kindle-dashboard 3

A minimalist PNG dashboard shown as an always-on screensaver on Kindle e-readers.

Kindle Dashboard

A minimalist Python web service that renders a greyscale PNG dashboard for Kindle-sized screens.

Usage Guide

The Dashboard

• The time and battery are shown in the top-right
• The next significant rainfall window is shown in the top-left (>1 mm precipitation)
• Cloud cover is shown as a darkness band at the top of the graph
• Temperature is shown as a line graph, with the daily low and high points marked
• The temperature guide lines are spaced at 5 °C
• Sunrise and sunset are indicated subtly
• Precipitation is shown as bars at the bottom, with the peak labelled
• Precipitation guide lines are spaced every 0.2 mm
• When showers dominate rain, the precipitation bars are dotted

Depending on your online screensaver configuration, the information will be somewhat out-of-date - notably the time.

Weather data is retrieved from Open-Meteo in the forecast location's local timezone.

Quick guide to standing in rain for one hour:

• 0.1mm: you'll be dry
• 0.3mm: you'll be damp
• 0.5mm: you'll be wet
• 0.7mm: you'll be soaked
• 0.9mm: you'll be dripping

Prerequisites

• Python 3.14+

On Your Kindle

Put the dashboard on your Kindle using https://github.com/FalconFour/onlinescreensaverPW2.

Running the Server

The simplest way is using uv.

Try it out without installing: WEATHER_LATITUDE=5 WEATHER_LONGITUDE=-5 uvx kindle-dashboard.

Or, install for your user, and run from there:

uv tool install kindle-dashboard
kindle-dashboard

The server serves the dashboard image on http://127.0.0.1:42137/, by default.

There is an example systemd service file.

Configuration

• HOST (default: 127.0.0.1)
• PORT (default: 42137)
• IMAGE_WIDTH (default: 600)
• IMAGE_HEIGHT (default: 800)
• RENDER_SUPERSAMPLE_SCALE (default: 2)
• WEATHER_UPDATE_SECS (default: 1800)
• NEXT_RAIN_GAP_TOLERANCE_HOURS (default: 1; merges rain events separated by dry gaps up to this many hours)
• WEATHER_LATITUDE (optional; must be set together with WEATHER_LONGITUDE)
• WEATHER_LONGITUDE (optional; must be set together with WEATHER_LATITUDE)
• LOG_LEVEL (default: INFO; standard Python logging levels)
• LOG_SYSTEMD (optional; set 1/true to force systemd log format, 0/false to disable auto-detect)

The weather graph is shown shown if the latitude and longitude variables are set.

When JOURNAL_STREAM is present (typical under systemd), logging automatically switches to systemd-compatible output.

Development Guide

Development

uv sync

• bin/fix applies automatic linting fixes (run this first)
• bin/check runs linting, type checks, and release validation
• bin/test runs the test suite

uv run kindle-dashboard

Build and Publish

bin/publish

Development Notes

• Precipitation bars represent the hour interval ending at the API timestamp (for example, a value at 16:00 is drawn for 15:00-16:00).
• The Kindle Basic 7th Generation has a 16-level greyscale display.