Just wondering since I know a lot of people quietly use a screen-area-select -> tesseract OCR -> clipboard shortcut.
- I separate subjects of interest into different Firefox windows, in different workspaces – so I have an extension title them and a startup script parse text to ask the compositor to put them in the correct workspace (lets me restart more conveniently).
- I have automatically-set different-orientation wallpapers for using my 2-in-1 depending on whether I use it in portrait or landscape (kind of just for looks, but I don’t think if anyone else adds a wallpaper change to their screen rotation keybind).
I use KDE’s defaults.
I made a user for my partner
When I press Super + PrtSc, a bash script performs the following:
Takes a screenshot of the entire desktop (import -window root) and saves it as ~/screenshot.png…
Analyzes the screenshot to calculate the “mean brightness” value of the image. It converts the image to grayscale and determines the average pixel brightness (a value between 0 and 1, where 0 is black and 1 is white).
Checks if the image is dark by comparing the mean brightness to a threshold of 0.2. If the mean brightness is less than 0.2 (i.e., the image is very dark), it applies a negative filter to the image (convert -negate), effectively inverting the colors (black becomes white and vice versa).
Sends the image to a printer (lp command) named MF741C-743C for printing.
why?
Honestly I print out anything my little kiddo does at school on his Chromebook, and some stuff has black backgrounds. I got tired of wasting toner so I made a script that would print a negative screenshot if it’s a dark image. One keystroke and I get what I want
That’s a really neat use case!
And a very clever implementation.
I use my DE mostly as it comes, that’s got to be unique in this community
I’ve got a RPI running a full-screen ‘kiosk’ view from homeassitant that turns an external display on/off based on a motion sensor.
So basically it’s showing current temperatures, thermostat control, etc. but I have the display turn off after X minutes of no movement and turn on when there has been movement so it’s only on when you’re in the room.
I’d love to see your implementation specs, code, pr any other technical details you’d like to share. I’m setting up home assistant and one of the things I want it to do is replace the functions of my thermostat and add some additional details.
I used to have a Nest Thermostat, but my furnace needed to be replaced a couple of months back and I got a Mitsubishi heat pump, but their thermostat sucks, and it isnt compatible with Nest because it’s all wireless. I installed the WiFi add-on to the furnace so I can use the app, too, but it also sucks pretty bad. Plus I miss the functionality of it turning down the heat when I’m away to save money and turning it back on before I get home.
So I’m planning to implement my own solution and documenting and open sourcing everything. But it’s going to be several months before I get to doing it due to other more urgent projects. So, I’m looking at everything available. I definitely will be setting up a small display to replace the thermostat and having motion detectors to turn on the display when you approach it to see the temperature and such and to supplement the home/away detection.
Anyway, I would love to see your implementation to see how you did this piece of it.
It’s really quite simple - but works pretty well. There are 3 components:
Kiosk service
A simple systemd service that starts a kiosk script.
[Unit] Description=Kiosk Wants=graphical.target After=graphical.target [Service] Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0 Environment=XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority Type=simple ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/pi/kiosk.sh Restart=on-abort User=pi Group=pi [Install] WantedBy=graphical.target
Kiosk script
The script in /home/pi/kiosk.sh just starts a web browser in full-screen mode pointed at my home assistant instance:
#!/bin/bash xset s noblank xset s off xset -dpms export DISPLAY=:0.0 echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/bl_power LANDING_PAGE="https://homeassistant.example.com/" unclutter -idle 0.5 -root & /usr/bin/chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --disable-infobars --kiosk $LANDING_PAGE
Display service
I have a very simple python/flask service that runs and exposes an endpoint that lets you turn on/off the display. It’s called by a homeassistant automation for when the motion detector senses or hasn’t sensed movement.
Here’s the python - I have this started from another “kiosk.service” systemd service as well.
#!/usr/bin/env python3 import subprocess from flask import Flask from flask_restful import Api, Resource def turn_off_display(): with(open(backlight_dev, 'w')) as dev: dev.write("1") def turn_on_display(): with(open(backlight_dev, 'w')) as dev: dev.write("0") class DisplayController(Resource): def get(self, state): if state == 'off': turn_off_display() elif state == 'on': turn_on_display() else: return {'message': f'Unknown state {state} - should be off/on'}, 500 return {"message": "Success"} def init(): turn_on_display() if __name__ == "__main__": init() app = Flask(__name__) api = Api(app) api.add_resource(DisplayController, '/display/<string:state>') app.run(debug=False, host='0.0.0.0', port=3000)
You can then have the HA rest action call this with “http://pidisplay:3000/display/on” or off.
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