The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive Linux Computer which you can for example use to play back videos (up to Fill-HD). This page shows you how to set it up:
Making the RapberryPi run a video at startup
Install The Raspbian image (NOOBS is okay for the beginning, but it wastes a bit space on the SDcard for the recovery image which we don't need. here is how to copy the raspbian on the card: source
Connect to the internet (Ethernet + DHCP) and bring the OS up to date:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Test video playback: source
omxplayer /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/test.h264
add option -r to change display frame rate and resolution to the one that the movie file has:
omxplayer -r /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/test.h264
startup_script.sh
clear echo "Startup script running" echo "some useful information here" sleep 2 omxplayer -r movie.mp4 --loop
Make it log in automatically: http://opentechguides.com/how-to/article/raspberry-pi/5/raspberry-pi-auto-start.html
Step 1: Open a terminal session and edit inittab file.
sudo nano /etc/inittab
Step 2: Disable the getty program. Navigate to the following line in inittab
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 115200 tty1
And add a # at the beginning of the line to comment it out
#1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 115200 tty1
Step 3: Add login program to inittab. Add the following line just below the commented line
1:2345:respawn:/bin/login -f pi tty1 </dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1 2>&1
This will run the login program with pi user and without any authentication Step 4: Save and Exit.
Make it start the script automatically:
sudo nano .bashrc
and right at the end put:
if [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ]; then ./startup_script.sh fi
Synchronizing multiple RaspberryPis
maybe you want to have the different pis different hostnames, so you don't get confused
sudo raspi-config
install pexpect:
sudo apt-get install python-pexpect
install python bindings for DBUS https://github.com/LEW21/pydbus
sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools sudo wget https://github.com/LEW21/pydbus/archive/master.zip sudo unzip master.zip rm master.zip cd pydbus-master/ sudo chmod 777 setup.py sudo ./setup.py build sudo ./setup.py install
sudo apt-get remove omxplayer sudo rm -rf /usr/bin/omxplayer /usr/bin/omxplayer.bin /usr/lib/omxplayer sudo wget -O- http://yokto.net/0/omxplayer/omxplayer-3176db4.tar.bz2 | sudo tar -C / -xjvf - sudo ln -sf /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpcre.so.3 /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpcre.so.1 sudo wget -O /usr/bin/omxplayer-sync https://github.com/turingmachine/omxplayer-sync/raw/master/omxplayer-sync sudo chmod 0755 /usr/bin/omxplayer-sync sudo wget https://github.com/turingmachine/omxplayer-sync/raw/master/synctest.mp4
Make a local network, connect them with Ethernet cable (+Hub if more then two) and configure static IPs source
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
- start on master
omxplayer-sync -muv synctest.mp4
- start on slave
omxplayer-sync -luv synctest.mp4
Notes
other ressources: Use multiple RasberryPis to make a video wall (needs one extra server-Pi, plus one Pi per client) Piwall
make a backup of SDCard:
sudo dd if="/dev/mmcblk0" of="Pi.bin"
put backup on card:
sudo dd bs=4M if=Pi.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0
(both these commands take a long time and the terminal seems like frozen, there is no progress feedback)
reboot:
sudo reboot -h
shutdown:
sudo shutdown -h now