If you have a Raspberry Pi 4 and an Inky wHAT ePaper/eInk/EPD, you’ll likely want to use one with the other at some point. Here’s everything I did from opening the box of the Raspberry Pi and Inky wHAT to running the example code:

• Assemble the required ingredients:
  • Raspberry Pi 4
  • MicroSD card + SD card adapter + SD card reader (laptop maybe?)
  • USB-C cable and 5V power supply
• Download a SD card flashing tool, e.g. from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/
• Run the flashing tool, and flash an OS, I used Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Raspbian?)
• Before ejecting the SD card, set up your Wi-Fi connection and SSH
• For SSH:
  • Create an empty file named “ssh” (no extension) in the SD card’s boot partition
• For Wi-Fi:
  • Create a file “wpa_supplicant.conf” in the SD card’s boot partition with your configuration

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=<Insert 2 letter ISO 3166-1 country code here, e.g. CA for Canada>

network={
    ssid="<Name of your wireless LAN>"
    psk="<Password for your wireless LAN>"
}

• Eject the SD card from your computer
• Put the SD card in the Pi
• Connect the Pi to power
• Wait a minute or two
• Determine the IP address of the Pi as it joins your Wi-Fi
  • I look at the device with the shortest uptime on my WLAN from my router
  • other strategies outlined here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ip-address.md
• ssh into your Pi
  • e.g. ssh pi@192.168.1.215 with password ‘raspberry‘
• Generally I update the PI first thing, just so I know where I stand
  • sudo apt update
  • sudo apt upgrade -y
  • sudo apt autoremove
  • sudo reboot
• Now, enable SPI and also I²C (I’m not sure why it needs both)

• Now on to the Pimoroni aspect!
• They recommend the ol’ magic script, which is a great way to start:
  • Execute: curl https://get.pimoroni.com/inky | bash
  • Opt to include the documentation and examples
  • Wait a bit, restart the Raspberry Pi again
• Now, the moment of truth, run one of the included examples
  • change directory into ~/Pimoroni/inky/examples
  • sudo python name-badge.py --type "what" --colour "red" --name "Inigo Montoya"
  • Note that “sudo” is required because you’re accessing the GPIOs
  • Also note the British spelling of “colour” – at this time “color” does not work

It looks absolutely fantastic in person. I love eInk displays, so I’m jacked up about this. Now time to create my own images!