PyPillar

A workplace nameplate and presence display for a Raspberry Pi 4 connected to a 480×1920 portrait LCD. Shows your name, job title, and real-time Microsoft Teams availability — pulled live from Microsoft Graph.

![Dark themed display showing name, status, and clock]

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Features

• Live presence — reflects your Teams status (Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, Away, etc.)
• Free After — shows end of current busy block when in a meeting (requires Calendars.Read)
• Ambient glow — background color shifts with your status
• Clock — 12-hour time with blinking colon and full date
• Multi-user — single server instance handles multiple nameplates via /{username}
• Zero interaction — fully automated after boot

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Hardware

Component	Details
SBC	Raspberry Pi 4
Display	480×1920 portrait LCD via HDMI

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Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• An Azure app registration with the following application permissions (admin consent required):
  • User.Read.All
  • Presence.Read.All
  • Calendars.Read (optional — enables the "Free After" indicator; omit to skip it)

Azure app registration setup

1. Go to Entra ID → App registrations → New registration
2. Add API permissions: User.Read.All and Presence.Read.All (both Application type)
3. Optionally add Calendars.Read (Application type) for the Free After feature
4. Click Grant admin consent
5. Go to Certificates & secrets → New client secret — copy the value immediately
6. Note the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID from the Overview page

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Installation

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/denniskoch/pypillar.git
cd pypillar
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Copy the example env file and fill in your values:

cp .env.example .env

.env variables:

Variable	Description
PYPILLAR_CLIENT_ID	Azure app registration client ID
PYPILLAR_TENANT_ID	Azure tenant (directory) ID
PYPILLAR_CLIENT_SECRET	Client secret value
PYPILLAR_DOMAIN	UPN domain suffix, e.g. company.com
PYPILLAR_COMPANY_NAME	Company name shown at the top of the display
PYPILLAR_ALLOWED_SUBNETS	(optional) Comma-separated CIDRs to restrict access, e.g. 10.0.0.0/8,192.168.1.0/24. Empty = allow all.
PYPILLAR_TRUST_PROXY	(optional) Set to 1 if behind a reverse proxy to trust X-Forwarded-For for subnet checks

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Running

Docker (recommended)

A Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml are included for containerised deployments.

cp .env.example .env   # fill in your values first
docker compose up -d

This builds the image from source, binds port 8000, loads .env, and restarts automatically unless manually stopped.

To rebuild after a code change:

docker compose up -d --build

Bare metal

uvicorn server:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

Open http://localhost:8000/{username} in a browser, where {username} is the UPN prefix (e.g. jsmith for jsmith@company.com). On the Pi, point a fullscreen Chromium window at this address.

Append ?layout=h for the horizontal layout variant.

Autostart on the Pi

Create a systemd service at /etc/systemd/system/pypillar.service:

[Unit]
Description=pypillar nameplate
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
User=pi
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/pypillar
EnvironmentFile=/home/pi/pypillar/.env
ExecStart=/home/pi/pypillar/.venv/bin/uvicorn server:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable pypillar
sudo systemctl start pypillar

For a fullscreen Chromium kiosk at boot, add to /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart:

@chromium-browser --kiosk --noerrdialogs --disable-infobars http://localhost:8000/jsmith

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Presence mapping

Teams status	Display label	Color
Available	Available	Green
Busy	In a Meeting	Red
DoNotDisturb	Do Not Disturb	Red
BeRightBack	Be Right Back	Amber
Away	Away	Amber
Offline	Offline	Amber
PresenceUnknown	Offline	Amber
Out of Office*	Out of Office	Purple

* OOF is detected via outOfOfficeSettings.isOutOfOffice and takes precedence over the reported availability value, so it displays correctly even when Teams reports a different underlying status (e.g. Offline with OOO left on).

When workLocation is remote, a Remote badge is appended to the label for: Available, Busy, DoNotDisturb, BeRightBack, and Away.

When presence is Busy or DoNotDisturb and Calendars.Read is granted, a Free After time is shown beneath the status label indicating the end of the current contiguous busy block.

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Project structure

pypillar/
├── server.py            # FastAPI backend — MSAL auth, Graph polling, routing
├── requirements.txt
├── .env.example
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
└── static/
    ├── index-v.html     # Portrait layout (480×1920)
    ├── index-h.html     # Landscape layout
    ├── style-v.css      # Portrait styles
    ├── style-h.css      # Landscape styles
    ├── script.js        # API polling, clock, name auto-fit
    └── error.html       # Shown at / when no username is provided