ePaper Display Generates Beautiful Fractal Art

To most of us, fractals are just pretty patterns. But the mathematicians know what's up: fractals are fascinating. They repeat endlessly, with only a change in scale. There are many mathematical functions for generating fractals and their output variations are almost infinite. If you understand the underlying math, the crystal-like growth of fractals can become mesmerizing. To ensure that they always have new fractal art to be mesmerized by, Runezor built this device called PiArtFrame.

As the name implies, this is a Raspberry Pi-based device that shows art in a frame. It is especially interesting because it displays fractals on an ePaper screen. That's cool because it draws very little power over time, and because the very high contrast makes the fractals look more "real" compared to if they were shown on a traditional LCD. The ePaper screen sits within a picture frame, so it looks like a printed piece of art and not a digital display.

The two key components of this project are a Raspberry Pi Zero (or Zero W, or Zero W 2) and a 7.5" Waveshare ePaper screen with a Raspberry Pi HAT controller. The functionality is all thanks to a Python script that takes advantage of a few libraries. The first simply handles drawing graphics onto the ePaper screen. The Pillow library generates those graphics based on math performed by the numpy library. Runezor even links to the frame they used, which is available on Amazon for anyone that wants to showcase their own fractals.

If you're a fractal-loving math geek or just think they look nice, then PiArtFrame would be a perfect weekend project.