Old NOOK eBook Reader Becomes iCloud Photo Album Frame

More than any other category of device, we have ebook readers to thank for the development and acceptance of ePaper/E Ink display technology. Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite and the NOOK series from Barnes & Noble proved to be the perfect application for ePaper, as the low energy consumption and high contrast were desirable and the slow refresh rate was easy to ignore. But old ebook devices have very little value once readers upgrade to newer models. Ben Borgers took advantage of that fact to buy some inexpensive old NOOK ebook readers to turn into iCloud photo album frames as gifts.

Photos look surprisingly good on ePaper screens if you have the right expectations. Most models can only display in grayscale, so you won’t be getting the kinds of full-color photos that you could with LCD or OLED technology. But the incredible contrast of ePaper makes it a good choice for black-and-white photos. Most digital photo frames look like computer screens, but this project makes it look like printed photos were placed in normal frames.

This was all possible because NOOK devices run an Android-based operating system. After gaining root access, Borgers was able to customize the operating system and install apps just like if the NOOK were an old smartphone. That let him take advantage of an old app called Electric Sign, which is a basic kiosk program that displays any website and refreshes the page at set intervals. Any photo on the website would therefore show up on the ePaper screen — Borgers just had to set the size to match the NOOK’s resolution.

Borgers built two of these devices as gifts for his girlfriend and his parents, and he wanted them to be as easy to use as possible. They’re iPhone users, so he thought the most intuitive approach would be to show pictures from a shared iCloud album.

Borgers needed to get photos from a specific publicly shared iCloud album to his website, but Apple doesn’t provide an iCloud API (Application Programming Interface) for situations like this. His solution was to sniff out the backend API requests and have the website server replicate those to fetch new pictures. Because this is “unofficial” and doesn’t use any iCloud credentials, it only works with albums made public and shared with a link.

With software sorted out, Borgers simply crammed the NOOK devices into photo frames. The frames’ backs bulged a bit, but this looks nice enough and was a simple solution. Now the recipients can easily display their favorite photos in black-and-white ePaper glory.