tfaour 914eaed71c Add CLAUDE.md and docs/widgets.md; fix stale single-mode architecture docs
Repo-tracked context so a fresh Claude Code session (this machine or a
remote/cloud one) gets accurate project context without relying on this
session's local, machine-specific memory: repo conventions (no
co-author trailers, flag copyleft deps explicitly, scope security
gates broadly -- each backed by a real past incident), testing/deploy
workflow, and pointers into the existing docs.

docs/architecture.md's sequence diagram and boot-flow text still
described the pre-widget-system single-photo-queue model (e.g. "force-
advance to next queued photo") even though that was fully replaced by
the widget system across this branch's recent history -- fixed, and
added docs/widgets.md distilling the widget system's actual design
(data model, grid placement, compositor, button-action dispatch) as
current-state documentation, including the still-open Phase 6 cleanup
(legacy Frame columns not yet dropped) as a known gap.
2026-07-24 20:04:08 -04:00
2026-07-22 19:07:29 -04:00

ESPresso Frame

A DIY e-ink photo frame: an ESP32-C6 pulls photos from your Immich library and displays them on a 7.3" full-color e-paper panel, waking on a timer to refresh and spending the rest of its time in deep sleep.

  • No cables to a computer, no SD card shuffling. Provisioning is a captive portal with a QR code drawn on the panel itself -- scan, join, fill in your WiFi and server address, done.
  • The frame never decodes an image. A small self-hosted server does all the work (pulling from Immich, cropping, dithering, packing into the panel's exact pixel format) and hands the device a stream it can write straight to SPI. The ESP32-C6 has no PSRAM and not much SRAM to spare -- keeping it a dumb display client is what makes that workable.
  • Crops toward faces, not just the center, using face bounding boxes Immich already computed for its own People feature -- no bundled face detector.
  • Refresh interval and album are configurable from a web UI, no reflashing needed to change them.

Hardware

See docs/hardware.md for wiring, docs/architecture.md for how the two halves talk to each other, and docs/widgets.md for the server's placeable photos/calendar/whiteboard widget system.

Getting started

  1. server/ -- run the FastAPI server first (Docker Compose, points at your Immich instance). See server/README.md.
  2. firmware/ -- build and flash the ESP32-C6, then scan the QR codes it draws on first boot to provision it. See firmware/README.md.

Repo layout

firmware/   ESP-IDF project for the ESP32-C6
server/     FastAPI server: Immich -> crop/dither/pack -> the frame
docs/       Wiring and architecture notes

License

MIT -- see LICENSE. A few small pieces of vendored third-party code (a QR code generator, a bitmap font table) keep their own permissive licenses; see LICENSE for details.


Built with substantial assistance from Claude Code.

S
Description
No description provided
Readme MIT
17 MiB
v1.4.2
Latest
2026-08-04 14:39:20 -04:00
Languages
Python 62.9%
C 19.2%
JavaScript 7.4%
HTML 5.6%
CSS 1.7%
Other 3.2%