In this blog, I present solutions for various features that you can include in your digital picture frame project.

I am often asked for recommendations, so in this article, I will show which hardware and software I am personally using for my living room photo frame.

I update this article whenever something changes and link to my posts with the step-by-step instructions. The last big update was in September 2026, when my frame moved to picframe3.

For me, the big hardware update in 2021 was the move to a large 32-inch 4K frame. While the original 24-inch project had a perfect 16:10 aspect ratio, the 4K has the size and the resolution.

Hardware

I use a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM and a 128GB A2 SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card. A 64GB SD card would be plenty, but the 128GB model is often the same price and reduces the wear.

A Pi 4 shows still photographs at full 4K. If you also want to play 4K video on the frame, you need a Pi 5; the Pi 4 plays video up to 1080p.

Read about the advantages of the Raspberry Pi for digital picture frame projects. An overview of the various Raspberry Pi models, and which one to pick, is here.

As a case, I use Flirc cases for all my Raspberry Pis because of their superior passive cooling technology.

The display is a 32-inch BenQ PD3200 4K monitor in 16:9 format with 3840 x 2160 pixels.

I had a black anodized aluminum frame custom-made in a frame shop. More about this project is here.

The Amazon Echo Dot is not something I have bought especially for this project, but I found it easy and convenient to use it to voice-control my digital frame. And often, these devices are heavily discounted. More on how I do that is here.

Operating system

When you have a Raspberry Pi, you choose the Raspberry Pi OS unless you have some special use cases that require an alternative.

My frame runs Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) on the current release, Trixie. Lite has no desktop at all, and none is needed: picframe3 draws straight to the screen and starts before anyone logs in.

Image viewer

It’s no surprise that I use picframe3. It installs with a single command, and a handful of questions set up everything else: the photo sync, the file share, Home Assistant and the look of the frame.

I use the crossfading transitions, set to a fade delay of 10 seconds and an image duration of 200 seconds. I also use the place names, which show where a photo was taken, and the matting, so that every photo looks good regardless of its format.

Day to day, I control the frame from the web interface on my phone at http://frame.local:9000/: previous, pause, next, brightness, turning the screen off, and a library to search and filter. A picture I remove from the frame lands in the Removed tab, where I can put it back.

I am processing my photos in Adobe Lightroom and exporting them in the pixel dimensions of the 4K screen (3840 x 2160).

Photo Management

My photos arrive through Syncthing, which the picframe3 installer sets up. The Syncthing folder is shared across several computers so everyone can add or remove images on their regular system. The devices talk to each other directly, without going through anyone else’s server.

New photos show up on the frame within seconds. There is nothing to index or restart.

Networking

For copying photos from a computer by hand, the installer also sets up a Samba file share, already configured for macOS so Finder does not leave its ._ files next to every photo. On a Mac, it is Finder → Go → Connect to Server → smb://frame.local/Pictures.

Home Automation and Remote Control

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 running exclusively Home Assistant with the Nabu Casa service connecting it with Amazon Echo.

picframe3 shows up in Home Assistant as one device, with no YAML to write: a light for the screen, pause, next, previous and remove buttons, sensors for the photo on the wall, and the photo itself as an image entity. The card above is from my own dashboard. Date filters like “last 30 days” or “on this day” are ready-made buttons.

This enables me to set up Routines in the Alexa app that are activated by voice commands and trigger a Home Assistant script that controls the picture frame.

Nabu Casa is the only service that is not free, at US$6.50 per month, but it also supports the ongoing development of Home Assistant, which is outstanding software. And I need Nabu Casa for the Alexa interface.

I also have many automations in Home Assistant that, e.g., turn the frame off when no one is home.

The frame also reports its temperature, load, free space and the Raspberry Pi’s undervoltage warning to Home Assistant, and there is a shutdown button, so I can power it down safely from the sofa.

MQTT

The connection between the frame and Home Assistant runs over MQTT. My broker is the Mosquitto add-on on Home Assistant, not on the frame. It is one less thing running on the picture frame, it keeps working while the frame is switched off, and every other device can share it.

Other useful software and tips I use or follow

I have set my Raspberry Pi to 2.4 GHz because the connection is more stable. If the WiFi drops anyway, picframe3 notices and reconnects by itself.

When something is not right, picframe3 doctor checks the hardware, the drivers, the permissions and the photo library, and prints the command that fixes it.

For testing purposes, I got myself an HDMI video capture card.

Conclusion

This is my current mix of hard and software for the digital picture frame in our living room, which enjoys a high WAF—a key issue for any electronic device!

It requires little or no maintenance… unless, of course, I find new things to add and to experiment with!