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FrameOS

An operating system for single function smart frames.​

Think smart home calendars, meeting room displays, thermostats, interactive message boards, public advertisement screens, and more.

DashboardThermostatMessage board
Door frame Tells me which windows are open before leaving the houseBathroom frame Hot water control and clock in the bathroomPasta frame QR-code controlled kitchen message board

It's designed for both screens that update 60 frames per second, and for screens that update 60 seconds per frame.

What do you need?​

  • A Raspberry Pi. Any will do, but the Zero W 2 hits the sweet spot for eink displays (cheap, multicore, low power), and can easily do 24 FPS on small LCDs.
  • A display of some sort. E-ink or LCD. Take your pick from Waveshare or Pimoroni's e-ink HATs, or hook up a TV with an HDMI cable. To get 60FPS over HDMI you'll need a Raspberry Pi 5 though.
  • A server for hosting the FrameOS controller. You'll use this to setup your scenes, and deploy them onto frames via SSH. FrameOS is written in nim, and gets compiled into a single binary.

Sample scenes​

Once setup, deploy your first scene from the scene templates repository:

Scenes

The list of samples keeps growing, so check back often.

Create your own scenes​

Didn't find what you need? Visually connect apps like "Text Overlay" and "OpenAI Image" to build your own scenes:

Star counter scene

Go a step deeper, fork these prebuilt apps, and/or build new ones from scratch:

Stars app code

Getting started​

  1. Start by installing the FrameOS controller.
  2. Then set up the raspberry, while following the device guide for your specific screen.

Supported platforms​

Supported are all the most common e-ink displays out there (most Waveshare and Pimoroni panels), and anything you can connect over HDMI. See the full list here!

Status​

FrameOS is good enough for small-time usage. The experience of building apps is still a bit wonky, but most of the core concepts are in place.

We haven't released a numbered version yet. A FrameOS/frameos:latest docker image is generated for every push to main. While we take great care not to break things, there are no guarantees at this point.

If you're the adventurous type, please try it out, and help out. Look at the tasklist for ideas. Don't ask for permission, just submit a PR. If you're not sure, open an issue and we'll discuss it.

Next steps:​