PyFrame: A simple photo frame made in Python

PyFrame is a simple Python-based photo frame which loads pictures from a Samba share and displays them with smart title generation. In addition, if the connected monitor is HDMI-CEC compliant, it will automatically be turned off at night and back on during the day.

Installation

Install prerequisites:

sudo apt -y install python3 python3-pip python3-venv cifs-utils freeglut3-dev cec-utils libcec-dev

Install python packages from requirements.txt. A virtual environment is recommended, e.g.,

python3 -m venv ~/pyframe.venv
source ~/pyframe.venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

N.B. If not using a virtual environment at ~/pyframe.venv, the provided init.sh script will need to be adjusted to the correct virtual environment path.

Handling pictures location

By default, PyFrame expects the photos to be stored on a remote file server and mounted to /mnt/photos. If the files are stored locally, you can simply edit your configuration to point to the correct location.

As an example, to automatically mount a SMB share to /mnt/photos on boot, you can run:

sudo su -c "echo '<your file share here> /mnt/photos    cifs    ro,noexec,noserverino,user=nobody,guest 0 0' >> /etc/fstab"

making sure your file share uses forward slashes /, e.g. a share at \\server\photos would be entered as //server/photos.

If using a window manager

To further clean up the desktop and create a seamless experience, hide most desktop elements as follows (instructions for lightdm with Raspberry Pi Desktop):

Edit /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
To hide the top bar, prepend # to the line which starts with @lxpanel
To hide the cursor, append the following line: @unclutter -display :0 -idle 3 -root -noevents

It is recommended to disable the screensaver by placing an empty file named .xscreensaver in $HOME.

If only using a display manager

Simply add the full path to init.sh from your .xsession file. To prevent any form of screensaver from starting, you can use the provided xset.sh file and call it before init.sh.

If starting from a clean slate without a display manager

You can install the bare minimum X server with:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-libinput x11-xserver-utils xinit --no-install-recommends --no-install-suggests

To enable X on login, edit your .bash_profile or .bashrc (use whichever already exists), adding:

[[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]] && exec startx

Then, follow the instructions in "If only using a display manager". You will probably want to reboot after this.

Autologin on Ubuntu

The correct way to autologin on Ubuntu is to edit the tty service as follows:

sudo systemctl edit getty@tty1.service

Inside this new file, add the following at the top of the file (between the marked comments):

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --noissue --autologin <your username> %I $TERM
Type=idle

making sure to replace <your username> with your desired autologin username.

Pi-specific guide

A Raspberry Pi 3B or better can very easily run this photo frame and is well suited thanks to its low cost and small size.

The recommended installation is to start off the lite OS image, which you can install via the Raspberry Pi Imager onto a microSD card. From there, manually install X11 and lightdm via the package manager:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-core xinit x11-xserver-utils lightdm

and enable GUI autologin through raspi-config.

It is also recommended to enable "Network at boot" in raspi-config in order to make sure the Samba share mounting succeeds.

To disable the screensaver, the recommended approach is to edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, look for the line #xserver-command=X and change it to xserver-command=X -s 0 -dpms -s noblank, which disables screen timeout, disables display power management services, and disables blanking. Note that this will not affect PyFrame's ability to turn off the screen at night, which uses HDMI-CEC instead. If your screen does not support CEC, this may cause the screen to never sleep.

Friendly0Fire/pyframe