Instructions on setting up a Raspberry Pi Zero WH with a Waveshare ePaper 7.5 Inch HAT. The screen will display date, time, weather icon with high and low, and calendar entries.
- Shopping list
- Setup the PI
- Using this application
- Setup dependencies
- Set your location
- Pick a Weather provider
- Pick a severe weather warning provider
- Pick a Calendar provider
- Pick a layout
- Run it
- Adding custom data
- Choosing a different language
- Choosing a different font
- Troubleshooting
- Waveshare documentation and sample code
- Debugging locally
Shopping list
Waveshare 7.5 inch epaper display HAT 640x384 Raspberry Pi Zero WH (presoldered header) microSDHC card
Setup the PI
Prepare the Pi
Use the Raspberry Pi imager and install Raspberry Pi OS. Ensure that you have SSH access, or direct access, to the Raspberry Pi, and that it can connect to the Internet to download packages.
Connect the display
Turn the Pi off, then put the HAT on top of the Pi's GPIO pins.
Connect the ribbon from the epaper display to the extension. To do this you will need to lift the black latch at the back of the connector, insert the ribbon slowly, then push the latch down.
Now turn the Pi back on and SSH into it.
Using this application
Clone it
git clone this repository in the /home/pi directory.
cd ~
git clone --recursive https://github.com/mendhak/waveshare-epaper-display.git
This should create a /home/pi/waveshare-epaper-display directory.
Setup dependencies
cd waveshare-epaper-display
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install gsfonts fonts-noto python3 python3-pip pigpio libopenjp2-7 python3-venv
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip3 install -r requirements.txt
sudo sed -i s/#dtparam=spi=on/dtparam=spi=on/ /boot/config.txt #This enables SPI
sudo reboot
Waveshare version
Copy env.sh.sample (example environment variables) to env.sh
Modify the env.sh file and set the version of your Waveshare 7.5" e-Paper Module (newer ones are version 2, red one is 2B)
export WAVESHARE_EPD75_VERSION=2
Set your location
Whichever weather provider you use, you'll need to provide the location and units to display in.
Modify the env.sh file and update with the latitude and longitude of your location.
As needed, change the temperature format (CELSIUS or FAHRENHEIT).
export WEATHER_LATITUDE=51.3656
export WEATHER_LONGITUDE=0.1963
export WEATHER_FORMAT=CELSIUS
Pick a Weather provider
You can pick between OpenWeatherMap, Met Office, AccuWeather, Met.no, Weeather.gov, VisualCrossing, and Climacell to provide temperature and weather forecasts.
You can switch between them too, by providing the keys and commenting out other ones, but remember to delete the cache_weather.json if you switch weather providers.
OpenWeatherMap
Register on the OpenWeathermap website, and go to the API Keys page, that's the key you'll need. Add it to the env.sh file.
export OPENWEATHERMAP_APIKEY=xxxxxx
Met Office (UK)
Create an account on the Met Office Weather DataHub site. Next, register an application - just call it Raspberry Pi or Home Project. You'll be shown a Client Secret, and a Client ID. Copy both of these somewhere, you'll need it later.
After registering an application, you then "subscribe" to an API by going to the API Usage Plans. Pick "Global spot data bundle" which includes the "Global daily spot data" API. Choose the Basic (free) plan and when prompted, pick that application you previously registered.
Finally, add the Met Office Client ID and Secret to the env.sh file.
export METOFFICEDATAHUB_CLIENT_ID=xxxxxx-xxxxxx-....
export METOFFICEDATAHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=xxxxxx
AccuWeather
Register on the AccuWeather site. Next, register a new application. I just named it Personal, marked it as Limited Trial, Internal App, Business to Consumer. Once you do this you'll get an API Key, save it.
You'll also need an AccuWeather Location Key.
Do a normal AccuWeather search for your location.
The last number in the URL is the Location Key. In the example of London, it's 328328.
Add the API Key and Location Key to the env.sh.
export ACCUWEATHER_APIKEY=xxxxxx
export ACCUWEATHER_LOCATIONKEY=328328
Met.no
Met.no's Terms of Service requires you to identify yourself. The purpose is to ensure they can contact you in case you overload or abuse their servers. For this reason, you just need to set your email address in env.sh like so:
export [email protected]
Note that the Met.no API provides 6 hours of forecast, rather than a full day.
Met รireann (Ireland)
Met รireann publish their forecast data under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). All you need to do to use it is to uncomment this line in env.sh:
export WEATHER_MET_EIREANN=1
Note that a condition of use of this data is that weather alerts be displayed, so ALERT_MET_EIREANN_FEED_URL should be uncommented, too.
Weather.gov (US)
Weather.gov requires you to identify your application. This can be any made up string, or an email address.
Set its value in the env.sh as shown:
export [email protected]
Warning: YMMV. During my testing, I found the weather.gov API would start returning errors and then suddenly work again.
Climacell (tomorrow.io)
Register on the Climacell site, and when you do you should be given an API Key.
Modify the env.sh file and put your Climacell API key in there.
export CLIMACELL_APIKEY=xxxxxx
VisualCrossing
Register on VisualCrossing. Under Account Details, you should be able to generate an API key. Once you have that, simply add it to env.sh as shown:
export VISUALCROSSING_APIKEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
SMHI (Sweden)
SMHI requires you to identify yourself. Just set your own email,
export [email protected]
Pick a severe weather warning provider
This is an optional step. By doing nothing you simply won't see severe weather warnings.
Met Office (UK)
Go to the Met Office RSS Feeds page and copy the URL of the RSS feed based on your region.
Set its value in the env.sh as shown below. For example, London would be:
export ALERT_METOFFICE_FEED_URL=https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/data/PWSCache/WarningsRSS/Region/se
Weather.gov (US)
Weather.gov requires you to identify your application. This can be any made up string, or an email address.
Set its value in the env.sh as shown:
export [email protected]
This provider will use the same latitude and longitude as specified for the weather provider.
Warning: YMMV. During my testing, I found the weather.gov API would start returning errors and then suddenly work again.
Met รireann (Ireland)
To use alerts from Met รireann, visit https://www.met.ie/Open_Data/json/ and choose the appropriate "warning_EIXX" JSON file for your region, using each county's FIPS code. This code can be found in the table on http://www.statoids.com/uie.html, in the pre-2014 section. For example, this is the file for Dublin:
export ALERT_MET_EIREANN_FEED_URL=https://www.met.ie/Open_Data/json/warning_EI07.json
Pick a Calendar provider
You can use Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar to display events.
Google Calendar setup
The script will by default get its info from your primary Google Calendar. If you need to pick a specific calendar you will need its ID. To get its ID, open up Google Calendar and go to the settings for your preferred calendar. Under the 'Integrate Calendar' section you will see a Calendar ID which looks like [email protected]. Set that value in env.sh
export [email protected]Google Calendar token
The Oauth process needs to complete once manually in order to allow the Python code to then continuously query Google Calendar for information.
Go to the Google Cloud Platform library page, search for and enable the Calendar API.
Next, head over to the API Dashboard Credentials page, and create new credentials of type "OAuth Client ID". For application type, choose "Desktop app" and give it a name such as "Epaper Display". When presented, download or copy the credentials.json file and add it to this directory.
You can now kick off the authentication process. On the Raspberry Pi, run:
.venv/bin/python3 screen-calendar-get.py
The script will prompt you to visit a URL in your browser and then wait. Copy the URL, open it in a browser and you will go through the login process. When the OAuth workflow tries to redirect back (and fails), copy the URL it was trying to go to (eg: http://localhost:8080/...) and in another SSH session with the Raspberry Pi,
curl "http://localhost:8080/..."
On the first screen you should see the auth flow complete, and a new token.pickle file appears. The Python script should now be able to run in the future without prompting required.
I also have a post here with screenshots walking through the process.
Outlook Calendar
The setup is much simpler, just run this script which will give instructions on how to login:
.venv/bin/python3 outlook_util.py
Login with the Microsoft account you want to get the calendar from, and accept the consent screen. After a moment, the script will then display a set of Calendar IDs and some sample events from those Calendars. Copy the ID of the calendar you want, and add it to env.sh like so:
export OUTLOOK_CALENDAR_ID=AQMkAxyz...
Note that if you set an Outlook Calendar ID, the Google Calendar will be ignored.
ICS Calendar
ICS is simple, get the ICS URL for a calendar, and place it in env.sh.
export ICS_CALENDAR_URL=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/xxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/basic.ics
There is no username/password support.
CalDav Calendar
For CalDav you will need the CalDav URL, username, and password.
export CALDAV_CALENDAR_URL=https://nextcloud.example.com/remote.php/dav/principals/users/123456/
export CALDAV_USERNAME=username
export CALDAV_PASSWORD=password
Some CalDav features may not work well as the protocol is heavily undocumented, proprietary, and many servers don't implement it the same way.
Pick a layout
This is an optional step. There are a few different layouts to choose from.
export SCREEN_LAYOUT=1 This is the default |
export SCREEN_LAYOUT=2 More calendar entries and less emphasis on weather and time |
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export SCREEN_LAYOUT=3 Calendar entries on left, less emphasis on weather |
export SCREEN_LAYOUT=4 Shows hour instead of time. Meant for color screens. |
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Run it
Run ./run.sh which should query the weather provider and Google/Outlook Calendar. It will then create a png, convert to a 1-bit black and white bmp, then display the bmp on screen.
Using a 1-bit, low grade BMP is what allows the screen to refresh relatively quickly. Calling the BCM code to do it takes about 6 seconds. Rendering a high quality PNG or JPG and rendering to screen with Python takes about 35 seconds.
Automate it
Once you've proven that the run works, and an image is sent to your epaper display, you can automate it by setting up a cronjob.
crontab -e
Add this entry so it runs every minute:
* * * * * cd /home/pi/waveshare-epaper-display && bash run.sh > run.log 2>&1
This will cause the script to run every minute, and write the output as well as errors to the run.log file.
Custom Data
This is an optional step, to add your own custom data to the screen. For example this could be API calls, data from Home Assistant, PiHole stats, or something external.
Rename screen-custom-get.py.sample to screen-custom-get.py. Do your custom code, and set the value of custom_value_1 to the value you want to display. Run ./run.sh and it'll appear on screen.
Next, modify screen-custom.svg and change the various x, y, font size values to adjust its appearance and position.
You can add more values by adding more SVG elements for custom_value_2, custom_value_3, and so on, and set its value in the output_dict in screen-custom.get.py.
How to use a different display language
The default locale of the system will be used to generate the time and date formats, including month and day names. On Raspberry Pi OS the default is usually en_GB.
Use the following instructions to install and try out other locales, or even force en_GB.
To see the current default locale, run locale.
To see all the locales installed on the system, use locale -a.
To install a new locale, go through the locale wizard:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
Select the locales you want to install, be sure to pick the ones that have .UTF-8 in the name.
Edit the env.sh file and at the top, set the language like so:
export LANG=ko_KR.UTF-8
The next time run.sh runs, the output should have the chosen language.
Fonts for non-western languages
Some languages may not render well because the default Raspberry Pi system fonts don't have all the characters needed to display on screen. For such cases, you'll need to find and install a font that supports all the characters you want to display. Chinese/Japanese/Korean should already be taken care of by installing the fonts-noto package. But sometimes just installing isn't enough, you'll also have to set it as the default font, see the font instructions.
The reason this is necessary: the SVG renderer does not support fallback fonts which means that if a font doesn't have a certain character, it won't ask the system for other fonts to help plug the gaps. You'll just see squares.
How to use a different font
The default font is set to sans-serif which on a Raspberry Pi defaults to DejaVu Sans. It's a decent font, wide, and visible, and works for most western languages.
In this example I'll replace it with Noto Sans. First run this command, it will show the current font being used.
$ fc-match sans-serif
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
Install Noto fonts.
sudo apt install fonts-noto
Now create a font config file if it doesn't already exist.
mkdir -p ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d
nano ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/00-fonts.conf
Set the contents of the 00-fonts.conf file:
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
<alias>
<family>sans-serif</family>
<prefer>
<family>Noto Sans</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>This tells the system to prefer 'Noto Sans' if the 'sans-serif' family is requested. You can test it by running:
$ fc-match sans-serif
NotoSans-Regular.ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
Troubleshooting
If the scripts don't work at all, try going through the Waveshare sample code linked below - if you can get those working, this script should work for you too.
You may want to further troubleshoot if you're seeing or not seeing something expected.
If you've set up the cron job as shown above, a run.log file will appear which contains some info and errors.
If there isn't enough information in there, you can set export LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG in the env.sh and the run.log will contain even more information.
The scripts cache the calendar and weather information, to avoid hitting weather API rate limits.
If you want to force a weather update, you can delete the cache_weather.json.
If you want to force a calendar update, you can delete the cache_calendar.pickle or cache_outlookcalendar.pickle.
If you want to force a re-login to Google or Outlook, delete the token.pickle or outlooktoken.bin.
Waveshare documentation and sample code
Waveshare have a user manual which you can get to from their Wiki
The Waveshare demo repo is here. Assuming all dependencies are installed, these demos should work.
git clone https://github.com/waveshare/e-Paper
cd e-Paper
This is the best place to start for troubleshooting - try to make sure the examples given in their repo works for you.
Debugging locally
It's possible to run and debug the application locally with virtual environments. The last step fails, as it's trying to write to GPIO, but that's not an issue since the aim of local development is to generate and view the screen-output.png.
Do this before opening VSCode:
# Generate the virtual environment directory
python3 -m venv .venv
# Switch to it
source .venv/bin/activate
# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txtThen, open VSCode with the project, and it should automatically detect and switch to the virtual environment in the terminal.
To run the project, just run ./run.sh. It will pick up env.sh variables, and run the various Python scripts.
To debug the project, open a Python script file such as screen-calendar-get.py or screen-weather-get.py, and press F5. It will generate a .env from env.sh, and run the script. It can hit breakpoints, no problem.