The Mansfield Reporter is a simple device which can generate new text from some of history’s greatest authors. By pressing the red button, you will be shown a new passage from either Friedrich Nietzsche, William Shakespeare, or Gertrude Stein. Or, press the black button to combine all of the authors into one super-author, and generate a unique passage from their combined corpus of text.
The device digests a piece of literature by one of the authors, and builds a model of the words used in the text. A sentence is then created through a semi-random process where the next word is generated only based on the probability of it occurring after the current word. This process is called Markov chaining, and the implementation used here is the Markovify library, developed at BuzzFeed.
In this instance, all of the (python) code is running on a tiny Raspberry Pi, displaying through a tft screen from Adafruit. Using the Pillow image manipulation library, the device breaks the sentence into one-word chunks, and uses a randomly selected image from my set of Polaroid photographs as a background. So, what you eventually see is a combination of the random words and text, compiled in the moment. The system is flexible enough that the output could be an animated gif, or a large wallpaper size image, like this one from Shakespeare:
PiTFT Plus 480×320 3.5″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi – Pi 2 and Model A+ / B+: Is this not the cutest, little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 3.5″ display with 480×320 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay just like our popular original, but this one is engineered specifically to work with the Raspberry Pi 2 and the Model A+ / B+. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top! Read more.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!