Raspberry Pi eInk Smart Screen

Smart Clock / Sysmon / Nobel-card for Raspbery Pi 3/4 using the e-Paper 2.7 inch display from Waveshare.

Originally inspired by the vekkari project by Jukka Aittola, this project has quickly evolved into a new project: a fully-featured smart clock. All you need is a Raspberry-Pi 3/4 and the e-Paper 2.7 inch display from Waveshare.

The eInk Smart Clock has multiple display modes, selectable using the four push-buttons soldered on the HAT:

• Raspberry Pi Logo (sort of standby mode)
• Clock (hours and minutes, day of the week, date) with 1 minute refresh interval
• System statics (CPU, RAM, Processes, IP addresses)
• Nobel Prize information (year, category, winner and motivation - offline dump of the official data obtained from http://api.nobelprize.org/v1/prize.json)

Data are refreshed every minute.

Buttons

• Button 1: Show Raspberry Logo
• Button 2: Show System Statics
• Button 3: Show Clock (time & date)
• Button 4: Show random Nobel info

Photos

Hardware Requirements

• Raspberry Pi 3/4
• 2.7inch E-Ink display HAT for Raspberry Pi
• 8+ GB SD card

Installation

• Install Raspberry Pi OS on SD card and boot the system
• Open a terminal
• python3 should be already present on Raspberry Pi OS - you may want to verify this by running: python3 --version
• Enable SPI:
  • Run the configuration tool: sudo raspi-config
  • Choose: Interfacing Options -> SPI -> Yes to enable SPI interface
  • Reboot: sudo reboot
• Reopen a terminal
• Update package list: sudo apt-get update
• Install required libraries and python modules
  • Install wiringPI: sudo apt-get install wiringpi
  • Install required Python3 libraries
    • sudo apt-get install python3-pil python3-numpy python3-psutil python3-spidev python3-spidev python3-rpi.gpio
  • Install BCM2835 libraries
    • wget http://www.airspayce.com/mikem/bcm2835/bcm2835-1.68.tar.gz
    • tar zxvf bcm2835-1.68.tar.gz
    • cd bcm2835-1.68/
    • ./configure
    • make
    • sudo make install
• Go back to home cd
• Install git: sudo apt install git
• Fetch this project: git clone https://github.com/emanueleg/rpi-eink-clock.git
• Enter the project directory: cd rpi-eink-clock and install required libraries and python modules
• Run the script: ./epaper-clock.py and verify if it works as expected (hit Ctrl-C to exit)
• If you want the script run at every boot, install this project as service so it could automatically run when Raspberry boots up
  • copy the epaper-clock systemd unit to the default system directory: sudo cp epaper-clock.service /etc/systemd/system/
  • verify if service works: sudo systemctl start epaper-clock.service
  • enable this script so it could be run on system start: sudo systemctl enable epaper-clock.service
  • reboot device to verify if it works: sudo reboot
  • if you edit the python script, you can restart the service without rebooting the system: sudo systemctl restart epaper-clock.service
  • logs can be followed with sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog | grep epaper-clock
  • startup script can be disabled: sudo systemctl disable epaper-clock.service

License

• Official Waveshare Electronic paper driver/libraries (epdconfig.py and epdconfig.py) are available under the MIT License.
• The official Raspberry Pi Logo used in raspberry.bmp is a (TM) of Raspberry Pi Foundation (https://www.raspberrypi.org/) and available under the Raspberry Pi Trademark rules and brand guidelines
• Nobel data are provided by Nobel Media AB and are available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license - see the Terms of Use for api.nobelprize.org and data.nobelprize.org
• The FreeMono.ttf and FreeMonoBold.ttf fonts are part of the GNU FreeFont collection and are available under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 or any later version.
• This project is a fork, hence the original license still apply to the initial edits. Since commit 02cc076 quite all the code is brand new: the license for the project is now the Apache License 2.0