Pandora reading light.

[Wrath Of Khan]

I was on a bus tonight and the bus driver would not turn on the reading lights.So it was dark and i couldnt read.It made me think that if the pandora had a torchlight screenmode like on some mobile phones,it might be useful as a reading aid.Just a simple mode where only the lcd light is used.Im guessing that this would be easy to dr is it?It would be cool if someone could implement this.

 

[Timstertoo]

Personally I was planning to do a lot of reading on the Pandora itself. :unsure:

 

[DaMummy]

it wouldnt be enough to just open up something like notepad where the whole screen is white, set it to full brightness setting, and read away? or am i misunderestimating what youre wanting?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Personally I was planning to do a lot of reading on the Pandora itself. :unsure:

Hah maybe.I have to say i personally dont like the idea of kindles or e readers.
You can have too much choice with downloads.I like to read real paper books.Just my preference.

it wouldnt be enough to just open up something like notepad where the whole screen is white, set it to full brightness setting, and read away? or am i misunderestimating what youre wanting?

Sure that might work.But a dedicated little app for that would be cool.plus i think the screen goes dark after about ten minutes of inactivity at the moment.

 

[Timstertoo]

The very reason I started reading eBooks was because of the backlight


I work late so I get home when the family is asleep and the wife gets rather annoyed with even the most subtle little light.


I always have a hard time falling asleep so I really need to read a bit in bed just to get settled in. The Nokia E90 was the first piece of electronic I read on. With the colors on magenta (background and silver/grey (letters) I could read for a long time without it bothering my eyes. On my N900 I dim the screen but the black letters on yellow backlight isn't as easy on the eyes as the E90 was. Also the small screen isn't as good.


So I have high hopes for the Pandora as a reading device. Hopefully I can change the colors of the ePub reader to be as easy on the eyes as on my E90 and with the screen size I certainly win. Would be great in a bus too!

 

[Austin25]

The very reason I started reading eBooks was because of the backlight


I work late so I get home when the family is asleep and the wife gets rather annoyed with even the most subtle little light.


I always have a hard time falling asleep so I really need to read a bit in bed just to get settled in. The Nokia E90 was the first piece of electronic I read on. With the colors on magenta (background and silver/grey (letters) I could read for a long time without it bothering my eyes. On my N900 I dim the screen but the black letters on yellow backlight isn't as easy on the eyes as the E90 was. Also the small screen isn't as good.


So I have high hopes for the Pandora as a reading device. Hopefully I can change the colors of the ePub reader to be as easy on the eyes as on my E90 and with the screen size I certainly win. Would be great in a bus too!

I want to read some eBooks, too. Where do you get them?

 

[Timstertoo]

The very reason I started reading eBooks was because of the backlight


I work late so I get home when the family is asleep and the wife gets rather annoyed with even the most subtle little light.


I always have a hard time falling asleep so I really need to read a bit in bed just to get settled in. The Nokia E90 was the first piece of electronic I read on. With the colors on magenta (background and silver/grey (letters) I could read for a long time without it bothering my eyes. On my N900 I dim the screen but the black letters on yellow backlight isn't as easy on the eyes as the E90 was. Also the small screen isn't as good.


So I have high hopes for the Pandora as a reading device. Hopefully I can change the colors of the ePub reader to be as easy on the eyes as on my E90 and with the screen size I certainly win. Would be great in a bus too!

I want to read some eBooks, too. Where do you get them?

You can buy ebooks from loads of sites like Amazon.com but also mobipocket.com If SciFi/Fantasy is your thing this is a great website: http://www.baen.com/ they also have some sort of monthly subscription I believe where they give you a random bunch of books every month for a cheap price.


For free books:


You can find a bunch here: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page


Apart from that you can find almost any book on IRC, Torrents and newsgroups. If you're looking for a specific book IRC is your friend (http://www.calvinshub.com/2008/11/how-to-download-e-books-from-mirc/) if you're looking for just lots and lots of books go for torrents/newsgroups.


Hope this helps!

 

[rotorschnee]

You can get "Flatland" by Abbott at Gutenberg - highly recommend!

 

[rabidpoobear]

ahah if you really want an app that makes the backlight fully on and stops the dimming script i'll write it for you. I will need a test project to work on my python libpnd wrapper anyway.


if my pandora ever gets here...

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

ahah if you really want an app that makes the backlight fully on and stops the dimming script i'll write it for you. I will need a test project to work on my python libpnd wrapper anyway.


if my pandora ever gets here...

That would be cool if you would do this lukevp.I just thought a screenlight might make a nice little app to add to the pandoras list of functions.Keep us posted if you decide to do this.

 

[Austin25]

The very reason I started reading eBooks was because of the backlight


I work late so I get home when the family is asleep and the wife gets rather annoyed with even the most subtle little light.


I always have a hard time falling asleep so I really need to read a bit in bed just to get settled in. The Nokia E90 was the first piece of electronic I read on. With the colors on magenta (background and silver/grey (letters) I could read for a long time without it bothering my eyes. On my N900 I dim the screen but the black letters on yellow backlight isn't as easy on the eyes as the E90 was. Also the small screen isn't as good.


So I have high hopes for the Pandora as a reading device. Hopefully I can change the colors of the ePub reader to be as easy on the eyes as on my E90 and with the screen size I certainly win. Would be great in a bus too!

I want to read some eBooks, too. Where do you get them?

You can buy ebooks from loads of sites like Amazon.com but also mobipocket.com If SciFi/Fantasy is your thing this is a great website: http://www.baen.com/ they also have some sort of monthly subscription I believe where they give you a random bunch of books every month for a cheap price.


For free books:


You can find a bunch here: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page


Apart from that you can find almost any book on IRC, Torrents and newsgroups. If you're looking for a specific book IRC is your friend (http://www.calvinshub.com/2008/11/how-to-download-e-books-from-mirc/) if you're looking for just lots and lots of books go for torrents/newsgroups.


Hope this helps!

Cool. I'm not for piracy, but downloading stuff through irc... that could be of use to me.

 

[liquidphantom]

Buy a torch,you can get ones that strap to your head. Save your Pandora for more noble things other than turning it into a lowly light source.

 

[MattF]

Or, get a USB-powered flexible LED lamp thingy. The one I have is made by Trust and is kinda supposed to be a "keyboard light for using your laptop in the dark".

It even works when the Pandora is put in soft-off / suspend mode (whatever the proper name for "flick the power switch to the right and it turns slightly off but not really"). AND, it doesn't confuse the USB port (the way that plugging a non-compatible usb1.0 device in will, where the port is "dead" until you fully restart) either!

 

[bzar]

^ How much battery does that one suck? Estimate?

 

[Timstertoo]

I think you're just looking for this:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Really-tiny-Book-Light-Blue/dp/B002ICSMTO/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1297071185&sr=8-8


I have one it's great. You can clip it on a book or lie it next to your book depending on your desired reading in bed position.


The battery is good for ages.

 

[MattF]

^ How much battery does that one suck? Estimate?

I have no idea, sorry! It's not a super-powerful LED, does not get noticeably warm when in use, but I don't have any definite references for it nor any way to measure the current draw.


LEDs are pretty efficient though, so I suspect it wouldn't be too horrendous. Probably more efficient than keeping the screen on to try to use as a light source, I would assume.

 

[Dave1234]

I've just started developing for the Pandora and as a test I've written a little "reading light" program (attached).


I've not turned it into a PND because I haven't figured out libpnd yet. Also, it doesn't do anything about the screen dimming script. When you're finished with it, press any key to exit.


As I said, it's just a test program, but I thought I'd put it here in case anyone wants it.

 

[lulzfish]

LEDs are pretty efficient though, so I suspect it wouldn't be too horrendous. Probably more efficient than keeping the screen on to try to use as a light source, I would assume.

I'm pretty sure there is a loss in the voltage converter that changes the Pandora's internal power supply to the 5 volts for a USB port. Can't remember if it goes up or down, think it goes up.


But it's possible that even with that drop, the LED is more efficient than the screen's backlight. (what is it, fluorescent of some kind?)

 

[Tempel]

I've not turned it into a PND because I haven't figured out libpnd yet.

Making a PND is dead simple, especially if you already have a Pandora to do it on. Take a look at this wiki page and maybe check out this recently released graphical PND builder. The hardest part of the job (beyond making the program, which you've already done) is building a correct PXML file (which holds information on what's in the PND). But if you follow a template, even that shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Dave1234]

I've not turned it into a PND because I haven't figured out libpnd yet.

Making a PND is dead simple, especially if you already have a Pandora to do it on. Take a look at this wiki page and maybe check out this recently released graphical PND builder. The hardest part of the job (beyond making the program, which you've already done) is building a correct PXML file (which holds information on what's in the PND). But if you follow a template, even that shouldn't be too hard.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that later. I've only had my Pandora a few days and I've mostly been looking at other things (like OpenGL ES).