Inky

Python library for Inky pHAT, Inky wHAT and Inky Impression e-paper displays for Raspberry Pi.

Inky pHAT

Inky pHAT is a 250x122 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

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 to-do lists, multi-day weather forecasts, bus timetables and more.

Inky Impression

Inky Impression is our line of glorious 7 colour eInk displays, available in 4" (640 x 400 pixel) 5.7" (600 x 448 pixel) and 7.3" (800 x 480 pixel) flavours. They're packed with strong colours and perfect for displaying striking graphics or lots of data.

Installation

Installing

We'd recommend using this library with Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm or later. It requires Python ≥3.7.

Full install (recommended):

We've created an easy installation script that will install all pre-requisites and get you up and running with minimal efforts. To run it, fire up Terminal which you'll find in Menu -> Accessories -> Terminal on your Raspberry Pi desktop, as illustrated below:

In the new terminal window type the commands exactly as it appears below (check for typos) and follow the on-screen instructions:

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/inky
cd inky
./install.sh

Note Libraries will be installed in the "pimoroni" virtual environment, you will need to activate it to run examples:

source ~/.virtualenvs/pimoroni/bin/activate

Development:

If you want to contribute, or like living on the edge of your seat by having the latest code, you can install the development version like so:

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/inky
cd inky
./install.sh --unstable

Install stable library from PyPi and configure manually

• Set up a virtual environment: python3 -m venv --system-site-packages $HOME/.virtualenvs/pimoroni
• Switch to the virtual environment: source ~/.virtualenvs/pimoroni/bin/activate
• Install the library: pip install inky

In some cases you may need to us sudo or install pip with: sudo apt install python3-pip.

This will not make any configuration changes, so you may also need to enable:

• i2c: sudo raspi-config nonint do_i2c 0
• spi: sudo raspi-config nonint do_spi 0

You can optionally run sudo raspi-config or the graphical Raspberry Pi Configuration UI to enable interfaces.

Usage

The library should be run with Python 3.

Auto Setup

Inky can try to automatically identify your board (from the information stored on its EEPROM) and set up accordingly. This is the easiest way to work with recent Inky displays.

from inky.auto import auto
display = auto()

You can then get the colour and resolution from the board:

display.colour
display.resolution

Manual Setup

If you have an older Inky without an EEPROM, you can specify the type manually. The Inky library contains modules for both the pHAT and wHAT, load the Inky pHAT 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:

display = 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
display = InkyWHAT('red')

Once you've initialised Inky, there are only three methods you need to be concerned with:

Set Image

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.

display.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 Border

Set the border colour of you pHAT or wHAT.

display.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.

Update The Display

Once you've prepared and set your image, and chosen a border colour, you can update your e-ink display with:

display.show()

Migrating

If you're migrating code from the old 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().

2.0.0

• Rewrite to gpiod/gpiodevice.
• Repackage to hatch/pyproject.toml.
• Breaking: Fixes to chip-select behaviour across all boards

1.5.0

• New: inky impression 7.3" support.
• BugFix: WIDTH / HEIGHT set on uc8159.

1.4.0

• New: inky SSD1683 support for WHAT variant

1.3.2

• BugFix: (ish) handle busy_wait failure cases for UC8159 (Inky Impression)

1.3.1

• BugFix: unbreak UC8159

1.3.0

• New: inky UC8159 support for 4" 640x400 display variant
• BugFix: fix set_image so it doesn't break set_pixel
• New: Added --simulate to "auto()", so auto examples can simulate a chosen board

1.2.2

• BugFix: Raise Impression/7Color/UC8159 busy wait timeout from 15s to 30s

1.2.1

• BugFix: inky high-temp red fix
• Enhancement: SSD1608 (250x122) set_border support

1.2.0

• New: inky impression set_border support
• BugFix: inky impression orange colour
• BugFix: inky impression invalid arg bug for Python 2
• New: inky impression simulator

1.1.1

• Enhancement: drive UC81559 CS with GPIO to avoid conflict with Grow workaround
• Add 7-colour/UC8159 specifics to EEPROM
• BugFix: define UC8159 colour and size constants in class
• BugFix: fix auto to grab args properly, support UC8159 and fallback gracefully

1.1.0

• New: Support for UC8159-based 7-colour 600x448 display
• Enhancement: auto now includes options for fallback
• Enhancement: EEPROM can now give text string for display variant

1.0.2

• Enhancement: Always install Pi dependencies

1.0.1

• Enhancement: Tweak setup.py extras for easier dependency install

1.0.0

• New: Support for SSD1608-based displays
• New: Mock Inky pHAT and wHAT displays
• New: Automatic Inky detection and class constructor
• Enhancement: Support for alternate i2c_bus when reading eeprom
• Enhancement: Support for alternate spi_bus
• Enhancement: Support for alternate GPIO driver
• Enhancement: Replaced sys.exit calls with ImportError
• Enhancement: Improved docstrings

0.0.5

• Enhancement: Added support for red/b/w high-temp Inky wHAT

0.0.4

• BugFix: Reverted normal red LUTs to correct values

0.0.3

• Enhancement: Added support for display variant detection
• Enhancement: Added DocStrings
• BugFix: Fixed set_border for all colours

0.0.2

• BugFix: Yellow Inky pHAT now yellow instead of brown/black
• Enhancement: Performance tweak for set_image

0.0.1

• Initial Release