I’m new to Python and RPI. I have a Raspberry Pi 3 and an Inky Impression 7.3. I’ve connected them with the 40 pin header and managed to download the Inky software to my RPI by creating a virtual folder wit Venv. However, when I try in terminal to run “from inky.auto import auto”, I get the following error: “bash: from: command not found”. I’m not sure if the Impression is even powered on. Is there an LED or someway for me to know?
I assume you’re following these instructions: GitHub - pimoroni/inky: Combined library for V2/V3 Inky pHAT and Inky wHAT.
The code you tried needs to be run at the Python prompt, so you need to run the python3 command to get a Python prompt first.
Thank you for the quick reply. Yes, those are the instructions I’m trying to follow. I didn’t realize this about running from python and that seems to have gotten me a step closer, but now I get this error:
from inky.auto import auto
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
File “/home/folder/InkyTest/lib/python3.11/site-packages/inky/init.py”, line 5, in
from .phat import InkyPHAT, InkyPHAT_SSD1608 # noqa: F401
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/home/folder/InkyTest/lib/python3.11/site-packages/inky/phat.py”, line 12, in
from . import inky, inky_ssd1608
File “/home/folder/InkyTest/lib/python3.11/site-packages/inky/inky_ssd1608.py”, line 4, in
from PIL import Image
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘PIL’
display = auto()
after some searching, from the command line, I’ve input:
pip3 install pillow
That seems to have taken care of the error, but now when I run python and type:
from inky.auto import auto
display = auto()
I get:
display = auto()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
File “/home/gregorpb/InkyTest/lib/python3.11/site-packages/inky/auto.py”, line 83, in auto
raise RuntimeError(“No EEPROM detected! You must manually initialise your Inky board.”)
RuntimeError: No EEPROM detected! You must manually initialise your Inky board.
So, following the instructions, I see there’s no EEPROM on my display, so I type:
from inky import InkyPHAT
and it returns a >>> prompt. I follow with
display = InkyPHAT(‘red’)
and get another >>> prompt. Then,
display.set_image(image) returns the follwing:
display.set_image(image)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
NameError: name ‘image’ is not defined
There are examples for the color Impressions line in the repo: e.g inky/examples/7color/colour-palette.py. Have you tried to run any of them?
I tried to run cycle.py and got this:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import timefrom inky.auto import auto
inky = auto(ask_user=True, verbose=True)
Failed to detect an Inky board. Trying --type/–colour arguments instead…
usage: [-h] [–simulate] --type
{what,phat,phatssd1608,impressions,7colour,whatssd1683,impressions73}
[–colour {red,black,yellow}]
: error: the following arguments are required: --type/-t
That message is telling you to use the --type “inkyboard” to specify which Inky board you have.
“impressions73”, “7colour” or “impressions” seem like the right ones to try. e.g. in the examples/7colour directory, use the command:
./cycle.py --type impressions73
or
./cycle.py --type 7colour
or
./cycle.py --type impressions
See if any work.
If you don’t know Python, learning it is really useful on the Pi!
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Thank you so much. This is great. I ran it as you suggested an got the Impression to cycle through colors. I am starting to learn Python, but it’s a steep learning curve.
Quick question - when I run cycle.py specifying the board, while it does cycle through the colors, I get this message in terminal:
Failed to detect an Inky board. Trying --type/–colour arguments instead…
Color: Black
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I’m guessing the auto call tries to identify the board first, fails and prints the message that it’s looking for a --type option as a fallback.
Keep trying stuff and read the code to understand what it’s doing - the library code too.
The online Python documentation is good, and you can download a copy for quicker access - the latest release of Raspberry Pi OS has Python version 3.11.2.
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