With it being the festive season and looking for something for my recent Inky PHAT purchase needing to be I used I decided to create a Countdown To Christmas.
I started off with a basic countdown in Python, where today’s date (2nd) is taken away from the 25th (Christmas Day).
Then I used the guidance provided by the excellent PiMoroni to create a small program that did the Christmas Countdown and display it on the Inky PHAT.
The original output did not go exactly as planned….
But with a little modification the Inky PHAT correctly displays the amount of days until Christmas.
——
#!/bin/python3
# geektechstuff
# import date from datetime
from datetime import date
# import the InkyPHAT library
from inky import InkyPHAT
# setting up InkyPHAT
inky_display = InkyPHAT(“black”)
inky_display.set_border(inky_display.WHITE)
# import Python Image Library modules
from PIL import Image, ImageFont, ImageDraw
# creates an image (img) and a then a canvas (draw) on the image
img = Image.new(“P”,(inky_display.WIDTH, inky_display.HEIGHT))
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
# import font
from font_fredoka_one import FredokaOne
font = ImageFont.truetype(FredokaOne, 22)
# Calculate how many days to go
today = date.today().strftime(‘%d’)
today = int(today)
christmas = int(25)
days_to_go = christmas – today
days_to_go = str(days_to_go)
message_formatted = days_to_go + ” days \n until \n Christmas”
# create the message to display
message = message_formatted
w,h = font.getsize(message)
x = (inky_display.WIDTH / 1) – (w /2)
y = (inky_display.HEIGHT / 8) – (h/2)
# display the message
draw.text((x,y),message,inky_display.BLACK,font)
inky_display.set_image(img)
inky_display.show()
# just for geektechstuff to say its done
print(“InkyPHAT updated”)
——
I can now use CRON to schedule the program to run daily just after midnight so that it displays the correct amount of days left.
GeekTechStuff 
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