VideoPi

video player for artists by artists

Hi, we’re Jakub and Viktor, graduates from an art university, and we know what it’s like

1. to transcode all your videos the night before your presentation,
2. to burn the DVDs three times until the player finally accepts them,
3. to see glitches and lags in your video and do the transcoding several times again until the playback is smooth,
4. to visit the exhibition and see that your videos are not playing because someone forgot to press the play button or didn’t turn the loop function on.

VideoPi fixes all these problems:

1. it plays virtually any video format you can think of¹,
2. from a USB stick²,
3. with no glitches or lags (full HD supported),
4. and it starts playing all videos on the USB stick in a loop automatically; you just connect the power cord.

VideoPi requires no configuration for the most common use case – HDMI full HD video output with a separate 3.5mm jack audio output.

VideoPi can also capture images using a webcam and upload them to your server.

VideoPi is extendable and open for modifications. You can modify VideoPi to do video post-processing like gamma adjustment, or to play the clips in random order, or to do something we couldn’t even imagine. VideoPi has all the capabilities of a micro PC; in the end it’s nothing but a clever Linux installation³. Dig in VideoPi’s open-source code.

Get VideoPi

If you don’t feel like installing VideoPi yourself (which you totally can, by the way, if you know the basics of Linux), we can

• lend you a VideoPi (or two, or a dozen) for a daily price for as long as you need,
• or we can sell it to you, so it will be yours and yours only forever.

In either case, we will help you with the initial setup.

We haven’t come up with a price list or the exact extent of provided support and maintenance yet, so just send us an email and we’ll get back to you.

Help

VideoPi aims for simplicity and zero configuration, therefore:

• Make sure the HDMI cable is connected before you power on VideoPi.
• By default, the sound will play from the 3.5mm jack not from the HDMI.
• Volume adjustment is not available. Adjust the volume on your speakers.
• Video files will play in alphabetic order. If you want to be sure of particular file order, name your files with numbers or lowercase letters and use only latin characters.
• File names with non-latin characters (such as chinese or cyrillic) as well as special characters (such as punctuation) are supported but should be avoided; especially if you care about the playback order.
• The loop (repeat all) function cannot be turned off.
• To setup the webcam you need to have an internet connection and a server with remote SSH access, see the Webcam section for more info.

Technical

WARNING: Following documentation uses /dev/sdX as a substitute for your real SD card device path. Double check this path before executing the installer (Makefile), so that you don’t accidentally overwrite a different device.

Requirements

Required Arch Linux packages (should be similar on other distributions):

util-linux (sfdisk)
dosfstools (mkfs.vfat)
e2fsprogs (mkfs.ext4)
make
wget

arch-install-scripts (arch-chroot) # Installation only
binfmt-support (update-binftms) # Installation only
qemu-user-static (qemu-arm-static) # Installation only

Install VideoPi on an SD card

First format your SD card:

# make erase filesystems DEVICE=/dev/sdX

Then install VideoPi for your Raspberry Pi version on the SD card and create a disk image of the whole card:

# make VERSION=2 DEVICE=/dev/sdX

Supported Raspberry Pi version are VERSION=1, 2 and 3.

Unpack a VideoPi image

After you’ve created an SD card image (see previous section), you can unpack it to another SD card without having to go through the installation again:

# make mount unpack umount VERSION=2 DEVICE=/dev/sdX

More

See the Makefile help for all available commands:

$ make help

Customize

To customize the installation (add or replace some files on the SD card), select one of the available modifications from src-custom/ or create your own and pass appropriate CUSTOM= parameter to make. Example:

$ mkdir -p src-custom/my-improvement/home/alarm
$ echo "bar" > src-custom/my-improvement/home/alarm/foo
# make VERSION=2 DEVICE=/dev/sdX CUSTOM="my-improvement"

Shuffle

Use modification shuffle to play the video files in random order:

# make VERSION=2 DEVICE=/dev/sdX CUSTOM="shuffle"

Multiple modifications

To use multiple modifications put a space separated list in the parameter CUSTOM=:

# make VERSION=2 DEVICE=/dev/sdX CUSTOM="shuffle my-improvement"

Network

To setup a network connection create a new netctl network config (possibly based on src/etc/netctl/example) in a new modifications directory and rebuild the image:

$ mkdir -p src-custom/my-home-network/etc/netctl
$ echo "my netctl content" > src-custom/my-home-network/etc/netctl/home
$ rm src-custom/my-home-network/etc/netctl/my-network
$ ln -s src-custom/my-home-network/etc/netctl/home src-custom/my-home-network/etc/netctl/my-network
# make VERSION=2 DEVICE=/dev/sdX CUSTOM="my-home-network"

Webcam

To setup a webcam image upload you need a working Network connection and SSH. Copy example SSH config files from src/ and edit them to match your server settings:

$ mkdir -p src-custom/my-server/home/alarm/.ssh
$ cp src/home/alarm/.ssh/config src-custom/my-server/home/alarm/.ssh/
$ cd src-custom/my-server/home/alarm/.ssh
$ nano known_hosts
$ echo "" > id_rsa
$ nano config

Then edit your remote server directory:

$ cp src/home/alarm/bin/upload-image src-custom/my-server/home/alarm/bin/upload-image
$ nano src-custom/my-server/home/alarm/bin/upload-image

…and build the image:

# make VERSION=2 DEVICE=/dev/sdX CUSTOM="my-home-network my-server"

Troubleshooting

The log is located in /home/alarm/.log/devmon.log.

License

Copyright 2016 Jakub Valenta

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.