epdtext

A simple display manager app for the WaveShare 2.7in e-Paper HAT

Screens

The app provides a number of screens that can be displayed on the e-paper HAT, and allows switching between them with the builtin buttons.

The included screens are:

• uptime - a system info viewer
• affirmations - display positive affirmations (or whatever kind you want, really)
• fortune - shows a random fortune from the fortune database (requires the fortune-mod package)
  • Install fortune-mod with this command: sudo apt install fortune-mod
• calendar and tasks - shows a list of upcoming events or todos from your calendars (see local_settings.py.example)

Making your own

The framework is extensible, so you can write your own screens as well, each screen is a Python module providing a Screen class that inherits from AbstractScreen.

For more information on how to create your own screens, check the wiki.

Message queue

There's also a message queue interface to control the screen from other apps. (example command line client available in cli.py)

Setup on Raspberry Pi OS

• First, enable the SPI inferface on the Pi if you haven't already.
• Then, install the Python requirements

sudo apt install python3-pip python3-pil python3-numpy python3-gpiozero

• Then install the drivers for Python

git clone https://github.com/waveshare/e-Paper ~/e-Paper
cd ~/e-Paper/RaspberryPi_JetsonNano/python
python3 setup.py install

• Check out the code if you haven't already:

git clone https://github.com/tsbarnes/epdtext.git ~/epdtext

• Install the remaining Python dependencies

cd ~/epdtext
sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt

• Then (optionally) create local_settings.py and add your settings overrides there.
• Also optional is installing the systemd unit.

cp ~/epdtext/epdtext.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo systemctl enable epdtext

Usage

To start up the app, run this command:

cd ~/epdtext
python3 app.py

To reload using the CLI client:

cd ~/epdtext
./cli.py reload

To switch to the uptime screen with the CLI:

cd ~/epdtext
./cli.py screen uptime