Heathergraph

Python based text email print server for Raspberry Pi and Pipsta

Configuration

Configure your Raspberry Pi and Pipsta using as many of the instructions here as required.

Create heathergraph.ini file in heathergraph folder containing:

[email]
*hostname: {imap server, default: imap.gmail.com}* 
username: {email address}
password: {email account password}
*folder: {email folder to watch, default: Inbox}*

[print]
*greetingonstartup: {print /formatting/startup.txt on startup, default: yes}*
*startuptemplate: {startup template to print, default: startup.txt}*
*template: {message template to print, default: email.txt}*

[encoding]
*errors: {character encoding error behaviour, options: strict/replace/ignore default: replace}*

Configuration References

Encoding Errors: Python 2.x’s Unicode Support

Dependencies

• beautifulsoup4: pip2 install beautifulsoup4

Startup

• Run the script directly from the terminal: python heathergraph.py
• Run the server script to create a background process: python server.py start
• Run the server on startup by adding python {heathergraph path}/server.py start to /etc/rc.local

Templates

Emails are printed based on text templates containing field placeholders and formatting tags.

The default email.txt template can be modified or new templates added and configured in heathergraph.ini.

The startup.txt greeting template can also be customised.

The Pipsta prints 32 or 16 chars per line, depending on font, so templates should be formatted accordingly.

No wordwrapping is applied to any of the fields.

Field Placeholders

Four fields are available for inclusion:-

• from - first name of sender
• date - message date formatted to %a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S
• subject - full subject of email
• content - text/plain or text/html content of email limited to printable ascii chars

--------------------------------
From: {from}
Date: {date}
Subject: {subject}
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
{content}

Formatting Tags

Four tags are available for formatting. They do not stack so the last tag before some text will be applied.

• reg - Default regular font (32 chars per line)
• tall - Double height (32 chars per line, 57mm)
• wide - Double width (16 chars per line, 57mm)
• u - Underlined (32 chars per line)

It's best practise to treat reg as a closing tag for the other three tags.

--------------------------------
<wide>{subject}<reg>
<tall>{content}<reg>

<u>from {from}
on {date}<reg> 

Logging

Logging is configured in logging.ini. By default this will output DEBUG to the console and INFO to a heathergraph.log file in the run location.

Guide to Python logging here.