It's easy to use eInk breakouts with Python and the Adafruit CircuitPython EPD library. This library allows you to easily write Python code to control the display.
Since there are dozens of Linux computers/boards you can use, we will show wiring for Raspberry Pi. For other platforms, please visit the guide for CircuitPython on Linux to see whether your platform is supported.
You'll need to install the Adafruit_Blinka library that provides the CircuitPython support in Python. This may also require enabling SPI on your platform and verifying you are running Python 3. Since each platform is a little different, and Linux changes often, please visit the CircuitPython on Linux guide to get your computer ready!
Python Installation of EPD Library
Once that's done, from your command line run the following command:
sudo pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-epd
If your default Python is version 3 you may need to run 'pip' instead. Just make sure you aren't trying to use CircuitPython on Python 2.x, it isn't supported!
If that complains about pip3 not being installed, then run this first to install it:
sudo apt-get install python3-pip
Download font5x8.bin
This library also requires a font file to run! You can download it below. Before continuing, make sure the folder you are running scripts from contains the font5x8.bin file.
Alternatively, you can use wget to directly download the file to your pi:
wget https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_framebuf/raw/main/examples/font5x8.bin
DejaVu TTF Font
Raspberry Pi usually comes with the DejaVu font already installed, but in case it didn't, you can run the following to install it:
sudo apt-get install fonts-dejavu
This package was previously calls ttf-dejavu, so if you are running an older version of Raspberry Pi OS, it may be called that.
Pillow Library
Some of the examples also use PIL, the Python Imaging Library, to allow graphics and using text with custom fonts. There are several system libraries that PIL relies on, so installing via a package manager is the easiest way to bring in everything:
sudo apt-get install python3-pil
That's it. You should be ready to go.
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