Use a Raspberry Pi to Stay Up to Date on Reddit’s Shower Thoughts

Reddit sometimes gets a bad rap from the media, because a handful of the communities have been quite unsavory. But the beauty of the website, and the reason for its popularity, is that there are thousands of communities (called subreddits) to enjoy. For virtually any topic you can think of, there is likely a thriving subreddit dedicated to discussing it and sharing relevant content. One of the most popular is the /r/showerthoughts subreddit, and YouTuber ACROBOTIC has used a Raspberry Pi to build a display specifically for showing new shower thoughts.

The /r/showerthoughts subreddit is all about sharing the kind of quasi-philosophical musings that many of us often think about while showering. For example, one of the top posts of all time is “Anxiety is like when video game combat music is playing but you can’t find any enemies.” The posts are sometimes funny, and sometimes thought-provoking — and almost always entertaining. Instead of one of those “inspirational quote of the day” calendars, ACROBOTIC wanted to see the newest shower thoughts.

To accomplish that, he used a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and a three-color 2.7" e-ink display HAT (sold under his own brand name on Amazon). The Raspberry Pi has a Python application that scrapes the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data from Reddit and extracts the relevant text. That text is then displayed on the e-ink display. The Raspberry Pi is housed in a 3D-printed enclosure, but ACROBOTIC didn’t design a custom cover to fit around the screen. Still, this is a simple and easy project that you can replicate in order to stay current on your favorite subreddits.