picture_frame

• Just another picture frame viewer for raspberry, but with automatic integration into Home Assistant for remote control
• https://github.com/helgeerbe/picture_frame
• Helge Erbe
• Licence: MIT
• Tested on rasberry 3B+ and Python 3.7

This is a viewer for a raspberry powered picture frames. For remote control it provides an automatic integration into Home Assistant via MQTT discovery.

Main highlights in Home Assistant:

• tun on/of display
• auto discovery and selection of image directories
• display number of images (incl. auto discovery of new images)
• date from / date to for images to display
• set image display duration and fading time
• show next/pevious image, pause, shuffle playlist or sort by name
• extract any exif info from image (like aperture, iso, fnumber, camera model) by config
• provide gps information as longitude/latitude to show image location on a map in Home Assistant

Quick Install

• pip3 install picframe
• all configurable items will be installed under ~/.local/picframe of the current user's home
• copy ~/.local/picframe/config/configuration_example.yaml to ~/.local/picframe/config/configuration.yaml and do your settings
• picture_frame makes use of pi3d which needs some extra config with sudo raspi-config. In the raspi-config module, go
  • on pi 4 to
    • 4 Performance Options > P2 GPU Memory > enter 256
    • 7 Advanced Options > A2 GL Driver > Choose G2 GL Fake KMS.
  • on pi 3 to
    • 4 Performance Options > P2 GPU Memory > enter 128
    • 6 Advanced Options > A2 GL Driver > Choose G1 (Legacy)
  • Reboot!
• start picture_frame

Configuration

configuration.yaml

By default picture_frame reads its configuration from ~/.local/picframe/config/configuration.yaml. To use an other file or path you can provide the config file as the first parameter picture_frame this/leads/to/my/config.yaml. Most parameters have default values, if not provided in the config file.

The configuration is splitted in three sections:

1. Viewer:

• blur_amount: 12
  default=12
  Larger values than 12 will increase processing load quite a bit.
• blur_zoom: 1.0
  default=1.0
  Must be >= 1.0 which expands the backgorund to just fill the space around the image.
• blur_edges: False
  default=False
  Use blurred version of image to fill edges - will override fit = False.
• edge_alpha: 0.5
  default=0.5
  Background colour at edge. 1.0 would show reflection of image.
• fps: 20.0
  default=20.0
  Frames per second to render. Higher values result in higher load.
• background: [0.2, 0.2, 0.3, 1.0]
  default=[0.2, 0.2, 0.3, 1.0]
  RGBA to fill edges when fitting.
• blend_type: 0.0
  default="0.0"
  choices={"blend":0.0, "burn":1.0, "bump":2.0}, type of blend the shader can do
• font_file: "~/.local/picframe/data/fonts/NotoSans-Regular.ttf"
  default="~/.local/picframe/data/fonts/NotoSans-Regular.ttf"` Font is taken from GoogleFonts
• shader: "~/.local/picframe/data/shaders/blend_new"
  default="~/.local/picframe/data/shaders/blend_new"
  The shader ist taken from pi3d_demos. If you like to play with it. Download the demo package. There are lots of shaders.
• show_names_tm: 0.0
  default=0.0
  Time to show text over image with file name.
• fit: False
  default=False
  Shrink to fit screen (i.e. don't crop").
• auto_resize: True
  default=True
  Set this to False if you want to use 4K resolution on Raspberry Pi 4.
  You should ensure your images are the correct size for the display.
• kenburns: False
  default=False
  Will set fit->False and blur_edges->False.

2. Model:

• pic_dir: "~/Pictures"
  default="~/Pictures"
  Root folder for images.

• no_files_img: "~/.local/picframe/data/no_pictures.jpg" default="~/.local/picframe/data/no_pictures.jpg"
  Image to show if none selected.

• subdirectory: ""
  default=""
  Subdir of pic_dir - can be changed by MQTT.

• check_dir_tm: 60.0
  default=60.0
  Interval for checking for direcectory and file changes.

• recent_n: 3
  default=3
  When shuffling the keep n most recent ones to play before the rest.

• reshuffle_num: 1
  default=1
  Times through before re-shuffling.

• time_delay: 200.0
  default=200.0
  Time between consecutive slide starts - can be changed by MQTT.

• fade_time: 10.0
  default=10.0
  Change time during which slides overlap - can be changed by MQTT.

• shuffle: True
  default=True
  Shuffle on reloading image files - can be changed by MQTT.

• image_attr: [
'PICFRAME GPS',
'EXIF FNumber',
'EXIF ExposureTime',
'EXIF ISOSpeedRatings',
'EXIF FocalLength',
'EXIF DateTimeOriginal',
'Image Model']
  default= ['PICFRAME GPS']
  picture_frame uses exifread to extract the image meta data.

  Note that the dictionary keys are the IFD name followed by the tag name. For example:
  'EXIF DateTimeOriginal', 'Image Orientation', 'MakerNote FocusMode'

  Tag Descriptions
  Tags are divided into these main categories:

  • Image: information related to the main image (IFD0 of the Exif data).
  • Thumbnail: information related to the thumbnail image, if present (IFD1 of the Exif data).
  • EXIF: Exif information (sub-IFD).
  • GPS: GPS information (sub-IFD).
  • Interoperability: Interoperability information (sub-IFD).
  • MakerNote: Manufacturer specific information. There are no official published references for these tags.
  • 'PICFRAME GPS' is special to picframe. It retrieves the GPS info as longitude/latitude pair. So you can show the image location in Home Assistant on a map.

3. MQTT:

• server: "your_mqtt_broker"
  Host name of your MQTT broker
• port: 8883
  Default = 8883 for tls, 1883 else (tls must be "" then !!!!!)
• login: "name"
  Your MQTT user.
• password: "your_password"
  Password for MQTT user.
• tls: "/path/to/your/ca.crt"
  File name including path to your 'ca.crt'. If not used, must be set to "" !!!!
• device_id: 'picframe'
  default='picframe'
  Unique id of device. Change if there is more than one picture frame. Home Assistant uses this id as the device name.

Running as service

I'm using systemd to run picture_frame as a servie.
Create /etc/systemd/system/picture_frame.service

[Unit]
Description=picture frame on pi
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
Type=idle

User=pi
ExecStart=/home/pi/.local/bin/picture_frame

Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Commands:

• Enable: sudo systemctl enable picture_frame.service
• Disable: sudo systemctl disable picture_frame.service
• Start: sudo systemctl start picture_frame.service
• Stop: sudo systemctl stop picture_frame.service

Home Assistant

The image shows a sample integration into Home Assistant.

Assuming you use picframe as device_id. Home Assistant shows the following entities:

1. Switches

entity	function
switch.picframe_display	Switch to turn on/of the display.
switch.picframe_back	Each toggle of the switch goes one image back
switch.picframe_next	Each toggle of the switch goes one image forward
switch.picframe_paused	Switch to pause/continue slide show
switch.picframe_shuffle	Switch on shuffle list, off sort list by filename

2. Sensors

entity	state	attributes
sensor.picframe_date_from	actual filter for date_from as timestamp in seconds since 1970-01-01
sensor.picframe_date_to	actual filter for date_to as timestamp in seconds since 1970-01-01
sensor.picframe_image	file name	image Metadata as configured in image_attr
sensor.picframe_dir	name of actual selected subdirectory or root of image directory	list of subdirectories
sensor.picframe_image_counter	number of files below selected directory
sensor.picframe_time_delay	actual setting for delay
sensor.picframe_fade_time	actual setting fading time

3. MQTT

Assuming you use picframe as device_id. picture_frame subscribes to the following topics to recieve settings.

topic	command
picframe/date_from	timestamp attribute from input_datetime entity
picframe/date_to	timestamp attribute from input_datetime entity
picframe/fade_time	state from input_number entity
picframe/time_delay	state from input_number entity
picframe/subdirectory	state from input_select entity

My example yaml sniplet config from the above image could be found unter ~/.local/picframe/examples.

Documentation

Please note that picture_frame may change significantly during its development. Bug reports, comments, feature requests and fixes are most welcome!

Acknowledgement

When I started 2019 my DIY project building a raspberry powered digital picture frame I came across Wolfgang's website www.thedigitalpictureframe.com. Many Thanks to Wolfgang for your inspiring work. I ran my frame with the pi3d PictureFrame2020.py viewer, but always missed a more deeply integration to my smart home server running Home Assistant.

A special Thank to the pi3d project. You are doing a great job!

As my personel corona project I decided to rewrite the viewer to my needs. Maybe someone can make use of it.