Nft Display Device: Your Portable Artwork Portfolio!

NFTs are taking over!  NFTs are an alternative to centralized databases, certificates of authenticity, and the cumbersome world of collectible/art storage and sales. I was inspired by an amazing NFT project called Gan Punks, https://opensea.io/collection/bastard-gan-punks-v2 , by Berk a Turkish artist.  His project is a combination of computer AI coding and his own creative colorful portrait backgrounds. Over 11,000 unique Gan Punk images were created on the ethereum blockchain; inspired by the original "CryptoPunks."

I wanted to get my gan punk NFTs onto a physical screen so I could enjoy them in my home and show them off to guests.  The look on the face of  my mother and father in law when they saw an original prototype of my gan punks on a small 1.3inch screen in my backyard was priceless and I become motivated to refine the idea into something they could hold and scroll through an entire collection. 

Here is how it works, it has a housing and a front "cap" that is there to prevent guests from turning it off or deleting NFTs or executing any of its more advanced functions. The cap gives guests one button to press to scroll at their own pace the device owner's collection! The cap obscures the unpolished Waveshare buttons and screen to make it look really cool and custom.  Here is a nice demo:

https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/o4w8tg/pi_nfts_micro_portable_display_device_with_pil_ui/

The guts of the device is a python3 program I wrote which utilizes the SPI of the pi and waveshare to draw web-based NFT artwork directly without saving any of the data on the device.  I wanted to make sure that users of the device aren't saving and copying artwork they don't own themselves.  I coded in cool flipping capabilities so the device orientation could change and a cool hanging port on the back!

As you can see there is a camera on the back! The camera is critical as it serves as the NFT onboarding tool.  Using OpenCV to scan QRcodes, users simply turn their NFT artwork into a QRcode, Chrome does this automatically now for you!  Unfortunately I had to limit the artwork to still images only and restrict super large image files as the poor little raspberry pi zero can't render them without making the user grow old!

So there you have it.  A fun battery operated handheld NFT display device.  My devices can be found at https://nftydaze.com/ and this one also has fun PIL coded artwork for transition screens so you get a little dose of my art displayed alongside your NFT art! Follow me, Snarflakes, at https://twitter.com/PunksGan for more NFT display device creations! Own' em and Show' em!