This project contains a set of tools that can be used to display images on a Pimoroni Inky Impression e-ink display (or similar models) connected to a Raspberry Pi.
Preprocessed versions of all images that should be displayed are stored in a folder on the Raspberry Pi. Using cron, a script is run periodically to display a random image from this folder.
All images will be cropped or expanded to the exact dimensions of the e-ink display. This way, unlike with automatic cropping, no important parts of the images will be cut off.
To speed up this process, cropper.py can be launched with
python cropper.py
By default, the width and height options are set to the dimensions of the Pimoroni Inky Impression display.
After configuring, the script will open every image found in the source directory (and any of its subdirectories), and allow you to quickly edit it to the right size.
Every image can be either cropped or expanded:
The controls are as follows:
| Key | Switches to... | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Crop mode | Move the cropped area |
| W | Expand mode | Expand the image with white pixels |
| B | Expand mode | Expand the image with black pixels |
| Mouse click | Expand mode | Expand the image with the color selected by the mouse |
| Escape | - | Skip this image |
| Enter | - | Save the edited version to the destination folder |
show_image.py can be used to display images on the e-ink display. All images must have the exact size of the e-ink display used.
A single image can be displayed by passing its path to the script:
python show_image.py -p ~/Pictures/test.jpg
If a folder is passed to the script, a random image from the folder is displayed:
python show_image.py -p ~/Pictures/
Cron can be used to display a new image automatically. For example, to display a new image every day at 3am, a cron job like this could be used:
0 3 * * * python3 /<SCRIPT_FOLDER>/show_image.py -p /PICTURE_FOLDER_/
Useful cron examples can be found here.