Cobalt

More than ambitious, I can now build things I had no time for but had the idea and architecture in place since long. A cool side project for me recently has been to allow reading more than books on my Kobo reader. I built an SDK and apps that allows e-ink apps with sandboxing and permissions model, auto-updates, shared capabilities etc. to be built for Kobo https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt

I saw a lot of people confused about how expensive the hardware parts ordering and assembly would be to run the awesome birds sound detection and rendering on e-ink frame posted this week here on HN. Here is how you can run that on a Kobo. A used can be bought for around US $50, much cheaper than buying the individual components, and it also doubles as an eBook reader. The Colour Kobo versions should be preferred over the BW ones. Also, add a nice case and it should look good.

If you have a Kobo (~ US$ 120 or even less used) you can run this using Cobalt https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt/tree/beta/apps/birds

This project has an OPDS client implemented as an app example here, tested on Gutenberg's OPDS and standard eBooks. https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt/tree/main/examples/gute...

Thank you for this! This is perfect and what I was looking for while building the UI components for an SDK for Kobo e-ink apps https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt

I have high myopia that is progressively getting worse so started working on building an app development platform for my Kobo eReader so that I can live without my mac and phone. https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt Have built the SDK and some apps like an HN Client, ChatGPT client, Claude Code permissions sidekick, RSS Reader, some games etc. (all in the same above repo) It has 8x less powerful hardware than a modern raspberry pi but runs Linux with an eink display, wifi bluetooth and a good battery life for $100 or something.

I have a Kobo that was kept unused in a similar state for a few years until I decide to build an SDK platform to develop and deploy apps on it. My Kobo does not support apps on its Linux platform. I have been using it to read HN, as an RSS reader over my news and blog sources, generate audiobooks on topics I want to understand with ElevenLabs, Exa and OpenAI and listen via connecting its bluetooth to my speakers and even as a remote Claude Code & Codex approval sidekick. It is amazing that a $100 device with a single core and 512mb RAM can do so much and run for so long. Here is the open-sourced platform https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt

A bit idealistic for the crowd here but has some good points. The other day I wanted to build personal apps for my Kobo device. It has a single ~800Mhz core and 512 MB of RAM, probably eight times less than a rasbperry pi, but runs a Linux. I wanted to break free from watching my laptop screen for long Claude sessions partially due to degrading eyesight and have a sidekick for approvals streamed to the Kobo. Apart from the Claude and Codex permissions sidekick done via hooks, I ended up building an entire SDK, an HN client, an RSS discovery & reader and an audiobook generator using deep research and ElevenLabs API all running on it. Anyone using an LLM can now personalize it for their own Kobo device, which might have some nuances over my Clara BW. Significantly less work I hope than doing it all from scratch even with a coding agent. htt

Hey HN, I built an SDK to help me create apps I wanted on my Kobo. My Kobo device has a single core <1GHz processor and 512MB RAM, much less than a Raspberry Pi, but the eInk display and larger battery life opens up a lot of use cases. I have since used it to build an approval sidekick for my Mac's Claude code and codex, a Hacker News Client for Kobo, a Gutenberg reader, an RSS search and reader and more. All the code is in the repo. If you have a different device than mine (Clara BW) would love for you to test it on your device and submit a PR to enable this for more device profiles. Thanks.