Empire State Light Display

The Empire State Light Display project retrieves information about the Empire State Building tower lights schedule from its official website and displays it on an e-ink display.

Features

• Retrieves tower lights schedule information from the Empire State Building website.
• Displays the schedule information on an e-ink display.
• Checks throughout the day for changes.
• Automatically runs system updates and reboots once a week

Before you Start

Setup directions and project files are built on the user being named 'administrator'. Current code will not work with a different username.

Setup

Enable SPI Interface

1. Open the Raspberry Pi terminal and enter the following command in the config interface:

   sudo raspi-config
   

2. Choose Interfacing Options -> SPI -> Yes Enable SPI interface

3. Reboot your Raspberry Pi:

   sudo reboot
   

4. Check /boot/firmware/config.txt, and you can see 'dtparam=spi=on' was written in.

Update System

  sudo apt update
  sudo apt upgrade

*If update fails, see troubleshooting below.

Clone Repo and Run Setup Script

1. Clone repo to /home/administrator/empirestate:

   sudo git clone https://github.com/gittygitlab/empirestate-light-display.git /home/administrator/empirestate
   

2. Run setup script:

   sudo python ./empirestate/setup.py
   

Start Display Script

1. Run the update_and_run.py script. This will pull the latest update and then run the display script.

   python ./empirestate/update_and_run.py
   

Setup Remote Management

• NOTE: rpi-connect is in beta. Please refer to the following link for the latest setup instuctions, https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/services/connect.html

Configure cron.log Rotation

The current /etc/logrotate.conf file sets global settings for log rotation. However, the configuration you provided doesn’t specifically include a rule for rotating /var/log/cron.log. Here’s how you can set it up:

1. Create a New Configuration File:

   You can create a new file specifically for the cron logs, for example /etc/logrotate.d/cron. This way, it won’t interfere with other log files.

2. Edit the /etc/logrotate.d/cron File:

   Add the following configuration to rotate the /var/log/cron.log file:

    /var/log/cron.log {
    	weekly
    	rotate 4
    	create
    	missingok
    	notifempty
    	postrotate
    		/usr/bin/systemctl reload crond > /dev/null 2>&1 || true
    	endscript
    }
   

   weekly: Rotates the log weekly.

   rotate 4: Keeps the last 4 rotated logs.

   create: Creates a new empty log file after rotation with default permissions.

   missingok: Ignores errors if the log file is missing.

   notifempty: Skips rotation if the log file is empty.

   postrotate: Reloads the cron service to apply changes after log rotation.

3. Verify the Configuration:

   Test the configuration by running:

    sudo logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.conf
   

   This will display the logrotate actions without actually performing them, allowing you to check for errors.

Troubleshooting

If system update stalls reading changelogs, swap file may be too small.

1. Before we can increase our Raspberry Pis swap file, we must first temporarily stop it.

   sudo dphys-swapfile swapoff
   

2. Next, we need to modify the swap file configuration file.

   sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile
   

3. Within this config file, find the following line of text. CONF_SWAPSIZE=100

   This number is the size of the swap in megabytes. CONF_SWAPSIZE=1024 <-- This would be 1GB

   Whatever size you set, you must have that space available on your SD card. Check disk space with: df -h

4. Once you have made the change, save the file by pressing CTRL + X, followed by Y, then ENTER.

5. We can now re-initialize the Raspberry Pis swap file by running the command below.

   sudo dphys-swapfile setup
   

6. With the swap now recreated to the newly defined size, we can now turn the swap back on.

   sudo dphys-swapfile swapon
   

7. If you want all programs to be reloaded with access to the new memory pool, then the easiest way is to restart your device.

   sudo reboot