I wanted to have a nice digital frame on the wall in my office to display art and family pictures. I had an old Raspberry PI laying around and decided to put it to good use.

Stuff

1. A Raspberry Pi. I had an Raspberry Pi 2 laying around, works perfectly for this. (~$25)
2. A TV or a monitor. I bought a 32” JVC TV from a local thrift store. (~$20)
3. I built a simple wooden frame to make it look nice. (~$10) (Nice to have)

All together under $60.

View images

I’m using feh. It’s a powerful, fast, and lightweight imlib2-based X11 image viewer that can be run from command-line arguments.

sudo apt-get install feh

My Art frame feh script

I created a simple art.sh bash script to control my art frame.

DISPLAY=:0.0 XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority /usr/bin/feh -q -p -Z -F -R 60 -Y -D 10.0 -r /home/pi/Pictures/art

This script runs the feh image viewer with specific options. Here’s a breakdown of what each part does:

DISPLAY=:0.0 tells the system to run the command on the primary display (:0.0). This is useful when running graphical applications from a script or remotely.

Sets the X Authority File: XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority ensures the script has permission to access the X server (the graphical interface). This is needed when running the script as a different user or from a startup process. Runs feh (a lightweight image viewer) with specific options:

• /usr/bin/feh specifies the path to the feh executable.
• -q (quiet mode) suppresses unnecessary output.
• -p (preload images) loads images into memory for faster transitions.
• -Z (zoom to fill) ensures images fit the screen while maintaining their aspect ratio.
• -F (fullscreen) runs the slideshow in fullscreen mode.
• -R 60 (reload interval) refreshes the image list every 60 seconds, useful if new images are added to the directory.
• -Y (hide cursor) hides the mouse cursor when the slideshow is running.
• -D 10.0 (display time) sets each image to be shown for 10 seconds before transitioning.
• -r (recursive mode) includes images from subdirectories. Specifies the Image Directory:

/home/pi/Pictures/art is the directory where feh looks for images to display in the slideshow.

To start i just run ssh username@192.168.XX.XX 'nohup bash art.sh > /dev/null 2>&1 &'

Rotate the screen

Since my frame is in portrait mode, I needed to rotate the screen.

sudo nano /boot/config.txt
display_rotate=1 (90 deg)
sudo reboot

Controlling the art frame with Raycast script commands or iOS Shortcuts

I created a few simple scripts to control the art frame remotely. You can use iOS Shortcuts or Raycast to run these commands over SSH.

I keep a simple folder on my ~/Desktop called art-frame where I put images to be transferred to the art frame.

Raycast script command example

#!/bin/bash

# Required parameters:
# @raycast.schemaVersion 1
# @raycast.title Art frame update
# @raycast.mode silent

# Optional parameters:
# @raycast.icon 🤖

# Documentation:
# @raycast.description Update my Art frame
# @raycast.author Urban Sanden
# @raycast.authorURL https://urre.me

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

# Clean art frame from images
ssh pi-userXX.XXX.XX.XX 'rm -rf /home/pi/Pictures/art/*'

# Switch to the transfer folder
cd ~/Desktop/art-frame

# Make all images in 9:16 ratio using mogrify (Imagemagick)
/opt/homebrew/bin/mogrify -path . -resize 1080x1920^ -gravity center -extent 1080x1920 *.jpg

# Copy images to the art frame on my Pi
scp *.jpg pi-userXX.XXX.XX.XX:/home/pi/Pictures/art

# Run art.sh on the Pi
ssh pi-userXX.XXX.XX.XX 'nohup bash art.sh > /dev/null 2>&1 &'

message="✅ Art Frame updated"
osascript -e "display notification \"$message\" with title \"Art Frame\""

Image optimization tips

A few scripts to help you optimize your images for the art frame.

Make all images in 9:16 ratio using Imagemagick

Resize and crop all jpg images in the current directory to fit a 9:16 aspect ratio (1080x1920 pixels) using ImageMagick:

mogrify -path . -resize 1080x1920^ -gravity center -extent 1080x1920 *.jpg

Script to make a single image 9:16 with background color

This script extends the outer edges of an image to fit a 9:16 ratio using the color of the top-left pixel as the background color.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Usage: ./make_9_16.sh input.jpg
# Requires: ImageMagick

input="$1"

if [ -z "$input" ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 input_image"
    exit 1
fi

# Extract base name and extension
filename="${input%.*}"
extension="${input##*.}"
output="${filename}-output.${extension}"

# Detect background color from the top-left pixel
bgcolor=$(magick "$input" -format "%[pixel:p{0,0}]" info:-)

# Target size (change as needed)
target_width=1080
target_height=1920

# Resize proportionally and pad to 9:16
magick "$input" \
    -resize "${target_width}x${target_height}" \
    -gravity center \
    -background "$bgcolor" \
    -extent "${target_width}x${target_height}" \
    "$output"

echo "Saved: $output (background color: $bgcolor)"