https://github.com/sstark/paperd

epaper display server
https://github.com/sstark/paperd

cloudless display epaper iot music-player raspberrypi

Last synced: about 1 year ago
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epaper display server

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/sstark/paperd
• Owner: sstark
• License: isc
• Created: 2018-09-22T19:31:49.000Z (over 7 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2024-04-25T05:13:38.000Z (about 2 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-04-23T13:08:54.474Z (about 1 year ago)
• Topics: cloudless, display, epaper, iot, music-player, raspberrypi
• Language: Python
• Size: 360 KB
• Stars: 5
• Watchers: 1
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE.TXT

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README

          

# paperd

An epaper display server.

So you have your epaper display sucessfully connected to your Raspberry Pi. Now

what do do with it?

paperd will make it easy to push content to your epaper display by letting you

define areas on the display and individually update those areas using a restful

web api.

In the configuration file those areas are defined with their position on the

display and their size. Furthermore it lets you set parameters like how to

handle box overflow or font sizes.

An area can currently be of type "image" or "text". If you push an image

(anything supported by PIL) to an area it will replace the contents of that

area. Likewise, text will be written to a text area in the defined font, size

and alignment.

paperd makes use of the partial update feature of some of the epaper displays

available and can currently only work with those.

Since epaper displays are notoriously slow, you can use a tk based realtime

preview window on your development system.

All testing is currently done on a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a Waveshare 2.9"

epaper, using Raspbian stretch.

![paperd screenshot](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sstark/paperd/master/paperd.jpg)

## Installation

Recommended (work in progress!):

     pipx install paperd

Run the development version without installation:

     poetry run paperd

For programming the epaper display, the driver for the Waveshare 2.9" (1-color

version) is included. This display has a resolution of 128x296 pixels. More

drivers will follow.

## Configuration

The configuration file is written in yaml and looks like this:

    paperd:

      v1:

        resolution: {x: 296, y: 128}

        orientation: 1

        output: epd2in9

        colordepth: 1

        maxfps: 4

        areas:

          - name: background

            type:

              format: image

              overflow: resize

            origin: {x: 0, y: 0}

            size: {x: 296, y: 128}

          - name: title

            type:

              format: text

              overflow: scrolling

              font:

                face: examples/musicplayer/fonts/pf_tempesta_seven_condensed.ttf

                size: 24

                align: left

            origin: {x: 70, y: 0}

            size: {x: 226, y: 64}

See the examples directory for another example. Some of the options in those

examples are not implemented yet: `orientation`, `colordepth`, `scrolling`.

`maxfps` is only partially implemented.

If text does not fit into a text area, paperd will try to scale down the font

size to make it fit, but only if the resulting font size is not smaller than

half the original font size, and not smaller than 4. If the text still does not

fit, it will be split into two lines at half the font size.

## Running

In order to run the included example using the tk preview run this command:

    ./paperd.py -c examples/musicplayer/paperd.yml -o tk

If you have a hidpi display you might want to add the `--scale 2` option to the

command line.

For running the example on your Raspberry Pi with the epd output module, simply

remove the `-o tk` parameter and it will use whichever driver is defined in the

configuration.

## Using the API

Currently there are only two useful api URLs:

### Change contents of an area

    PUT http://localhost:2354/v1/areas/

This PUTs content to the area named ``. The area must be defined in the

configuration file of paperd. Say you have an area "logo", you can test it

with curl like this:

    curl -T logo.png http://localhost:2354/v1/areas/logo

By default, paperd will resize the image to fit in the dimensions of the area.

However it is strongly recommended to provide the image in the correct

resolution already, since rescaling will likely look bad at such a small scale.

If the area you want to PUT something is of type text, you can use curl like

this:

    curl -X PUT -d "the text" http://localhost:2354/v1/areas/title

### Update the display

After you have uploaded some text or images to areas, you have to update the

display. For this use this API call:

    curl -sS http://localhost:2354/v1/update

This will swap the two frame buffers of the display, showing what you have

drawn since the last update.

## Development

This is an early, but working development version of paperd. Please be kind if

it does weird things and file an issue.

Since the original waveshare epd2in9 driver is used, and there is no low level

tweaking going on in paperd, it is unlikely this will cause any damage to your

display or Raspberry Pi.

To get debug information from paperd, set the environment variable

`PAPERD_LOGLEVEL` to "debug"