It's all fine and dandy to have a script which we can manually run, but wouldn't it be nice to have the time and ip address pop up on the display when the Raspberry Pi boots up? This is done using an init script which runs our Python code every time your Raspberry Pi boots up.
The following command will allow you to download the lcd.service file directly to your Pi.
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Learning_System_Guides/master/Drive_a_16x2_LCD_with_the_Raspberry_Pi/lcd.service
[Unit] Description=LCD date|time|ip [Service] ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 Drive_a_16x2_LCD_with_the_Raspberry_Pi.py WorkingDirectory=/home/pi StandardOutput=inherit StandardError=inherit Restart=always User=pi [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
The lcd.service file needs to be copied into the correct location and the systemctl command can be used to start | stop | enable the service. It is a good idea to test this before enabling as there might be a minor path difference on your system.
sudo cp lcd.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl start lcd.service ps auxww | grep -i 16x2
The following commands read the updates to the service file, start the lcd.service and confirm that the process is running. If the script shows up in the 'ps' command output you have done everything correctly and can now enable the service and reboot. The service should activate upon bootup automatically.
sudo systemctl enable lcd.service
Now on each boot the LCD will automatically show the date/time/ip address on startup. This means you will know when the Pi is reachable and what the ip address is without having to plug a monitor in.
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