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PiemPi turns the digits of pi into a paper mnemonic called a piem: each word’s letter count represents the next digit. Built around a Raspberry Pi Zero and a 58 mm thermal printer, it calculates pi digits and chooses words of matching lengths—but the result is a memory aid, not necessarily a meaningful poem.
What is a piem?
A piem encodes a number as a sequence of words whose lengths match its digits. A three-letter word represents 3, a one-letter word represents 1, and so on. Read the word lengths in order and they reproduce the number.
For example, the familiar mnemonic “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!” has word lengths corresponding to the opening digits of pi: 3.1415926535… Roni Bandini’s project page attributes that sentence to astronomer Sir James Hopwood Jeans; that attribution is reported by the project page rather than independently verified here. Bandini’s PiemPi Machine project page gives the wording and attribution.
How does the PiemPi machine work?
PiemPi calculates successive digits of pi, then uses them to select words from a dictionary file. The word lengths carry the numeric information; the words’ meanings do not. The machine can therefore print awkward or nonsensical combinations rather than polished poetry.
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- Calculate digits: Bandini’s implementation uses the Chudnovsky algorithm, adapted from a Python implementation to return successive digits.
- Choose matching words: The program selects random words from a dictionary according to the digits it needs to represent. The word list can be a plain file with one word per line; the project page says it need not be sorted by word length.
- Format and print: The text is wrapped to fit the thermal paper. The project’s example settings use a 27-character column length and a default of 767 decimal places.
- Track the run: A four-digit display shows the current decimal, a switch pauses printing, and the software writes a timestamped text log.
Those counts and features describe Bandini’s documented build, not a performance guarantee for other hardware or software. The maker reports that calculation and printing slow as the requested digit count increases, with the slowdown becoming noticeable at around 500 decimals.
Why does PiemPi print blank lines?
There is no ordinary word with zero letters, so a word-length encoding cannot represent the digit 0 directly. PiemPi handles a zero by printing a blank line. Bandini’s project page says the first zero occurs at decimal position 33, which is why the output eventually includes an empty line.
Does the machine have to recalculate pi?
No. Recalculation is part of PiemPi’s demonstration, not a requirement of the piem format. As Al Williams’s June 5, 2023 Hackaday article notes, the digits could instead be calculated once and stored, then used to generate printed mnemonics. PiemPi’s approach makes the calculation part of the physical project.
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Bandini lists these components for the PiemPi build:
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- Raspberry Pi Zero
- 58 mm thermal printer and roll paper
- Four-digit display
- Switch
- Custom enclosure
- 5V 4A power supply
- microSD card
- Jumper wires
The project page does not identify an exact printer model or provide compatibility specifications for replacement printers. Before substituting a printer, check its interface, power requirements, 58 mm paper fit, and how it connects to the chosen Raspberry Pi. The listed 5V 4A supply is a part of this documented build, not a blanket recommendation for every combination of components.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Can it print piems in another language?
The project page says the English word list can be replaced with a file containing one word per line. That provides a way to change the source vocabulary, but it does not establish that every language’s word list will produce equally natural or complete output. The encoding depends on finding words with the required lengths; a valid word list may still yield a jumble of unrelated words.
What the printed result does—and does not—mean
A PiemPi printout is a mnemonic representation of digits, not a translation of pi into prose. Its numeric accuracy comes from the sequence of word lengths, while the random selection of words is a separate presentation choice. The machine’s main appeal is the combination of a mathematical calculation, a simple encoding rule, and a physical printout.
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