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