Real Life Moving Portraits From Harry Potter!
Introduction: Real Life Moving Portraits From Harry Potter!
"Amazing! Amazing! This is just like magic!" - Gilderoy Lockhart
I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, and one of the things I’ve always loved from the Wizarding World are the moving portraits. I stumbled across Kyle Stewart-Frantz’s Animated Picture Frame project and realized I could adapt an old Kindle into a real-life moving portrait!
The e-ink technology in the Kindle screen makes it a much better choice than an old tablet. For one, they’re sunlight-readable, so the picture looks much more like an actual piece of paper instead of a screen. Two, the image will stay on the Kindle screen even after the battery dies.
Supplies
* Kindle E-Reader: I was able to do this with both a Kindle 4 No Touch (K4NT) and Kindle Keyboard 3G (K3G).
* USB cable for charging/connecting to Kindle
* Picture frame—needs a deep shadow box and a matte with an opening for a 5x7 photo. A smaller opening can work, but it may cover some of the Kindle.
* Picture Hanging Hook
* Wire: if you'd like to hide the hanging hook
* White or off-white construction paper
* Something solid to hold the Kindle up (I used small colorful Ello blocks)
* Twist-ties, or something to keep the Kindle in place
* Museum putty
* Duct tape
Step 1: Jailbreaking Your Kindle
In order to do anything cool on the Kindle, you’re going to want to jailbreak it. Thankfully, the wonderful community over at MobileRead have already done all of the work for us, and jailbreaking is very simple.
That being said: It’s really easy to brick your Kindle by running commands without knowing what they do. If you do brick your Kindle, I was able to recover my bricked K4 using Kubrick, but there’s no guarantee it’ll work in every situation. I don’t recommend proceeding with this tutorial unless you know your way around a shell, and have at least a moderate level of experience with Linux :)
First, if your Kindle isn’t on the latest firmware, head over to Amazon to install those updates. Update the Kindle by connecting the Kindle to your computer, dropping the update .bin file into the root directory, ejecting the Kindle, and then heading to Settings & selecting “Update your Kindle” from the menu (this is what I’ll call the “standard updating process”).
Confirm which Kindle model you have by taking a look at the serial number. Make sure you memorize the nickname, so you’ll know which hacks apply to your particular device.
Then find the Jailbreak for your particular device here and follow the relevant instructions. 267
The Jailbreak process is not the same for all devices, so make sure to carefully follow them. For the K3, the jailbreak process is almost exactly the same as the standard update process. For the K4NT, you will need to do something different. Follow the instructions here.
Step 2: Installing Necessary Packages
Congrats, you’ve now jailbroken your Kindle! Now we need to install the following packages:
MKK: prerequisite for KUAL, allows you to run custom Kindlets. You might not need to install this if you’re running a later device—take a look at the instructions to see. If the updates keep failing, make sure your device is registered with Amazon beforehand. It’s not listed as a requisite but that’s what fixed it for me.
Kindle Unified Application Launcher (KUAL): allows us to do all kinds of things, but most important, 1) easily toggle USBNetwork and 2) easily start the videos. When you install KUAL, it’ll show up as a new item in your book list.
Both can be installed using the standard update process. And always read the README for each package before installing, and don't follow random commands until you're sure what they do (goes for this tutorial too)!
Now that you’ve got KUAL set up, install the Helper KUAL extension to easily prevent over-the-air updates and disable the screensaver. You’ll need to unzip the folder and drag and drop /extensions/helper to the root of your Kindle.
I should also note that I don’t deserve any of the credit for this—that would go to the mobileread users NiLuJe, TwoBob, knc1, geekmaster, and others. 226