junk's COMBO MAKER

The COMBO MAKER is a small every day calandar counter for your desktop, inspired by the likes of Simone Giertz's Everyday Calendar.

Materials

• Raspberry PI Zero WH
• Waveshare 2.13" e-paper HAT
• Right Angle 40-Pin Header for Raspberry Pi

Assembly

(TODO: UPDATE WITH PICURES)

1. Print the enclosure
2. Attach the right angle header to the Raspberry Pi
3. Attach the e-paper display to the header
4. Place the display face down on a flat surface and carefully bend the right angle pins to a 60 degree angle

Installation

Raspberry Pi OS Lite

We'll be using the smallest version of Raspberry Pi OS we can, setting up SSH and connecting it to the local wireless network.

Hide/Show Instructions

1. Use the Raspberry Pi Imager to flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite onto the PI Zero's SD card.

2. Open the boot folder and create a new file named ssh. This will automatically enable SSH.

   • To do this on Windows, I right click > New > Text Document and remove the file extension when renaming.

3. In the boot folder, create a new file named wpa_supplicant.conf. Edit the file and add the following:

   country=<ENTER TWO-LETTER COUNTRY CODE>
   ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
   update_config=1
   
   network={
   ssid="NETWORK-NAME"
   psk="NETWORK-PASSWORD"
   }
   

4. Connect the PI Zero to power, it's time to SSH into it. You can do this using PowerShell with the ssh command:

   ssh pi@raspberrypi
   

   NOTE: If you're anything like me, you may screw things up by this point and want to start over. In case you've SHH'd into your Pi already, you may be presented with a screen saying WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED!. To fix this, you can run the following line in PowerShell, of course replacing hostname with whichever hostname you entered, or raspberrypi for the default:

   ssh-keygen -R hostname
   

   The default password for the pi user is raspberry. You may get a warning about permanently adding the PI to your hosts file, type yes when prompted. Once in, we'll change some system settings through the build in config menu:

   sudo raspi-config
   

   We will need to

   • Update Configuration Tool
     • Update
   • Change the default password
     • System Options > Password
   • Change the default hostname
     • System Options > Hostname
   • Enable SPI
     • Interface Options > SPI > Yes
   • Change the timezone
     • Localisation Options > Timezone

   Select Finish, this will require a reboot once completed It should prompt you, if not just do it yourself silly. Note: You'll want to use the new hostname and password you entered to SSH into your PI. After that, we'll go through the regular housekeeping after install:

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo reboot
   

   That marks the Pi Zero ready to be worked on!

Install Modules & More

We'll need to install a couple things in order to get the project working.

Hide/Show Instructions

1. Install Python Libraries

   sudo apt install python3-pip
   sudo pip3 install RPI.GPIO spidev flask
   

2. Install git & more

   sudo apt-get install git python3-pil python3-numpy
   

Clone This Repo

Hide/Show Instructions

1. Change your directory by typing cd and pressing enter.

2. Clone this repo with this command:

   git clone https://github.com/junk-shop/combo-maker/
   

3. Move the folder we need and delete the rest (we really just need a way to clone just the subdirectory without the extra files, but this will do for now...)

   sudo mv /home/pi/combo-maker/pi-zero-w /home/pi && sudo rm -rv /home/pi/combo-maker
   

Schedule Scripts to Run at Boot

Hide/Show Instructions

1. Edit the rc.local file:

   sudo nano /etc/rc.local
   

2. Add the following lines to the end of the file, before exit 0:

   sudo python3 /home/pi/pi-zero-w/epaper/PPT.py &
   sudo python3 /home/pi/pi-zero-w/webapp/app.py &
   

   This will run the calendar check script once at boot, and then start up the web app. The ampersands, &, allow the scripts to run while the boot continues in the background. Without them, the Pi will not boot.

DONE!

At this point, your combo-maker is ready! You should be able to connect to the webpage from any device that's connected to the same network, just go to hostname:5000 in your web browser.

If you run into any issues, submit them! I'd love to improve this project as much as possible! This is a really rough project but with some polish it can be a really nice tool to have in your life.

Planned Features (at the moment!)

• One-Script Installation & Configuration
• Multiple Calendar Support
• Leap Year Handling