Inky Dash

Inky dash is an interface for Inky pHAT, an e-paper display for the Raspberry Pi, that can be accessed from a browser via a local web server.

Prerequisites

1. Install the latest version of Node, must be version 11 or greater.
   • It's recommended to install Node through the Node Version Manager
   • Using NVM run nvm install node
   • If your hardware is armv6, install the last supported version of node (11.15.0) nvm install 11.15.0. Newer unoffical builds can be found here.
2. Ensure the Inky pHAT is correctly setup on your Pi. For help setting up the display follow this tutorial.

Install

1. Download the latest bundled release onto your Pi
2. Unpack the tar tar -zxvf inky_dash_v#.#.# . (replacing # with the relevant version)
3. Follow steps for running

Run

1. Change directories to the project root.
2. If you downloaded the "release" from GitHub run the project with node app.js. If you cloned this repo run the project with npm start.
3. On another device browse to your Raspberry Pi on port 8080, e.g.http://192.168.0.24:8080.
4. From here you should be able to upload an image to the Pi and have it displayed.

Uploaded images must conform with the confines of the Inky pHAT display:

• Dimensions are 212 x 104 pixels.
• Colour palette is white, black and (red or yellow) in that order, see here.
• File format is PNG.

Auto start

There are numerous solutions to running Node scripts on boot, here are a few possibilities:

• forever & forever-service
• pm2
• rc.local
• systemd

A quick and dirty way could be placing a line in rc.local to run the node server, similar to:

su pi -c '/home/pi/.nvm/versions/node/v11.15.0/bin/node /home/pi/inky_dash_v1.0.0/app.js < /dev/null &'

You have to be explicit with the node binary as the user's PATH variables are not accessible during boot up.

Build

1. Clone this directory onto your Raspberry Pi using Git clone
2. From the project root run npm build-all

Note: On hardware with low RAM such as the Pi Zero it may be quicker to build on a more powerful machine and copy across the files

Additional Info

Tech Stack:

• Node.js + Express handles REST API and serves the interface.
• React + Redux used in construction of the interface.

Requirements

• Node.js v11+

Why Express, React, Redux, etc...?

It may have been more suitable to have created Inky Dash using a Python web framework such as Flask, but the primary purpose of this project was so I could get more experience with the Express framework and React library.