inkplate5/projects/image_uploader

# Image Uploader

Turn Soldered Inkplate 5 into a standalone web app for uploading an image from a phone or PC and displaying it on the e-paper screen.

## Overview

Inkplate 5 connects to a WiFi network and starts an HTTP server (using ESP-IDF's native `esp_http_server` component). The server serves an upload page that lets the user take a photo or choose an image from their gallery. The page scales and crops the image to a fixed canvas in the browser, then uploads it to the device. The device decodes the uploaded JPEG and renders it on the e-paper display in grayscale.

## Hardware Required

- Soldered Inkplate 5
- USB cable
- WiFi network
- Phone or PC with a web browser

## Setup

Run `idf.py menuconfig` and navigate to:
- **Inkplate Boards → Inkplate5**
- **WiFi Configuration → Enter your SSID and password**

## Build and Flash

```
idf.py build
idf.py -p PORT flash monitor
```

## Expected Output

After flashing, the device connects to the configured WiFi network and prints its IP address to the serial log (and shows it on the e-paper display), for example:

```
I (2345) IMAGE_UPLOADER: Connected! Open http://192.168.1.42/ in your browser
```

Open `http://<printed-ip>/` in a web browser on a device connected to the same network. The upload page lets you take a photo or choose an image from your gallery; pressing **Upload** sends it to the device, which decodes it and renders it on the Inkplate 5 e-paper display.

## Notes

- Arduino's `WebServer` class has no equivalent in this ESP-IDF component. This example is built directly on ESP-IDF's native `esp_http_server` component (`REQUIRES "esp_http_server"` in `main/CMakeLists.txt`) instead, with routes registered via `httpd_register_uri_handler()`.
- The browser posts the picked/captured image as `multipart/form-data`. Rather than implementing a full multipart parser, the upload handler scans the received body for the JPEG start-of-image marker (`0xFF 0xD8`) to locate the embedded image before decoding it.
- The uploaded image is buffered fully in RAM, sized from the request's `Content-Length` header; very large uploads may fail to allocate.
- The upload page (`main/html.h`) scales/crops the picture to a 960x540 canvas client-side before uploading (matching the Inkplate 5 panel's 16:9 aspect ratio at a reduced resolution, to keep JPEG uploads small), so it does not fill the full 1280x720 panel edge-to-edge.
- This example uses the display's default grayscale (3-bit) mode; partial update is not available in grayscale mode, so `display.display()` performs a full refresh.
- This is a demo web server without authentication; avoid exposing it on untrusted networks.

## Resources

- Docs: https://docs.soldered.com/inkplate
- Support: https://forum.soldered.com/
- Image tool: https://tools.soldered.com/tools/image-converter/