Raspberry Pi Inky pHAT Peripheral Display - Quote, Currently Playing Spotify Song and Local Weather

Overview

A project that uses a Raspberry Pi (Zero WH) to display information on to a Pimoroni Inky pHAT screen display. The information displayed is data retrieved from API endpoints: a quote stored in a Firebase Realtime database, the song the user is currently listening to on Spotify, and the weather in degrees celcius for the user's city. The Inky pHAT display will update periodically with new information.

Motivation

I started this project as a means to try out using Raspberry Pi for the first time. I was curious to see how the Pi's work, as well as how it functions with the Inky pHAT display attached. To find out, I ended up creating this project that periodically makes a few HTTP GET requests to various API's and displays the retrieved information out on the display, and as a result functions as a peripheral display for a desk.

Setup

1. Install Raspbian to Raspberry Pi and complete Pi setup.
2. Shut Pi down and attach Inky pHAT display. Power on Pi.
3. Install inky dependencies

   1. curl https://get.pimoroni.com/inky | bash 

4. Try name-badge.py example to make sure every thing is working as intended.

   1. python3 name-badge.py --type "auto" --colour "yellow" --name "Ben Carroll"

5. Clone this repo

   1. git clone https://github.com/bencarroll1/raspberryPiE-InkDisplay.git

6. Enter the following to RaspberryPi.py:
   1. WeatherAPI (Request an API key):
      1. API key
   2. Spotify API (Create an app on Spotify for Developers):
      1. client_id
      2. client_secret
      3. redirect_uri
   3. Firebase (Docs here):
      1. database name
      2. database region
7. In the file ras.sh, change the pathing to raspberryPiE-InkDisplay as appropriate.
   1. My own are listed below, but yours may be different:

   #!/usr/bin/bash
   cd /home/pi/Desktop/inkyTesting/raspberryPiE-InkDisplay
   python3 ./RaspberryPi.py 

   2. Save and place on the Desktop
8. Open a terminal and enter the following:

   crontab -e 

   1. If its your first time using crontab, you will be prompted to select an editor. Choose Nano, the recommended one.
   2. Scroll to the bottom of the file, and under the last commented line enter:

   */3 9-23 * * * /home/pi/Desktop/ras.sh >> /home/pi/Desktop/cron.log 2>&1 

   3. Press ctrl + o to save the changes you have made
   4. Press Enter
   5. Press ctrl + x to exit Nano

This will run the bash script every 3 minutes between 9 a.m. and 11:59 p.m.

Some information on burn in from the Pimoroni Forums.

3D Printed Case & Soldering Process

In order to have this project neatly displayed on my desk as a peripheral display, I needed to have a neat way to display the Inky pHAT display. To achieve this, I ordered a 3D-printed case from a local printer using this .stl design.

After I received the case, I got to work to attach a new female micro USB adapter to the Raspberry Pi for the power source connection as the current micro USB port was underneath the Pi and Inky pHAT, making it difficult to both power and display the device neatly. Relocating the micro USB port would allow me to have the power source wire come out the back of the case instead.

Using a soldering iron, I attached a short length of the red part of the insulated wire to the VBUS hole on the new female micro USB port and the black part of the wire to the ground (GND) hole.

I then attached the other end of the red/VBUS wire to the circuit board connection furthest from the edge on the back of where the original power source adapter is on the Pi (See picture below for reference), and the black/GND wire to the circuit board connection nearest the edge.

With that, the soldering was complete and Pi was ready to be fitted into the case. There are two holes on the back of the case that the new power source can sit in, and the Pi and Inky pHAt just fit into the front part of the case.

The finished Result:

Results

To begin with, I set up the Rasberry Pi Zero with Raspbian, as this was the recommended OS. Raspbian is probably not needed for this project, as the final product doesn't require a GUI, etc., but it was my first time using a Raspberry Pi, so I went with it.

Once the Pi was set up, I shut it down and attached the Inky pHAT and rebooted it. I then installed the necessary dependencies and and tried displaying some of the example Python scripts available for the Inky pHAT:

I then got to work on retrieving data from the specified APIs. This was straightforward as I've retrieved data from APIs with Python before.

Once I had that working, I began working on displaying the retrieved data on to the Inky pHAT. This was a bit trickier as I had to figure out how to display the data within the dimensions of the screen, and how to format it correctly.

Aftersome trial and error, I got the data displaying correctly within the dimensions of the Inky pHAT. I also removed any brackets or unneeded characters from the outputted display.

I then wrote a bash script to run the Python script and used Crontab to make run the bash script every 3 minutes between 9 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. This isn't real time data, especially for Spotify but 3 minutes is roughly the length of a song, and I avoid burn in refreshing this infrequently.

The project in a 3D printed case:

Here is a short video showcasing the Pi Zero with the Inky pHAT screen in the 3D printed case in action:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/h4ub3YzUvfz5MzDr8