8 to install the Google Play store, which in turn, allowed me to download and install the WeatherFlow app on my Fire tablet so I could use it as a console. Not sure this applies to a Kindle, but thought Iā€™d post it in case itā€™s of interest to others.

6 Likes

Brilliant! Thanks so much for this.:heart_eyes:

Very interesting idea!
But the Kindle stays on during the night also?

I donā€™t like anything ā€œonā€ when lights are out.

Iā€™d prefer a simple display, designed in line with the other WS products.
Think it is new business but will add a certain value for those used to old Weather Stations, like I prefer my old TFA wall display.

1 Like

With the insanely large dosage of vitamin pee that is needed to keep me alive, having the screen on as a night light to illuminate the path for my hourly trips to the weather observation lounge is actually a good thingā€¦ :wink:

6 Likes

Fire Tablet has a ā€œblueshadeā€ feature (night mode) which allows you to turn the brightness waaaaay down and cast the color towards the red starting at a certain time. I use that and it works fine. If I wake up in the middle of the night and want to know time and temp, can easily see it - but itā€™s not too bright so as to illuminate the room (much).

Thx Vreihen and Chris1,

What Kindle would do for this job, only the latest versions? (Iā€™m living in an Apple castle) :roll_eyes:

1 Like

Mine is an older Fire 7" tablet, that Amazon sent out as a free gift to me in an attempt to make a long-time Amazon Prime member use their streaming services. It works OK as a weather console, but is dog slow even loading the WF app. Plus, the Fire hardware at least in the version that I have does not support Bluetooth BLE, so I canā€™t use it to configure the Hub locally. I donā€™t know if the slowness is from Amazon update bloat or the kludges used to get the Google Play store app loaded, but I donā€™t recommend this unless you already have the hardware laying around gathering dust.

@dsj @WFmarketing - Can I make a silly request that you publish the WF Android app in the Amazon App storeā€¦even if you have to do it with BLE disabled if the current Fire hardware does not support it???

2 Likes

Due to lack of popularity, we will not code, publish, maintain an Amazon app. It is not a good use of our limited technical resources.

5 Likes

I picked up a Fire 7 on prime day and want to use this as a display for weatherflow but am having a problem.

After about 15 minutes the display stops updating. I notice ā€” in the wind rose.

I can not figure out what is causing it. The WiFi appears to be still connected (symbol is in the top bar and I have installed ā€˜best wifi keeperā€™ app).

Iā€™m sure that I have missed a setting, but where?

Turn off the Bluetooth completely, and check for any other power saver or sleep functions buried in the Android settings pagesā€¦

1 Like

Fixed now. Seems like it was a clash between the inbuilt ā€˜keep aliveā€™ process and an app for ā€˜keeping aliveā€™ that I had downloaded. Uninstalled that and all is good now.

2 Likes

@val you donā€™t have this issue?

No, speed is good. I did however speak too soon, I still have the issue of the app or website not updating still.

Happens with the WF App, Chrome and Silk. The display will stay awake and it looks like the wifi is still running but the page stops updating. The WF page/App shows how long since the last update (on the right hand side, says something like ā€˜2 hours agoā€™).

I am just about to go away for two weeks, so will have to debug when I get home.