Conor O'Hanlon's Raspberry Pi-Powered Motivational Quote Display Keeps His Spirits Lifted
Designed to keep his spirits lifted throughout the day, O'Hanlon's compact creation picks random motivational quotes to display.
Maker Conor O'Hanlon has shared a build guide for a Raspberry Pi Zero-powered motivational message dispenser, which uses an ePaper display to keep the power draw and desk glare down.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has been hard for everyone. Why not give yourself a break and create this unique Raspberry Pi Zero project," O'Hanlon writes by way of introduction. "This motivational quote bot will display a new quote every hour. It sits on my desk and gets me through the day."
The project is built around a Pi Zero W, which includes an on-board Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radio, connected to a Waveshare 2.13" ePaper Display HAT — an add-on that connects via the Raspberry Pi's general-purpose input/output (GPIO) port and provides a small, low-power electrophoretic display panel.
The software side is written in Python, with the code choosing random entries from a JSON-formatted file filled with motivational quotes. The chosen quote is then rendered as an image and output to the display — while a timer refreshes the quote throughout the day.
The full write-up, with source code, can be found on O'Hanlon's website.