Accessible Image/Sound/Video Player

[OneSwitch]

I'm looking for an accessible and easy to set-up image/sound/video player for a museum. The wishes are...


1. Easy start: Auto boot into the slide show.

2. Display those slides (images / images with a linked sound file / videos that auto-start) in a constant loop. Slides progressed on a timer, but also possible to manually override via a keyboard/game controller (next, previous, pause/play).

3. Slide order sorted alphanumerically from a SLIDES folder, unless directed otherwise by a simple well annotated and easy to find configuration script.

4. Some sort of SD card corruption protection / recovery if possible.

5. Slideshow system to be provided in an .img file (like RetroPie) that can be written directly to an SD card. Ideally with a config.txt file so the user can adjust the monitor output settings (e.g. vertical/horizontal/CRT/HDMI etc.) - just like you can with RetroPie.

6. Ability to add files and edit config as easily as you can with RetroPie (e.g. Ethernet / Wi-Fi connection typing \\RETROPIE to get access to the important folders.... Or SSH Remote Access (e.g. Putty).


On point 1 - that's great for not having to be around to set the thing up.
On point 2 - being able to link a sound file to an image would be really important for visually impaired / blind visitors for audio description... short videos that auto-play great for many inc. those who can't read. Being able to control it via a USB keyboard / joystick (e.g. Xbox 360 standard) allows for accessibility controls to be easily connected.
On point 3 - makes life easier for anyone setting it up.
On point 4 - RetroPie does this really well. I've never had a problem with it corrupting anything after a hard-power down.
On point 5 - that would make life massively easier for many, as the alternative is quite daunting for many.... or a digestible explanation of what the workable alternative is.
On point 6 - again, makes life so much easier to use drag and drop with a connected PC.


If anyone knows if this is possible, even if a commercial thing, I'd love to know. I'm hoping to share information on Game Accessibility at a number of venues in the near and mid-future. Something like this display I put on in the past, but in more detail: http://oneswitch.org.uk/page/se2007-2017. Any help, would be much appreciated.

[dividuum]

Basically you're looking for a digital signage solution.

I'm working on info-beamer, a solution for the Pi. It should handle almost all requirements:

1) It's a custom OS that directly starts by showing your content. There's no desktop at all. You don't have to do any manual configuration for that.

2) info-beamer works by running custom built packages on any number of Pis. On package, the Scheduled Player, can handle most of that already: You can add images/video to any number of pages and use an attached keyboard for navigation. You can also specify manual interactive events (like keyboard presses/xbox controller button presses) to navigate to specific page. You could even trigger that remotely if needed. Modifying the behaviour is also possible as the package itself is open source. Slides with sounds are not supported, but you should be able to use ffmpeg to convert an image+sound file into a video and use that instead.

3) The complete configuration is online. Once the Pi is set up (which itself only take a minute or so), the rest is done using a web interface.

4) The OS is highly optimized for that: The complete OS itself is always read-only and all content files are checksum protected and get automatically restored if there's even a single bit flip. All is fully automatic so you never have to do any of that manually.

5) It's essentially that. You sign up for free and can fetch the 50MB installation zip file from here. Then just unzip that on an empty FAT32 formatted SD card, put that in the Pi and you're done. The installation literally takes a few seconds

6) The complete OS can be configured online. Editing the configuration offline is also possible, but the online editor makes all that a lot easier.

The system is free for the first Pi, after that, checkout the pricing page. Let me know if you have any questions.

[scruss]

Basically you're looking for a digital signage solution.

I think Barrie's looking for a bit more than that: the custom interaction and the no-corruption on power down seem to be important features.

[dividuum]

I think Barrie's looking for a bit more than that: the custom interaction and the no-corruption on power down seem to be important features.

Agreed. Let me rephrase: Digital signage with some nice bonus features

[OneSwitch]

Thanks for this. Does look good, but I don't really want to pay any sort of subscription, and would only want to set it up locally. I will look into it though, thank you. I've also heard of Pi-Kiosk: https://github.com/Smithsonian/Pi-Kiosk ... ideo_kiosk.