Raspberry Pi Digital Clock, written in Python programming language

This was challenging for me to get into Python programming and setting Raspberry Pi to my own needs. I know this is overkill but also this is a path for future projects for example info display which can display time, the temperature in your place, and maybe turn on lights in the living room and the list goes on and on.

Hardware requirements:

Raspberry Pi
Waveshare 5inch HDMI LCD
MicroSD Card
PSU for Raspberry Pi

1. create micro sd card with raspberry pi os lite

Here we need to enter the path and name of the image we want to write to the sd card instead of "/ source_image_file" and instead of "/ destination_disk_drive" we need to enter the path and name of the disk we want to write to.

sudo dd if=/source_image_file of=/destination_disk_drive

2. enable SSH

To be able to access over SSH we need to create an empty file named SSH in the boot partition of our Micro SD card.

sudo touch /media/your_username/boot/SSH

3. setup hostname

sudo nano /media/ebaketa/rootfs/etc/hostname

4. edit the host's file and replace "myhostname" with the desired hostname:

sudo nano /media/your_username/rootfs/etc/hosts

127.0.0.1	localhost
::1		localhost
127.0.1.1	myhostname.localdomain	myhostname

5. setup a static IP address

sudo nano /media/your_username/rootfs/etc/dhcpcd.conf

# Example static IP configuration:
interface eth0
static ip_address=192.168.x.xxx/24
#static ip6_address=fd51:42f8:caae:d92e::ff/64
static routers=192.168.x.x
static domain_name_servers=192.168.x.x 8.8.8.8 fd51:42f8:caae:d92e::1

6. edit Raspberry Pi OS configuration file config.txt

These lines below we need to add to "config.txt" to configure 5 inch HDMI LCD. The best is to add lines to the end of the file.

max_usb_current=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt 800 480 60 6 0 0 0
hdmi_drive=1

7. insert micro SD to the target machine, boot OS, and login over SSH

Now we can insert an SD card into Raspberry Pi, connect the power supply and boot into OS.

8. update Raspberry Pi OS

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

9. reboot Raspberry Pi OS and login over SSH

10. start raspi-config tool

sudo raspi-config

change default password
set boot options -> console autologin
set language and regional settings
set keyboarad layout
set time zone

11. reboot Raspberry Pi OS and login over SSH

12. install xorg, xinit, x11-server-utils

sudo apt -y install --no-install-recommends xserver-xorg
sudo apt -y install --no-install-recommends xinit
sudo apt -y install x11-xserver-utils

13. install openbox, lxterminal, lxtask, lxappearance

sudo apt -y install openbox obconf obmenu lxterminal lxtask lxappearance

14. install PyGObject

sudo apt -y install python-gi python-gi-cairo python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-3.0

15. create .bash_profile file and add a line below

touch ~/.bash_profile && sudo nano ~/.bash_profile

if [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then exec startx; fi

16. create openbox autostart file and add lines below

mkdir ~/.config && mkdir ~/.config/openbox && touch ~/.config/openbox/autostart && sudo nano ~/.config/openbox/autostart

# disable screen saver
xset s off &
xset s -dpms &
# run python digital clock
python ~/Projects/python/digital_clock/digital_clock.py

17. create directories for projects and get projects via wget

mkdir ~/Projects && mkdir ~/Projects/python && mkdir ~/Projects/python/digital_clock && cd ~/Projects/python/digital_clock

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ebaketa/digital_clock/master/digital_clock.py

18. reboot Raspberry Pi OS

And that's it with the next boot you should have a Raspberry Pi digital clock. If you find any mistakes in commands, please let me know, so I can correct them!

Github repo: https://github.com/ebaketa/digital_clock

Till the next time!