# Aaron Gotwalt > [Blog](/blog/) / [Projects](/projects/) / [Work](/work/) | [llms.txt](/llms.txt) --- ## Screeny Date: 2026-10-05 A Tidbyt turned into a 30 fps window for generative art. --- Screeny is open-source firmware and software that turns a [Tidbyt](https://tidbyt.com) Gen 1 into a 30 fps display for generative art. Instead of rendering frames in the cloud, Screeny renders them on a computer on the local network and streams them straight to the panel. No cloud, no account, no subscription. ``` patches ──> art pipeline ──> encoder (best of 5 codecs, ≤ 1464 B) ──UDP/WiFi──> firmware ──> HUB75 panel ``` ## Firmware - `no_std` Rust on [embassy](https://embassy.dev) and esp-hal, with the display on one ESP32 core and the network on the other. - Refreshes the 64×32 panel at 154 Hz with six bit planes, and dithers temporally to about a thousand levels per channel. - Caps brightness so a laptop USB port can power it. - Advertises itself over DNS-SD, sets up WiFi from the browser or a phone QR code, and takes over-the-air updates that roll back on their own if they fail. ## Protocol - One frame, one UDP datagram: an 8-byte header and at most 1,464 bytes of pixels. - Nothing is retransmitted, every frame decodes on its own, and the newest frame wins. - The sender tries five codecs on every frame — mostly adaptive palettes that shrink until the frame fits — scores each against a model of the panel, and sends the best. A clock frame is about 280 bytes. - `screeny pipe` takes raw RGB frames on stdin, so any program in any language can drive a panel. ## Studio - A single Rust binary: an axum server with the web UI compiled in, and an MQTT bridge to Home Assistant. - Runs as a Home Assistant app, in Docker (amd64 or arm64), or from source. On a Raspberry Pi 4 it uses about half a core and 85 MB of memory. - Each patch renders on its own thread, and a patch that stalls is replaced without taking the process down. - Patches include clocks inspired by [ClockClock 24](https://www.humanssince1982.com/products/clockclock-24-white) and the [Vestaboard](https://www.vestaboard.com), a slow-motion flock, metaballs, raymarched solids, and a GPU-rendered procedural world. The [design docs](https://github.com/gotwalt/screeny/tree/main/docs) cover the protocol, the architecture, and the research behind each decision. Read the story behind it in [the blog post](/blog/2026-10-05-screeny).