Cryptocurrency ePaper Ticker

An ePaper Cryptocurrency price ticker that runs as a Python script on a Raspberry Pi connected to a Waveshare 2.7 inch monochrome ePaper display. The script periodically (every 5 mins by default) takes data from CoinGecko and prints a summary to the ePaper. You can specify the exchange used for price info, as well as the currencies that your chosen coin's prices are in.

A few minutes work gives you a desk ornament that will tastefully and unobtrusively monitor a coin's journey moonward.

(supports all coins/currencies/exchanges listed on CoinGecko)

Getting started

Prerequisites

(These instructions assume that your Raspberry Pi is already connected to the Internet, happily running pip and has python3 installed). It also is set up to work for the V1 Waveshare 2.7in ePaper. If you are using V2 then see the note in btcticker.py about switching to V2.

If you are running the Pi headless, connect to your Raspberry Pi using ssh.

Connect to your ticker over ssh and update and install necessary packages

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip mc git libopenjp2-7
sudo apt-get install -y libatlas-base-dev python3-pil python3-numpy python3-matplotlib

Enable spi (0=on 1=off)

sudo raspi-config nonint do_spi 0

Now clone the required software (Waveshare libraries and this script)

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/waveshare/e-Paper
git clone https://github.com/veebch/btcticker.git

Move to the btcticker directory, copy the example config to config.yaml and move the required part of the waveshare directory to the btcticker directory

cd btcticker
cp config_example.yaml config.yaml
cp -r ~/e-Paper/RaspberryPi_JetsonNano/python/lib/waveshare_epd .
rm -rf ~/e-Paper

Install the required Python3 modules

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Add Autostart

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/btcticker.service
[Unit]
Description=btcticker
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 -u /home/pi/btcticker/btcticker.py
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/btcticker/
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
User=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Note that this assumes your user is 'pi'. If it isn't, change all occurences of pi to your user name . Now, simply enable the service you just made and reboot

sudo systemctl enable btcticker.service
sudo systemctl start btcticker.service

sudo reboot

Control via buttons

This only applies if you are going to control configuration via the buttons on the board.

The ePaper is slow. There is a lag of a few seconds between button press and a change to the display.

Here's what each of the buttons do:

• Button 1: Cycle through the cryptocurrencies listed in config.yaml
• Button 2: Rotate Display -90 degrees
• Button 3: Invert Display
• Button 4: Cycle through the fiat currencies listed in config.yaml

Update frequency can be changed in the configuration file (default is 300 seconds).

Configuration via config file

The file config.yaml (the copy of config_example.yaml you made earlier) contains a number of options that can be tweaked:

display:
  cycle: true # Setting to true makes the ticker cycle through a list of coins
  cyclefiat: true # Setting to true makes fiat cycle too, so you can do multiple pairs
  inverted: false # true for black text on grey, false for grey text
  orientation: 90 # 90 for horizontal display, buttons on left
  trendingmode: false # Add trending coins to those being displayed
  showvolume: false # Show volume (in fiat currency)
  showrank: false # Show ranking (by volume)
  24h: true # true for 24h clock, false for 12h
  locale: en_US # For region specific changes to price formatting
ticker:
  currency: bitcoin,ethereum,cardano # symbols used on coingecko
  exchange: default # specific exchanges can be specified
  fiatcurrency: usd,btc,gbp # 'fiat' currency
  sparklinedays: 1 # Time period shown on sparkline graph
  updatefrequency: 300 # How often price is refreshed (seconds) (lower limit 60s)

Values

• cycle: switch the display between the listed currencies if set to true, display only the first on the list if set to false
• cyclefiat: cycle listed fiat currencies, display only the first on the list if set to false
• inverted: Black text on grey background if false. Grey text on black background if true
• orientation: Screen rotation in degrees , can take values 0,90,180,270
• trendingmode: If true, it checks the 7 coins that coingecko lists as trending and also displays them (names are included in display)
• showvolume, showrank: true to include in display, false to omit
• currency: the coin(s) you would like to display (must be the coingecko id)
• exchange: default means use coingecko price, it can also be set to a specific exchange name such as gdax (coinbase), binance or kraken (full list on coingecko api page)
• fiatcurrency: if cyclefiat is set to True, it will also cycle, otherwise it will use only the first entry (and cycle with button presses)
• sparklinedays: Number of days of historical data appearing on chart
• updatefrequency: (in seconds), how often to refresh the display

Trending mode

When you activate trending mode (by setting to true in the config file, in addition to your coins, the ticker will cycle through 7 coins that are currently listing as trending on CoinGecko (see photo below).

Contributing

To contribute, please fork the repository and use a feature branch. Pull requests are welcome.

Links

• Video of the unit working here
• A fully assembled ticker or frames can be obtained at veeb.ch

Licencing

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3.0