Convert Any Book to a DIY Audiobook with PageParrot

How It Works

PageParrot is powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer and a USB webcam. It runs a Python script that waits for a button press, then snaps a picture of the book with the webcam. The image is then sent to Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash large language model, along with a prompt instructing it to tell me all the text contained in the image. The text it returns is then fed into Piper to synthesize speech, which is played on a Bluetooth speaker.

Media

Bill of Materials

• 1 x Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
• 1 x USB webcam
• 1 x Bluetooth speaker
• 1 x Push button
• Aluminum extrusions, wire, twist ties, and hot glue

About the Author

Nick A. Bild, MS