This Raspberry Pi AI pizza clock tells the time one slice at a time

We've seen a Raspberry Pi clock or two in our time but this is the first one we've seen that would make a Ninja Turtle blush. Maker and developer Likeablob, as they're known as over at Hackaday and GitHub, is using our favorite SBC to power this Raspberry Pi AI pizza clock that uses slices of pizza to indicate the current time instead of hands like you would find on a regular clock.

This project is simply delicious! Not only does it put the fun in functional, it's pretty impressive when you delve into the work that was necessary to make it possible. It implements artificial intelligence to create "realistic" pizza images. This took a fair bit of work on Likeablob's part to create a consistently scaled pizza that would fit the round display used in the clock face.

According to Likeblob, an image has to be generated as a sort of template to indicate the size and shape of the pizza based on the current time. This image is then parsed through Stable Diffusion which creates a realistic pizza on top of this clock map. The end result is an AI-generated image of pizza representing the current time with cheesy, Pi-powered goodness.

(Image credit: Likeablob)

(Image credit: Likeablob)

You don't need the latest Raspberry Pi to recreate this project as Likeablob has managed to pull everything off just fine using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. Because this is a clock, it made sense to use a round display. In this case, Likeblob is using a 4-inch round LCD with a resolution of 720 x 720px. It connects using a mini HDMI board.

The Pi and screen are housed inside of a custom case that Likeblob created using SolidPython and OpenSCAD to model. The clock faces are created using Stable Diffusion, like we mentioned above, and the Raspberry Pi was running NixOS. What's cool about this project is there's a bit of versatility in the output. You don't have to dedicate the clock to your love of pizza as you can use any other round image to represent the time. In an example photo, we see a flower used in place of the pizza design.

If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, you can find tons of details breaking down its construction over at Hackaday. The full source code is also available at GitHub for anyone to peruse.