Making a map of the night sky on an Inky Impressions e-ink display
- A Raspberry Pi (tested with Zero 2WH)
- An Inky Impression e-ink display from Pimoroni [https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-7-3?variant=55186435277179].
- A micro SD card that's not too slow (I have used a SanDisk 64GB High Endurance MircoSD XC I3 V30.)
- A power cable
Attach the Raspberry Pi to the GPIO port
- Use Raspberry Pi Imager (available from here [https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/]) to install the OS on a micro SD card. (On a Windows/MacOS/Linux system)
- Insert the Micro SD card in your Raspberry Pi.
- Log in on your Raspberry Pi with SSH (can be with Putty or iTerm2).
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Download inkystarmap_0.4.0.deb
wget https://github.com/Marcel-Jan/inkystarmap/blob/main/inkystarmap_0.4.0.deb -
Run the .deb file
sudo dpkg -i inkystarmap_0.4.0.deb -
Run inkystarmap (see Usage below)
inkystarmap --lat 52.0141616 --lon 4.7158104 --direction 180
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Enlarge the swap space of your Raspberry Pi (new version creates a 4G swapfile). (I found that installing the necessary Python packages for inkystarmap, specifically cartopy, will hang if you don't have enough swap space.)
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In your $HOME, create a PythonProjects directory (or wherever you want to install inkystarmap).
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Install uv (instructions here: [https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/]).
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Download this repository on your Raspberry Pi (I would do this in the PythonProjects directory).
git clone https://github.com/Marcel-Jan/inkystarmap.git -
Go in the new inkystarmap directory.
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Run uv sync. This will create a virtual environment, install Python 3.13 there and install all necessary Python packages. (If it hangs during installation of the Python packages, check step 4.)
uv sync -
Activate the virtual environment.
source .venv/bin/activate -
Run inkystarmap (see Usage below)
inkystarmap --lat 52.0141616 --lon 4.7158104 --direction 180
python3 inkystarmap.py --lat <your_latitude> --lon <your_longitude> --direction <direction to look at in degrees>
Example: To have a map of the southern night sky from Gouda, the Netherlands, you can run this:
python3 inkystarmap.py --lat 52.0141616 --lon 4.7158104 --direction 180
If you don't enter the latitude and longitude, an attempt is made to get your location via IP.
There now is an inkystarmap service and a timer that will run the Python code every hour (with default lat/lon and direction 180). Based on your location it will determine if the sun is up or down. If the sun is down, the starmap will be refreshed.