Simon Somlai's Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-Powered ePaper Picture Frame Prints Punchlines on a Schedule
Designed to pull down jokes and quotes, but equally at home displaying comics and black-and-white photographs, it's a quick-and-easy build.
Maker Simon Somlai has built an ePaper display frame, powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, to brighten up any desk with a selection of quotes — or photos.
"If you're still looking for a cool gift for your (nerdy) friend - or just something to treat yourself — I just might have the solution," Somlai writes by way of introduction to the project. "A fancy ePaper quote display to display anything you can think of! Quotes? - check! Jokes? — double-check! Pictures of grandma? — triple-granny-check!"
The project is based around the newly-released Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, an upgraded alternative to the Raspberry Pi Zero W which includes four higher-end processor cores for a dramatic performance boost, linked to a 7.5" ePaper display. "There are also bigger, higher resolution, and multi-colored displays," Somlai notes, "but those tend to get really [expensive] fast."
Running a headless copy of Raspberry Pi OS, the system runs a Python script for taking text, wrapping it neatly, formatting it with an attractive font, and outputting it to the display. Any images are automatically resized for the display, though the driver is given the job of converting color images into grayscale for the electrophoretic panel.
"Now all that's left is to put it in a nice picture frame," Somlai concludes, "and hot-glue your Raspberry Pi to the back. It's a cool little desk companion that will give you some additional laughs during the day. Definitely a worthwhile time investment!"
The full build guide, which offers alternative uses including cartoon display, is now available on Somlai's website .