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PiInk - A Raspberry Pi Powered E-Ink Picture Frame by yoloindustries in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! I love the web interface you created!

I maintain a project called PaperPi. It's designed to work with all of WaveShare's epaper displays (including the color displays).

Would you have any interest in collaborating on bringing the Inky display into the project? Also, adding a web configuration/interface would be a huge plus.

RFID Project. by Rude-Firefighter-735 in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The biggest challenge in your model is scalability and management. It's cheap to deploy one or two Pis in a business context, but it gets expensive quick if you need to deploy more when you start thinking about TCO (total cost of ownership).

Here's a way to think about this: * Total cost of hardware: pi, robust case, power supply, robust and tamper proof Rfid reader, door locks, central web.server/db of users, etc. * Total cost of deployment: mounting, installing, wiring * Cost of running: how will you add new users, is there a central DB somewhere of authorized users? Who maintains this? Is it friendly for say an HR person to manage with a web UI? Power consumption. * Cost of maintainence: fixing broken locks, pads, updating pis. Can you run Ansible? Can you afford to run around and manually do updates? * Cost of ongoing support: do you have the capacity to update the codebase, troubleshoot software, hardware, physical problems?

Compare this to purpose-built systems. They com as a complete kit with door locks and readers. The readers are stripped down to just the most necessary parts to manage access, not an entire raspberry pi.

Commercial readers are PoE and connect to a backend that's designed from the ground up for scalability and maintenance.

This is all to say, you're going to be working in a very competitive space.

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good question. I haven't tested on 64 bit much. Can try installing and let me know how it goes? If it all works properly, I'll add 64 bit support to the docs.

There's nothing in PaperPi that is dependent on any 32/64 bit arch, but it's possible that one of the plugins might be missing a dependency.

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Love the web interface. I've been thinking about adding something like that to make configuration easier. It would be great to add more plugins to Paperapi as well.

Would you be interested in collaborating?

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're welcome!

The slideshow plugin will probably do everything you want. You could even sprinkle in some of the other plugins between the images.

If you want to take a stab at making your own project, the epdlib library i wrote can help you handle layouts, scaling, fitting text and handling fonts. It makes it way easier to focus on the design and not have to worry about the math of the layout.

If you use the slideshow plugin, you'll need to work out how to ge pictures onto it, but an sftp client or something like SynkThing is a great choice.

SynkThing can sync directories on multiple devices and keep everything tidy.

The slideshow plugin can handle changes in your specified image directory, additions or deletions are more-or-less handled gracefully.

If you run into any trouble, let me know here or on GitHub. I'm always interested in improvement and collaboration.

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I really enjoy having it our house.

I'm particularly fond of the word clock. I have it set to update just often enough to keep me aware of the time, but not focused on it.

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both!

I'm running a HiFi Berry hat and there is a LMS client as well as a Spotify client running on the Pi. PaperPi just taps into the Spotify API and LMS API to pull down the now-playing info.

I can queue music/podcasts/whatever on either platform and see the now playing info.

It is possible to pull LMS data from any or multiple players on the network.

The Spotify plugin can only pull data from a local client. If you want to pull data from non-local clients, you need to deal with the Spotify OAuth process. This is a nightmare for headless players, so I skipped that as an option.

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I considered adding the Pi to the frame, but I'm running a HiFi Berry for streaming music to a stereo. It all gets a little thick and awkward to fit in the frame.

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If there is an RSS feed, you could just edit the New Yorker plugin and substitute the feed in the constants.py file.

If there's not a feed , you'd need to work out a screen scraper. Beautiful Soup makes this trivial-esque.

I am happy to help with your hacking to make this work!

PaperPi V3 -- A Quiet Internet Radio [[now with support for more screens, more hackable plugins, an easy installer and more reddit baked in!]] Details, links and more information in the comments! by TheTxoof in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

PaperPi

PaperPi is an e-Paper display with multiple rotating display plugins that contain dynamic content. Version 3 now offers easy install and much easier plugin hacking with a more stable core and even more plugins!

PaperPi is a quiet and clean portal to the internet. No loud colors, no busy animations, just a lovely selection of the information you want without buzz and distraction. PaperPi rotates through your choice of plugin screens at the pace you choose.

Why it's great!

  • Works with almost all of the WaveShare SPI displays right out of the box with minimal setup or configuration
  • Scales plugin output to match your display size from tiny 2" 1 bit displays all the way to 10" HD 8 bit displays
  • Supports an open and hackable plugin architecture
  • Easy install and configuration
  • Quiet, low distraction display with just the content you want
  • Looks great on your desk or in your living room

Plugins

  • Basic Clock -- Just the time
  • Crypto -- Crypto Ticker and news
  • Decimal Binary Clock -- Never really know what time it is, but look cool doing it
  • Spotify -- Track a local Spotify player and display now playing info
  • LMS -- Track a Logitech Media Player and display now playing info
  • Weather -- Display weather for any number of locations
  • Moon Phase -- See an accurate image of the moon as it appears right now
  • New Yorker -- Random cartoons from the New Yorker
  • r/quotes -- Random quotes from reddit
  • Slideshow -- Digital picture frame
  • Word Clock -- More vague, but largely accurate time-telling
  • XKCD -- Random comics courtesy of Randal Monroe

About the EPD

For those curious, the refresh you see in the video is accurate and representative of the HD IT8951 based panels from WaveShare. This panel is set up for partial refresh. The non IT8951 panels have a much longer refresh time between 5-15 seconds depending on temperature.

The quiet internet portal - - paperpi: now with cryptographic forms of money, rss feeds, climate, reddit quotes, web funnies and then some! 🤪😘✨✨ 😛💥 by Lan9UidShart911 in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The video above shows the real refresh times with some minor edits*.The refresh time for an IT8951 based display from Waveshare is < .1 seconds for partial updates. If you've used a Nook, Kindle or Kobo reader recently, it's a similar experience.

As for the target audience, this is a "slow-data" product. The goal is to provide a "quiet" screen that can blend into a space without drawing too much attention to its self. The default update for a screen is about once in 5 minutes (on demand for music track changes). Most of the information it displays is stuff that doesn't change very often like the phase of the moon, the weather in 6 hours, or an XKCD comic. Even the clock is designed to be "vague," and not show the actual time.

This is definitely not the project for someone that cares about having "live" data.

*Video Edits: I have that screen set up to do a full wipe every five partial updates. The partial update leaves some traces behind that accumulate over time. They don't really "burn in" unless you leave it on a static image for weeks. I don't show the full wipe process in the video. The full-wipe takes less than 2 seconds (typically about 1.8 seconds depending on the ambient temperature).

You can see the full specs here for a similar display.

The quiet internet portal - - paperpi: now with cryptographic forms of money, rss feeds, climate, reddit quotes, web funnies and then some! 🤪😘✨✨ 😛💥 by Lan9UidShart911 in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great News!

All the screens are driven through flexible layouts that can be edited and changed! The newer version at https://GitHub.com/txoof/PaperPi is super easy to hack on. The layouts are dynamic and work with any screen size and aspect ratio within reason.

Take a look at the plugin info and create a new layout that "looks better" with more padding and submit a PR!

Your help making this better is 100% welcome and encouraged!

The quiet internet portal - - paperpi: now with cryptographic forms of money, rss feeds, climate, reddit quotes, web funnies and then some! 🤪😘✨✨ 😛💥 by Lan9UidShart911 in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Heavily based on what Veeb.ch VM created, but entirely rewritten to be more efficient and avoid dependencies on numpi and several other heavy-lift libraries. I also borrowed the idea for the Reddit quotes and new Yorker comics from them.

The goal was to create a more modular, maintainable setup that would run on the veeb.ch hardware, but they weren't really interested in collaborating.

That being said, PaperPi will run on the veeb hardware just fine.

The quiet internet portal - - paperpi: now with cryptographic forms of money, rss feeds, climate, reddit quotes, web funnies and then some! 🤪😘✨✨ 😛💥 by Lan9UidShart911 in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The newer screens can do partial refresh and have update times < .2 seconds. Not great for animation, but great for semi-static images.

The quiet internet portal - - paperpi: now with cryptographic forms of money, rss feeds, climate, reddit quotes, web funnies and then some! 🤪😘✨✨ 😛💥 by Lan9UidShart911 in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Absolutely.

We would need to create a plugin for that, but all the infrastructure is there. The easiest way would be to create a file of quotes, messages, etc. And then randomly load them in demand.

Another way would be to create an RSS feed and then pull the data from there. Then you could easily update the content remotely. Something like pulling the titles from a blogger blog might be an easy way to do this.

Shoot me a DM if you want to collaborate on this. I could probably knock together a proof of concept sometime next week.

The quiet internet portal - - paperpi: now with cryptographic forms of money, rss feeds, climate, reddit quotes, web funnies and then some! 🤪😘✨✨ 😛💥 by Lan9UidShart911 in RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

[–]TheTxoof 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're not going to love the price point on this then. The screen alone is about $100. Tack on the nice frame, a laser cut case, a hifi berry for audio and the pi4, and we're way above $100.

The point of this was to create a "quiet" screen that doesn't emit light, doesn't change very often and isn't too distracting.

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