The screen turns on at seven in the morning. Simone doesn't know why. She didn't ask for it, she didn't configure it. She finds it on, with her photos scrolling by. That's enough for her.
Here's what she sees — and what's happening on the other side.
At a glance
- → Family photos on continuous loop
- → Clock & weather 4× / hour
- → Algorithm-free news
- → Radio in one touch
- → Screen auto 7am – 9pm
- → Daily restart at 6:59am
Family photos
What Simone sees
Photos scrolling by. Hers, ours. A portrait of the grandchildren, a landscape from last weekend, an image someone sent this morning from their phone. Each photo stays on screen for twenty seconds. Then the next one arrives, silently.
Under the hood
Photos are stored in a folder on the Raspberry Pi. A program displays them in shuffled order, then reshuffles and starts again — never twice the same. It reads the EXIF data of each image to orient it correctly. Every ten seconds, it checks for new photos. No restart needed.
A photo sent from Paris appears in Simone's living room moments later, without anyone having to "sync" anything. That's often what people find most magical.
The clock and weather
What Simone sees
Four times an hour, the screen changes. The time appears in large text, the date below it. And alongside, the weather forecast for the day: morning, afternoon, evening, with temperatures.
Under the hood
The time is generated locally every minute — a fresh image rebuilt on the Raspberry Pi, no internet needed. The weather is fetched three times a day from an online service, then set aside. Result: it displays even if the connection drops in between.
The news — a newsstand without an algorithm
What Simone sees
News headlines with a background image, displayed like posters. In the bottom right corner, a small black square. If something catches her interest, she points her phone at it and reads the full article.
Under the hood
News comes from RSS feeds from France Télévisions — general news, sport, culture and cinema. Three times a day, the system fetches headlines, generates composite visuals with embedded QR codes, and sets them aside. No algorithm decides what Simone sees. I chose the editorial sources.
After my mother told me some stories made her anxious, I revised the schedule. General news gave up the prime slot to cinema and culture. Less tension, more curiosity.
The radio
What Simone sees
She touches the screen. A menu appears with four large coloured buttons: France Inter, France Info, Rire & Chanson, France Musique. She touches whichever she wants. The radio starts. One touch to return to the photos.
Under the hood
When she touches a station, an audio player launches in the background — no window, no display, just sound. Like an invisible radio tuner tucked inside the television cabinet. The slideshow and radio run in parallel, without interfering with each other.
The daily programme
This is the invisible piece that holds everything together. Every minute, a silent alarm goes off. A script looks at the time. And according to a precise rule, it decides what's displayed.
The mechanism is called a symbolic link — an arrow painted on the floor, pointing to a different door depending on the time. The display program always looks at the same door, but behind it, the content changes. Instantly, with no abrupt transition.
One hour's schedule
| :00 | Clock & weather | 1 min |
| :01 – :09 | General news | 9 min |
| :10 – :14 | Family photos | 5 min |
| :15 | Clock & weather | 1 min |
| :16 – :21 | Sport news | 6 min |
| :22 – :29 | Family photos | 8 min |
| :30 | Clock & weather | 1 min |
| :31 – :36 | Culture & cinema | 6 min |
| :37 – :44 | Family photos | 8 min |
| :45 | Clock & weather | 1 min |
| :46 – :59 | Family photos | 14 min |
Photos take up most of the time. Everything else is regular, discreet punctuation — never intrusive. My mother doesn't know this schedule exists. She just says the screen feels "alive."
What you can't see — and matters just as much
The screen turns on and off by itself. At 7am and at 9pm. Two lines of code in the system scheduler. A tablet that turns itself off in the evening isn't a tablet that needs looking after — it's part of the house, like a blind.
A daily restart at 6:59am. Every morning, one minute before the screen comes on, the Raspberry Pi restarts. A computer running continuously accumulates small residues in memory. The restart clears everything out, starts clean. In two years, the tablet has never crashed for any length of time.
A built-in network filter. The local network is protected by a Pi-hole that automatically blocks malicious domains. Simone never sees adverts, never loads a phishing site. She doesn't know it exists. That's the point.
A watch on the connection. Every night, the system checks the tablet's public IP address. If it changes after a network outage, a notification goes out — not to Simone, to us. Being present from a distance doesn't mean watching. It means being alerted when something's wrong, without disturbing what's right.
In short
From the outside, SimoneBox is a screen that shows family photos, the time, the weather, some news, and plays the radio.
From the inside, it's a system that refreshes itself three times a day, turns on and off by itself, detects new photos within ten seconds, and restarts each morning to start clean. All on a Raspberry Pi that costs under €5 a year in electricity. No subscription. No account. Nothing sent to anyone.
If you're looking for a solution for an elderly parent, the SimoneBox survey is made for you.
Also worth reading
How I built the first SimoneBox on Raspberry Pi in one week →How SimoneBox builds its news images — from France TV to the screen →
Send photos to SimoneBox in 30 seconds →
Privacy by design: why SimoneBox will never run on a cloud server →
Installing and maintaining SimoneBox yourself: the skills you need →
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