How It Works


PageParrot is powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer and a USB webcam. It runs a Python script that waits for a button press, then snaps a picture of the book with the webcam. The image is then sent to Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash large language model, along with a prompt instructing it to tell me all the text contained in the image. The text it returns is then fed into Piper to synthesize speech, which is played on a Bluetooth speaker.

Media


Bill of Materials


  • 1 x Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
  • 1 x USB webcam
  • 1 x Bluetooth speaker
  • 1 x Push button
  • Aluminum extrusions, wire, twist ties, and hot glue

About the Author


Nick A. Bild, MS