Why the Leather Cover Crashes the Kindle 3

http://connectify.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-leather-cover-crashes-kindle-3.html

by Bud • 16 years ago

31 15 16 years ago

connectify.blogspot.com

ndunn2• 16 years ago

So weird, my Kindle 3 crashed twice yesterday, something that's not happened in the 3~ months I've owned it. And I have a leather cover. Curious if this is why.

ghshephard• 16 years ago

Should be simple to get more data - just short out (with appropriate resistors!) the connection points and see if your Kindle Crashes.

50%+ of my reading get's done by the K3 nightlight - I'm surprised people manage to get by without it.

ovi256• 16 years ago

But that's the point: to trigger the brownout that crashes the system, you need to really short-circuit those points. So resistors in series won't do it.

nitrogen• 16 years ago

You use the resistors for safety to determine how much current is needed to kill the device. I'd use a potentiometer, and turn down the resistance until bad things happened. Or, more likely, I'd insulate the hooks on my case or sever the connection between them, and not risk damaging the Kindle.

davidw2• 16 years ago

Interesting... I had some random crashes with mine, and I have a leather cover. Haven't had any lately. The worst was when our plane was supposed to leave from Amsterdam for PDX, and I thought I was going to be stuck for the whole flight with no Kindle... it wasn't reacting. Luckily it rebooted or something, but I was getting pretty pissed off.

ardit33• 16 years ago

If the device is really acting up, and needs restarting teep the power button/slider 'on' for 12-15 seconds. That will force a reboot on the device.

gimpf• 16 years ago

Ähm... has the page changed? There is not a single mention of a Kindle crash, and the DDG summary of the page when searching for the title shows something completely different than what I see there. Hm.

Bud• 16 years ago

Looks like the blog did indeed "update" the page at the same URL, after I had posted the link here.

I apologize for the confusion, even though it's the blog's fault. :)

olalonde• 16 years ago

This post has nothing to do with a leather cover crashing the Kindle (apart from the tags and the URL). Are people up voting this before having read the actual article or am I missing something?

davidw2• 16 years ago

That's weird. It did when I looked at it and made my comment...

staktrace• 16 years ago

I believe the website changed the content of the article. Note how his blog has two posts with the same text now. Probably trying to take advantage of all the Slashdot/other traffic to sell whatever.

barrkel• 16 years ago

I think he may have taken in the criticism over the 2MΩ reading and started to think he made a mistake.

jdminhbg• 16 years ago

The post has changed for some weird reason since submission. Here's the text, via the Google cache:

I love my Kindle 3. I was in the middle of writing a blog post about how great the Kindle 3 and Connectify work together (which I will post in the next day or two), but started having a problem with my Kindle crashing randomly. I searched the forums and lots of people reported the same problem, but only when they had the Amazon leather cover without a light. But no one ever saw this happen on the version with the light, and no one seemed to explain how that could happen.

It didn't seem to make a lot of sense that a leather cover would crash an electronic device, so I got curious and started to look closely at my Kindle's case.

The unlit leather Kindle case has 2 black hooks that slide into the side of the device to hold it into place.

So then I looked at the lighted version to see how it's different:

On the lighted version, the hooks are gold! That's how the light gets power, of course. One of them is power and one of them is ground.

So then I looked really closely at hooks on my cover:

It's coated in a black, textured paint, which does not conduct electricty. But look closely along the edge, where it rubs against the inside of the Kindle. It's still black, but there are now spots with a smooth texture where the paint has rubbed off.

So out came the handy-dandy Radio Shack multimeter, set to measure resistance. I found a smooth point on each of the hooks and:

They're connected? It's hard to get a good reading, without scraping all the paint away. But that's a connection... remember that's how it powers the light. Depending on your contact you can see some pretty low values, which imply a pretty good connection between the two.

This is why the Kindle crashes. Once a bit of paint has rubbed off the hooks, power starts flowing through the cover, leading to brownouts; the CPU does not get enough juice to operate properly and ends out either hung or rebooting!

devindotcom• 16 years ago

Escapist has the pictures. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/106355-Amateur-Eng...

jrockway• 16 years ago

Wow, I had no idea you could get power from the hook ports on the Kindle. I have a separate light that uses batteries.

I may have to do some hardware hacking in the near future!

Why the Leather Cover Crashes the Kindle 3

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