Python library for the Inky pHAT and Inky wHAT e-paper displays.
Inky pHAT is a 212x104 pixel e-paper display, available in red/black/white, yellow/black/white and black/white. It's great for nametags and displaying very low frequency information such as a daily calendar or weather overview.
Inky wHAT is a 400x300 pixel e-paper display available in red/black/white, yellow/black/white and black/white. It's got tons of resolution for detailed daily todo lists, multi-day weather forecasts, bus timetables and more.
The Python pip package is named inky, on the Raspberry Pi install with:
pip3 install inky[rpi,fonts]
This will install Inky along with dependencies for the Raspberry Pi, plus fonts used by the examples.
If you want to simulate Inky on your desktop, use:
pip3 install inky
You may need to use sudo pip3
or sudo pip
depending on your environment and Python version.
The library should be run with python 3
Inky can try to automatically detect your board and set up accordingly:
from inky.auto import auto
board = auto()
You can then get the colour and resolution from the board:
board.colour
board.resolution
The Inky library contains modules for both the pHAT and wHAT, load the InkyPHAT one as follows:
from inky import InkyPHAT
You'll then need to pick your colour, one of 'red', 'yellow' or 'black' and instantiate the class:
inkyphat = InkyPHAT('red')
If you're using the wHAT you'll need to load the InkyWHAT class from the Inky library like so:
from inky import InkyWHAT
inkywhat = InkyWHAT('red')
Once you've initialised Inky, there are only three methods you need to be concerned with:
Set a PIL image, numpy array or list to Inky's internal buffer. The image dimensions should match the dimensions of the pHAT or wHAT you're using.
inkyphat.set_image(image)
You should use PIL
to create an image. PIL
provides an ImageDraw
module which allow you to draw text, lines and shapes over your image. See: https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/ImageDraw.html
Set the border colour of you pHAT or wHAT.
inkyphat.set_border(colour)
colour
should be one of inky.RED
, inky.YELLOW
, inky.WHITE
or inky.BLACK
with available colours depending on your display type.
Once you've prepared and set your image, and chosen a border colour, you can update your e-ink display with:
inkyphat.show()
If you're migrating code from the inkyphat
library you'll find that much of the drawing and image manipulation functions have been removed from Inky. These functions were always supplied by PIL, and the recommended approach is to use PIL to create and prepare your image before setting it to Inky with set_image()
.