Let me preface this by saying I am very new to coding and RasPi projects, so pardon any ignorance
Ideally I’d like to use my Inky Frame as a desktop calendar/weather widget and I was planning on doing this by designing a “dashboard” of sorts as a web page and directing the “inky/examples/7color/html” example to the webpage as reference.
Getting the initial image seems simple enough, but how do I modify the code to update with a current screenshot every day when the web page itself changes? Is there a way to do it where I don’t have to go in every time and manually change it?
Initially I am thinking that as long as I set up the deep sleep behavior so the Pi turns off after setting the initial image, when it comes back on to change it, since it runs the code again from the top, it should then grab the most recent version of the web page at that time. Is that an accurate understanding? If not, please explain.
As of typing, I’m now also wondering about what hapens to the old stored image? Is it replaced each time the code runs? Or do the previous day’s images sit in the system building up and taking space? Again, if I’m misunderstanding here, please let me know. And if I’m right, and the old images are left to take up unnecessary storage, I would love to know how to fix that!
I feel silly asking what feel like very basic questions, but I have a lot of interest in cool projects like this and want to make sure I’m heading in the right direction.
First thing to clarify: are you talking about an “Inky Frame” or an “Inky Impression”? The example you are referring to won’t work on an Inky Frame, which is based on a Pico-W.
Secondly: the Pi does not have a deep sleep behavior before the Pi5. That is why it makes more sense to run these kind of projects on a Pico (i.e. an Inky Frame).
If you would like to see an example of what is possible, have a look at my projects:
The first project is for the Pi. And in contrast to the repository-title, it supports a calendar display and a weather-display. It was running fine for years using an Inky Impression 5.7". Implementing on/off operation here was a big challenge.
The second project is a port to the Pico and uses the Inky Frame.
Another suggestion: since you are new to coding in general and RasPi projects as you said, I would recommend that you start with something simpler. For example, there are many online tutorials for coding in Python/MicroPython/CircuitPython. Python is a very good basis for all kind of projects, and once you know how to code you will be able to implement your ideas. As a second step, you could start to learn about hardware-programming with digital I/O, analog I/O, I2C and SPI - this will help you understand how programs interact with hardware.
If you are working on a Pi, a basic understanding of Linux will also be helpful.
Okay, so I’ve done a bit more research, and I have a tentative attempt at accomplishing what I’m trying to do. I took the “Grab a random image from PlaceKitten and display it on Inky Pack.” example Pimoroni provides in their repositories, micropython/examples/pico_inky/placekitten.py and modified it to instead grab a Dakboard screen and show it. I also put a 12 hour deep sleep at the end of the script so it refreshes twice a day.
So again, coming at this from a starting point of very little coding knowledge, would this likely work on the Inky Frame 5.7", or am I in the wrong ballpark?