Portal eInk Calendar

A small desk-calendar with the theme of a portal chamber info.
It displays the current date, the next few events in your calendar and whether a person in your contact list has a birthday (inc. their name).

Table of Contents

1. About The Project
   • Components
2. Getting Started
   • Prerequisites
   • Installation
3. Frame
4. Questions
5. Contact
6. Acknowledgments

About The Project

The finished project on my desk:

The pie is displayed when a person in your contacts has a birthday (along with the name below it). The other three icons are currently displayed randomly.

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Components

This repo includes the software (100% python) and the STLs of the frame.

I used the following hardware:

• Waveshare 800×480, 7.5inch E-Ink display (13505)
• Raspberry Pi 3b
  (The Raspi is a bit overkill if you only want to update the calendar. But since it's powered on anyways, I use it to host many other things as well. If you only want to use it for the calendar, you should take a look at the Raspberry Pi Zero series)

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

The prerequisites are based on this waveshare instruction to get your rapi ready for the display:

• Enable the SPI interface on your raspi

  sudo raspi-config
  # Choose Interfacing Options -> SPI -> Yes  to enable SPI interface

• Install BCM2835 libraries

  wget http://www.airspayce.com/mikem/bcm2835/bcm2835-1.60.tar.gz
  tar zxvf bcm2835-1.60.tar.gz 
  cd bcm2835-1.60/
  sudo ./configure
  sudo make
  sudo make check
  sudo make install

• Install wiringPi libraries

  sudo apt-get install wiringpi
  
  #For Pi 4, you need to update it：
  cd /tmp
  wget https://project-downloads.drogon.net/wiringpi-latest.deb
  sudo dpkg -i wiringpi-latest.deb

Installation

1. Clone the repo

   git clone https://github.com/13Bytes/eInkCalendar
   cd eInkCalendar

2. Install requirements

   sudo apt-get update
   # requirements by waveshare
   sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-pil python3-numpy RPi.GPIO python-spidev
   # requirements by this repo
   sudo python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Create config-file

   cp settings.py.sample settings.py

   Now edit settings.py and set all your settings:

   LOCALE: "en_US" (or e.g. en-GB.UTF-8) Select your desired format and language. It needs to be installed on your device (which 95% of time is already the case - as it's you system-language. You can list all installed local-packages with locale -a. If the desired one is missing, add it in this menu sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales (for Raspberry Pis) or take a look at the general Debian Wiki).

   WEBDAV_CALENDAR_URL = "webcal://p32-caldav.icloud.com/published/2/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" The address of your shared wabdav calendar. (It needs to be publicly accessible by this URL)

   WEBDAV_IS_APPLE = True Is the calendar hosted on icloud?

   CALDAV_CONTACT_USER = "louis" Username for logging into your CALDAV contact-list.

   CALDAV_CONTACT_PWD = "secret" Password for logging into your CALDAV contact-list.

   ROTATE_IMAGE = True This will rotate the image 180° before printing it to the calendar. True is required if you use my STL, as the dipay is mounted upside-down.

4. Add the start-script to your boot-process:
   (You might need to adapt the path /home/pi/eInkCalendar/run_calendar.sh acordingly)

   Make run_calendar.sh executable

   chmod +x /home/pi/eInkCalendar/run_calendar.sh

   and add it to crontab, as follows:

   crontab -e

   and add following line:
   @reboot sleep 60 && /home/pi/eInkCalendar/run_calendar.sh

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Frame

The STLs of the frame can be found in hardware. It's designed for 3D-printing. The two parts can be screwed together in three of the four corners.

The raspi is held in place by threaded heat set inserts.

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Questions

Stuck somewhere?
You can contact me, or create a issue.

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Contact

Louis - @Louis_D_ - coding@13bytes.de

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Acknowledgments

• I got the idea from following reddit-post.
• This readme-page uses this template.

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