Kobo Highlights to Obsidian (markdown)

This program reads highlights directly from a Kobo e-reader and exports them into an Obsidian vault. It uses Python and the SQLite3 library to connect to the Kobo database and retrieve the highlights, and then saves them to a Markdown file in the Obsidian vault.

What is Kobo (e-reader)?

A Kobo e-reader is more open than an amazon kindle - no ads, supporing epub, drag-drop usb, custom configuration settings, and easy read of sqlite database of bookmarks and collections under device\.kobo\KoboReader.sqlite

What is Obsidian (note-taking - knowledge-base) ?

Obsidian is a mardown text editor like Typora that works great for note-taking - allowing you to link between notes and search.

What is your second brain?

If you're like me, you probably take a lot of notes but they get thrown away - lost in paper notebooks or disorganized text files.

Second brain is really just a concept of aggreating that in a seachable way. Obsidian (or any text editor with folders or wiki) makes it easy to organize notes so you wind up with a file-sized repository of details at your disposal. Combine it with a conceptual productivity system like PARA (Project, Area, Resource, Archive) and you might find it transformative.

This project really isn't about second brain however it is about adding your reading highlights into Obsidian, so it is searchable within your second brain vault.

A good intro to the concept is this video by Matt D'Avella - I learned a productivity system for organizing life or Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

What is markdown?

Well this is a markdown file. It's a really quick way to write content with easy headers and table of contents.

See the raw code behind of this file here - README.md

Dependencies

• Python 3.x
• SQLite3 library

Setup

1. Clone the repository to your local machine.
2. Install Python and the SQLite3 library if you haven't already.
3. Open the settings.json file and update the kobo_path and obsidian_path variables to match the paths to your Kobo device and Obsidian vault, respectively.

{
    "kobo_path": "/Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite",
    "obsidian_path": "/Users/username/Documents/Obsidian/Vault"
}

Usage

1. Connect your Kobo device to your computer and mount it as a drive. Open a terminal window and navigate to the root directory of the project.
2. Run the kobo_to_obsidian.py script using the following command:
3. The program will retrieve the highlights from the Kobo database and save them to a Markdown file in the Obsidian vault. The file will be named after the author of the book and will be located in the root directory of the vault.

python import.py

4. The program will retrieve the highlights from the Kobo database and save them to a Markdown file in the Obsidian vault. The file will be named after the author of the book and will be located in the root directory of the vault.

Troubleshooting

• If you encounter any errors while running the program, make sure that the paths in the settings.json file are correct and that your Kobo device is mounted as a drive.
• If you have trouble connecting to the Kobo database, try restarting your computer or disconnecting and reconnecting the device.
• If you have trouble exporting the highlights to the Obsidian vault, make sure that the path to the vault is correct and that you have write permissions for the directory.

Sample Output

/home/chris/obsidian/highlights/Corey, James S. A.md

Caliban's War

Holden pulled himself a cup of coffee from the galley coffeepot, and the strong smell filled the room.

Location: Page (043) Point (/1/4/3:1) Date: 2023-10-29T18:26:01Z

“If this is a race, I know where there’s a racing ship …”

Location: Page (042) Point (/1/4/196/1/1:46) Date: 2023-10-29T20:06:04.131

Leviathan Wakes

Posthuman. It was a word that came up in the media every five or six years, and it meant different things every time. Neural regrowth hormone? Posthuman. Sex robots with inbuilt pseudo intelligence? Posthuman. Self-optimizing network routing? Posthuman. It was a word from advertising copy, breathless and empty, and all he’d ever thought it really meant was that the people using it had a limited imagination about what exactly humans were capable of.

Location: Page (049) Point (/1/4/28/1:349) Date: 2023-10-29T20:37:56.482