A Pimoroni Inky Impression 13.3" (Spectra 6) mirroring the live collage. A Pi screenshots the site, mats it onto an A5 opening, and pushes to the panel, refreshing only when the birds change. Build one of your own at theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors#frame-ous.

BOM

Qty	Description	Price	Link
1	Raspberry Pi Zero (2) W	~$35	Amazon
1	13.3" E Ink Display	$299.99	Amazon
1	A4 Wood Photo Frame	$21.99	Amazon
1	Long, Flat Micro USB Cable	$7.99	Amazon
1	Flat USB Brick	$7.59	Amazon
	Total	~$372

CAD + 3d print files can be found in hardware/.

Kits

I offer the frame and the bird mic as separate electronics kits. I put up a store for some of my open-source projects and will soon be able to offer kits cheaper than buying all the components individually, once I start buying in bulk.

1. Flash the SD card

Flash an sd card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) via Raspberry Pi Imager. In the customisation dialog set:

Username
WiFi SSID + password
Hostname: birdpic
Enable SSH with password auth

Then install in Pi and power up.

2. Run the installer

ssh <your-username>@birdpic.local
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y git
git clone https://github.com/Twarner491/AvianVisitors
cd AvianVisitors/frame

Pick how the frame gets its birds:

# Pair with your bird mic on the same network (birdnet.local). The default.
./install.sh

# No microphone: draw the collage from BirdWeather for any ZIP code.
./install.sh --bird-weather --zip 94107

# Bird mic hosted at a public URL: point the frame straight at it.
./install.sh --image-url https://bird.onethreenine.net/frame.png?k=YOUR_FRAME_KEY

Each one enables SPI + I2C, installs the deps and a systemd timer, writes ~/.birdframe/config.toml, and reboots once to bring SPI up. Full options live in config.example.toml.

BirdWeather mode renders on the Pi from this repo's illustrations on GitHub, so there is no image set to copy over. ZIP codes with no station nearby fall back to the closest ones. If you are far from any BirdWeather station, add --ebird-key <key> (a free key from ebird.org/api/keygen) and the frame fills from eBird sightings instead.

The bundled illustrations center on the western U.S. If birds near your ZIP aren't in the set you cloned, the installer flags them and the frame skips them until they exist. To generate them, run generate_illustrations.py on a laptop or workstation (it uses the same rembg cutout as the rest of the pipeline, which the Pi can't fit in memory), passing your ZIP and a paid Google Gemini key, then commit the new cutouts or copy them to the Pi:

python3 generate_illustrations.py --zip 10001 --gemini-key YOUR_GEMINI_KEY

It generates only the species you're missing; --country and --sample carry through for non-US postcodes or a wider region.