Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W uses AI to make infinite flower paintings on an e-ink display

One cool thing we love Raspberry Pi It is the sheer amount of resources available to integrate artificial intelligence into the project. You can actually host a generative AI system natively on a Raspberry Pi, rather than using third-party tools to relay AI tasks. Today’s project is a great example of how this type of setting can be used to create a beautiful decorative display. Maker and developer Dylan created what he calls Paper Pie AI—A digital e-ink photo frame that uses artificial intelligence to create flower paintings.

dylan is using Pimoroni ink impression A 7-color e-ink display serves as the main screen, so the picture is retained even if the Pi loses power. Pi generates flower pictures in various styles and updates the display regularly. It takes a while to generate the image and update the screen, so it does limit the number of changes, but not bad for something like this that’s mostly for decoration.

According to Dylan, creating a new image takes about half an hour, but you’re not limited to generating flower paintings. You can program the Raspberry Pi to produce a variety of themes and styles. Because image generation occurs locally, you don’t need an Internet connection for the project to work properly. After the Pi creates a new image, it takes 30 seconds to update the image on the e-ink display.

You don’t need the latest high-performance Raspberry Pi model to replicate this project. dylan is using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W to control operations. It connects to an Inky Impression 7.3-inch e-ink color display, which also supports seven different colors. All the hardware is housed in a picture frame large enough to accommodate the display panel and Pi.