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Paper Pi

A modern, modular, and highly customizable dashboard for Waveshare E-Ink displays. Built with Python 3.14+ using async/await patterns and a clean, testable architecture.

🚀 Quick Start with Docker

The easiest way to run is using Docker - it handles all dependencies and driver setup automatically.

Screenshots

📊 Dashboard

Todo	HackerNews

🥷 Other Modes

Quote	Poetry	Wallpaper	Year-End Summary

🎉 Special Days

Happy Birthday	Anniversary	Valentine's Day

Happy New Year	Spring Festival	Mid-Autumn Festival	Christmas

Pull and Run

# Pull the latest image
docker pull palemoky/paper-pi:latest

# Or use GitHub Container Registry
docker pull ghcr.io/palemoky/paper-pi:latest

# Run with docker-compose (recommended)
git clone https://github.com/palemoky/paper-pi.git
cd paper-pi
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your API keys

# For dashboard/quote/wallpaper modes (default)
docker-compose up -d

Supported Platforms

• linux/arm64 - Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 (64-bit)

✨ Features

📊 Dashboard Widgets

• Custom To-Do Lists - Three customizable lists (Goals/Must/Optional) with strikethrough for completed items
• HackerNews - Auto-rotating top stories with pagination and configurable display time (Live Mirror)
• Real-time Weather - OpenWeatherMap integration with icon support
• GitHub Contributions - Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly stats with grid layout
• Bitcoin Price - Live BTC price with 24h change percentage
• VPS Data Usage - Monitor your server's data consumption
• Weekly Progress - Visual progress ring for the current week

🎨 Display Modes

• Dashboard - Main information display with time-based TODO/HN switching
• Quote - Inspirational quotes
• Poetry - Classical Chinese poetry
• Holiday Greetings - Auto-triggered on special days
• Wallpaper - Custom images

🎉 Smart Features

• Year-End Summary - Automatic GitHub contribution summary on Dec 31st
• Holiday Detection - Auto-displays greetings for:
  • Birthdays & Anniversaries (configurable)
  • Lunar New Year (Spring Festival)
  • Mid-Autumn Festival
  • New Year's Day & Christmas
• Time-based Switching - Configurable time slots for TODO lists vs HackerNews
• Quiet Hours - Configurable sleep period (e.g., 1 AM - 6 AM)
• Grayscale Support - 4-level grayscale for enhanced visual quality (white/light gray/dark gray/black)
• Audio Notifications - Xiaomi speaker integration for alerts and announcements

🏗️ Modern Architecture

• Async/Await - Built with asyncio and httpx for concurrent operations
• Modular Design - 23+ focused modules following Single Responsibility Principle
• Type Safety - Full type hints with mypy validation
• Plugin System - Extensible display mode system
• Event Bus - Decoupled component communication
• Smart Caching - TTL-based caching with LRU eviction
• Unified Retry - Automatic retry with exponential backoff using tenacity
• Task Management - Async task lifecycle management
• Config Hot Reload - Runtime configuration updates with watchdog
• Graceful Shutdown - Proper SIGTERM/SIGINT handling

🧪 Quality & Testing

• Unit Tests - 90+ tests with 66% overall coverage
• Core Modules - 77%+ coverage on critical components
• CI/CD - Automated testing, type checking, and Docker builds via GitHub Actions
• Type Checking - Full mypy validation with strict mode
• Code Quality - Ruff linting and formatting
• Pre-commit Hooks - Automated code quality checks before commits
• Mock System - CLI tool for generating test images without hardware

🏛️ System Architecture

The E-Ink Dashboard follows a modular, event-driven architecture with clear separation of concerns:

flowchart LR
    %% --- Style Definition ---
    classDef control fill:#e1f5fe,stroke:#01579b,stroke-width:2px;
    classDef data fill:#f3e5f5,stroke:#4a148c,stroke-width:2px;
    classDef render fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#e65100,stroke-width:2px;
    classDef hw fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#1b5e20,stroke-width:2px;
    classDef subBox fill:#ffffff,stroke:#90a4ae,stroke-width:1px,stroke-dasharray: 5 5;

    %% --- 1. Control Layer ---
    subgraph ControlLayer ["🎮 Core & Control"]
        direction TB
        Main("Main Orchestrator")
        Config("Config & Hot Reload")
        DisplayCtrl{{"Display Controller"}}
        TaskMgr("Task Manager")
    end

    %% --- 2. Data Layer ---
    subgraph DataLayer ["📡 Data Acquisition"]
        direction TB
        Fetcher("Data Fetcher")

        subgraph Providers ["Providers"]
            External["External APIs<br/>(Weather, GitHub, BTC, HN)"]
            Local["Local Info<br/>(Quotes, Poetry, TODO)"]
        end

        subgraph Storage ["State Management"]
            Cache[("Cache (TTL/LRU)")]
            State[("Persistence DB")]
        end
    end

    %% --- 3. Render Layer ---
    subgraph RenderLayer ["🎨 Rendering Engine"]
        direction TB
        ImgBuilder("Image Builder")

        subgraph Strategies ["Layout Strategies"]
            DashLayout["Dashboard Layout"]
            ContextLayouts["Context Layouts<br/>(Holiday, Quote, Poetry)"]
        end

        Renderer["Primitive Renderers<br/>(Text, Icons, Shapes)"]
    end

    %% --- 4. Hardware Layer ---
    subgraph HWLayer ["🖥️ Hardware Output"]
        direction TB
        DriverFac("Driver Factory")
        EPD["E-Paper Driver"]
        Mock["Mock (PNG)"]
    end

    %% --- Connection Logic ---
    %% Control Flow
    Main --> Config & TaskMgr
    Main --> DisplayCtrl
    Config -.-> Main

    %% Data Flow
    Main --"Trigger"--> Fetcher
    Fetcher --> External & Local
    External & Local -.-> Storage

    %% Render Flow
    DisplayCtrl --"Select Mode"--> ImgBuilder
    ImgBuilder --"Get Data"--> Storage
    ImgBuilder --> DashLayout & ContextLayouts
    DashLayout & ContextLayouts --> Renderer

    %% Output Flow
    Renderer --> DriverFac
    DriverFac --> EPD & Mock

    %% --- Application Style ---
    class Main,Config,DisplayCtrl,TaskMgr control
    class Fetcher,External,Local,Cache,State data
    class ImgBuilder,DashLayout,ContextLayouts,Renderer render
    class DriverFac,EPD,Mock hw
    class Providers,Storage,Strategies subBox

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🖥️ Hardware Support

• Primary: Waveshare 7.5inch E-Paper HAT (V2)
• Other Models: Configurable via EPD_MODEL env var (supports most models in the official repo)
• Platform: Raspberry Pi (Zero/3/4/5) or any Linux board with SPI/GPIO

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Antigravity for the pair programming

• Waveshare for E-Ink display drivers

• Chinese Poetry, LxgwWenKai, Hanyi for poetry

• Flaticon, Weather Icons for icons

• CoinGecko for BTC price

• OpenWeatherMap for weather

• Figma for UI design

• All the open-source libraries that make this project possible