libcamera VS inky

pi@rpi5:~ $ sudo apt show libcamera0.1 Package: libcamera0.1 Version: 0.1.0+rpt20231122-1 Priority: optional Section: libs Source: libcamera Maintainer: Serge Schneider Installed-Size: 1,755 kB Depends: libcamera-ipa, libatomic1 (>= 4.8), libc6 (>= 2.34), libdw1 (>= 0.158), libgcc-s1 (>= 3.5), libgnutls30 (>= 3.7.3), liblttng-ust1 (>= 2.13.0), libpisp1 (>= 1.0.2), libstdc++6 (>= 12), libudev1 (>= 183), libunwind8, libyaml-0-2 Breaks: libcamera0 Replaces: libcamera0 Homepage: https://libcamera.org/ Download-Size: 476 kB APT-Manual-Installed: no APT-Sources: http://archive.raspberrypi.com/debian bookworm/main armhf Packages Description: complex camera support library libcamera is a complex camera support library which handles low-level control of the camera devices, providing a unified higher-level programming interface to the applications.

Red Hat seems to be putting a lot more work into desktop Linux lately. They added extended lifecycle options to RHEL Workstation with RHEL 9, they've been doing a bunch of work on desktop Linux technologies (PipeWire, libcamera, HDR displays, etc.), and they've recently worked with AWS to launch a virtual desktop option in the cloud.

https://github.com/kbingham/libcamera

the libcamera stack moves all of that control loop stuff into linux userland, so you would think there are no secrets left

but the actual register writes to drive the ISP are still in the blob, and libcamera is just telling the blob how to tweak every knob in the hardware

it makes no sense why they have opened it up so much, yet still insist on keeping that last bit a secret

The Pimoroni Inky Impression in your link comes with a number of useful example demos, including one (image.py) which shows an image of your choice. So the actual coding for your project is already mostly done :-)

https://github.com/pimoroni/inky/issues/115

Inky library by Pimoroni

I've been wanting to use my wHAT e-ink display for weather information, but nothing I was finding suited what I wanted. So I wrote up a completely new project using the provided libraries from Pimoroni for the display, while using pyOWM for the OpenWeatherMap integration.

Should be pretty easy! It's built to be flexible and work with different hardware. I just looked at the phat library and it should almost be totally feasible. Adding color support would also be possible, but will require a more work.

Uses a 5.7" 600x448px 7 color ePaper/eInk Raspberry Pi HAT from Pimoroni (quite pricy though) with a Raspberry Pi 3 that periodically creates a screenshot of a web app via CRON and then renders it to the display – their repo makes it quite easy. A refresh takes around ~20-60 seconds.

Yes I used their library, it's still actively developed.

Take a look at the html example in Pimoroni's library: if I remember right this was something to do with getting headless Firefox to screenshot a website, and display that on the InkyImpression. Phil Howard (Pimoroni's softwre guy) tweeted a couple of examples of his personal website on an Impression, so it shouldn't be too hard to get this to work for whichever website you want, surely.

I've seen this guide, and it seems the software comes with few examples and that this is their repo, right?