SuperIlu / PyToDon

A mastodon client for a screen and a thermal printer

Introduction

This is a small fun project I did when switching from Twitter to Mastodon. It is a minimal Mastodon client with a twist. I hooked a b/w CRT TV to a Raspberry and added a thermal receipt printer (POS-5890). The TV shows the latest toot from the home timeline and the printer creates a continuous flow of paper for all notifications.

Installation

PyToDon needs Python3, the PIL image library, python-escpos, Mastodon.py and pygame.

For example (incomplete, you might need to install additional packages):

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pil 
pip3 install Mastodon.py pygame

Running

You may need to change the server address in PyToDon.py:

[...]
import pygame

MASTODON_SERVER = "https://mastodon.social"

CHECK_DELAY = 10
[...]

After that you need to register the client ONCE:

python3 mytest.py login

Then you can login using your credentials:

python3 mytest.py login <user> <password>

After that you can simply start the client using:

python3 mytest.py run