Custom PC - UK (2020-01)

GARETH HALFACREE’S

Hobby tech

The latest tips, tricks and news in the world of computer hobbyism,

from Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Androidtoretrocomputing

P

imoroni’sInkywHATadd-onforthe

RaspberryPi(seeIssue195,p96)is

anundeniablycleverpieceofkit,but

outoftheboxit lacksonekeyfeature:the

abilitytodisplayarbitrarytext.Thankfully,

addingthatfeatureis straightforwardand,

whencombinedwitha cheapboxframe,

colourprinteranda sharpknife,theresultis a

handynetwork-attachedsecondarydisplay.

1. InstalltheInkywHAT
   AssemblingtheInkywHATandPiZeroWHis
   straightforward,buttominimisetheproject’s
   depth– andthusthelikelihoodofit fittinginto
   yourboxframewhenyou’redone– isn’tquite
   thesameasinstallingit ona full-sized
   RaspberryPi.First,discardthebundled
   mountinghardwareandBoosterHeader.
   Instead,slidetheInkywHATdirectlyontothe
   PiZeroWH’sGPIOheader,makingsureto
   installit therightwayaround.

2.Installthesoftware

If youhaven’tusedtheInkywHATbefore,

you’llneedtoinstallitslibraries.Theeasiest

waytodosois toopena Terminalwindow– or,

if you’reusingtheRaspberryPi

headless,anSSHconnection–

andtype:

curlhttps://get.pimoroni.com/

inky| bash

Followtheon-screeninstructionstoinstall

thesoftware.You’llalsoneedtoenablethe

inter-integratedcircuit(I2C)communication

bus.Type:

sudoraspi-config

Scrollto‘5InterfacingOptions’andpress

Enter,scrollto‘P5I2C’andpressEnter,scroll

to‘Yes’andpressEnter,pressEnteragainto

confirm,thenpressTabtwicetoclosethe

tool.Finally,downloadtheinkywhat-writer

toolbytyping:

git clonehttps://github.com/

ghalfacree/inkywhat-writer.git

RebootthePiwith:

sudoreboot

3.Testing

Inkywhat-writeris a simpletoolthatwritestext

totheInkywHAT’sdisplay.TurnthePiandInky

wHATtoportraitorientation,thentypethe

followingina Terminal:

cd inkywhat-writer

./inkywhat-writer.py<

scheduleexample.txt

Aftera fewseconds,theInkywHATdisplay

willupdatewiththescheduleexample.txtfile’s

contents– santisedoutputofthedailyschedule

printerfromIssue183.Youmaynoticethatnot

everythingtranslatestotheultra-smallfont

usedtocramdataontothescreen.Youcanfix

thiswitha coupleoftools:‘sed’and‘iconv’.Type:

sed ‘s/← \|→ \|↓ \|↑ \|↘ \|↙ \|↖ \|↗

//g’scheduleexample.txt| iconv-f

UTF-8-t ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT| ./

inkywhat-writer.py

TUTORIAL

Inky wHAT secondary display

CUSTOMISATION / HOBBY TECH

TheInkywHATcomeswitha BoosterHeaderand

mountinghardware,butit’snotnecessarytousethe

Pi Zero WH

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