Desktop Pixel Art Player p3a

p3a is a fun desktop companion. It is a 4-inch little screen that you set up once, and it keeps going on its own, playing animated artworks (“gifs”) and periodically obtaining new ones from the internet. It connects to Giphy.com and to Makapix.Club (an open-source pixel art social network), or you can copy your own offline files.

Is a party coming tonight? Set your p3a to play “party” gifs. Must work for hours? Switch to “work” gifs. You can configure different play settings (“playsets”) to fit different moments. As a bonus feature, you can also use the device as a very special 4-inch monitor for PICO-8 games.

Under the hood, p3a is a sophisticated animated art player that leverages the powerful ESP32-P4, which is the most capable variant of ESP32 as of today. A journey through p3a’s codebase reveals techniques and technologies including:

• Multi-buffered display pipeline for freeze-less, gapless playback
• Full support for file formats GIF, WEBP, PNG and JPEG, including animations (GIF/WEBP) and alpha channels (WEBP/PNG)
• Mutual TLS (Transport Layer Security): both client and server authenticate each other
• Multicast DNS to host a local website at http://p3a.local/
• Soft Access Point with Captive Portal for wi-fi configuration
• Over-The-Air Updates using the GitHub Releases infrastructure
• Firmware flashing using WebSerial on the browser
• WebSockets to stream PICO-8 games over WiFi
• Online APIs: Makapix.Club (MQTT) and Giphy.com (HTTPS)

Don’t be dismayed by the technicalities! As a project, p3a really is an invitation to:

• Insert a microSD card into its slot
• Flash the device using the web browser: no software to install, no command line
• Control your p3a using the web browser
• Configure it with a free Giphy.com API key
• Register it for free at Makapix.Club
• Have fun!