Pi Presents: A display package for museums & visitor centres

[micropuller]

Hi Ken,

I wrote to you earlier through your website. I'm working with several museum studies students to build an exhibition about their school.

We've made a presentation using Pi Presents gapless, running on a Pi 2, using capacitive touch buttons to play (groups of) videos. We did this by using a radiobuttonshow that has a message and several other radiobuttonshows as tracks.
- The first track in the first show (the one that is played on startup) is a message track that automatically opens up a mediashow (using the show control option), consisting of one looping video.
- When a visitor activates one of the buttons, one of the other tracks/radiobuttonshows is played.
- Each of these radiobuttonshows is a copy of the first show, but has a different mediashow running in the background, again triggered by the show control function. Each of these mediashows has 4 or 5 tracks (videos).
- The tracks are set up as single shot, except for the last one, which is a copy of the video in the first show. This video is set up to repeat, so when all the videos in the mediashow have played, the last one loops until a button is triggered. This way it looks like the program has returned to the first show. This allows us to start each mediashow from any given point in the show, without first returning to the main show.

There are two things I'd like to ask you:
- Is it possible to have all tracks in an (art)mediashow that was opened with the show control function play once and then return to the first show (the one that is played on startup) automatically? We couldn't figure out how to do that, that's why we came up with the "trick" of looping the last video in each subshow.
- I've tried to replace the mediashows by artmediashows, but if I do, the sound in the videos stops after about one second. Also, I can't use the same "trick" as in the normal mediashows (having all videos play once and the last repeat)

Any help would be very much appreciated!

[CaptainKen]

I'm interested in using you PiPresents-next as a Digital Picture frame and as a "now showing" movie poster slide show for my home theater. I assume that these are common uses for PiPresents-next.

I have a DIY Rpi running Kodi with flat screen tv for digital picture frame, with NAS folder as source, but just not thrilled about the who setup and UI just for a basic slide show.

I scanned through the manual and saw mention of dynamic Liveshows via ftp. Would this allow for photos to be auto read as they are added to a specified NAS source folder?

- Ken

[KenT]

>I scanned through the manual and saw mention of dynamic Liveshows via ftp. Would this allow for photos to be auto read as they are added to a specified NAS source folder?

Yes. The folder can be on the Pi 's SD card, on a usb stick or on a remote computer so ftp is not essential. The USB stick is hot pluggable.

There is an example of a liveshow in the examples repository.

[Mitsu93]

Hi KenT
i'm using ur great PP for a liveshow which is filled from a Network Folder. The slideshow is fillded with videos and pictures and starts automatic on boot. Everything works great and i appreciate your work, its simply great!
I've read already most of the posts but couldn't found a answer to my only problem. My problem is that i want to control the tracks within the liveshow with GPIO buttons. Simply using a button to switch to next track and one to switch to the previous track. The Pause button works fine but there are no buttons specified for the my case.
Now my question is do i have to specify 2 GPIO inputs for the 2 Buttons and write these new case into the specific scripts?
Maybe someone had the same problem and ive just overseen it or just couldn't find it. I'm a beginner wit the Pi and just working wit it since a few months so my Python and general knowledge ist just basic.
Hopefully someone has an answer for me.
Anyway thanks in Advance for everything with PP.

[KenT]

The liveshow examples do not have controls as they were set up for an automatically advancing show. However you can add controls as are present in a mediashow example. You will also need to set the default track duration to 0 to stop the automatic advance.

if you want gpio control then you can just add a gpio.cfg file to set the rising or falling edges to the symbolic names in the controls field, the same names as are used for the keys. Some of the examples have gpio.cfg files that do this.

Hi KenT
i'm using ur great PP for a liveshow which is filled from a Network Folder. The slideshow is fillded with videos and pictures and starts automatic on boot. Everything works great and i appreciate your work, its simply great!
I've read already most of the posts but couldn't found a answer to my only problem. My problem is that i want to control the tracks within the liveshow with GPIO buttons. Simply using a button to switch to next track and one to switch to the previous track. The Pause button works fine but there are no buttons specified for the my case.
Now my question is do i have to specify 2 GPIO inputs for the 2 Buttons and write these new case into the specific scripts?
Maybe someone had the same problem and ive just overseen it or just couldn't find it. I'm a beginner wit the Pi and just working wit it since a few months so my Python and general knowledge ist just basic.
Hopefully someone has an answer for me.
Anyway thanks in Advance for everything with PP.

[ottrin]

I want to use pair of mediashows same time with different canvas (video and photo slideshow). How i can start next pair of mediashows when 1st video ends.

[KenT]

I want to use pair of mediashows same time with different canvas (video and photo slideshow). How i can start next pair of mediashows when 1st video ends.

In the 'show Control at End' field of the track put:

open show1
open show2

[ottrin]

In the 'show Control at End' field of the track put:

open show1
open show2

I cannot find "show control" tab ( edit show). I tried track control, but this opens only one show. Maybe more hints for begginner.

[KenT]

In the 'show Control at End' field of the track put:

open show1
open show2

I cannot find "show control" tab ( edit show). I tried track control, but this opens only one show. Maybe more hints for begginner.

You are doing the correct thing using the Show Control Field in a Track.

It should open more than one show.

Are you using [PiPresents-gapless] [PP-next] does not support multiple concurrent shows.

You might also have found a bug

[ottrin]

Are you using [PiPresents-gapless] [PP-next] does not support multiple concurrent shows.

I am using PiPresents-gapless 1.3. I have used VIDEO1 track-> new-> show. Title "nextVideo2" and Show to Run "Video2" and all other fields are blank. Same also for picture2 in VIDEO1.

[KenT]

Are you using [PiPresents-gapless] [PP-next] does not support multiple concurrent shows.

I am using PiPresents-gapless 1.3. I have used VIDEO1 track-> new-> show. Title "nextVideo2" and Show to Run "Video2" and all other fields are blank. Same also for picture2 in VIDEO1.

I think you are doing the wrong thing. See secion 8.2 of the manual and the pp_showcontrol_1p3 example mediashow.json River track (ignore the /pipresents.... lines, they are for OSC)

[ottrin]

Video and slideshow(pictures) plays 3 times and then there is no more slide show. If i move mouse or press "any key"then it starts again correctly and slide show ends after 3 time.

Sometime I see in terminal window: "unclutter: someone created a sub-window to my sub-window! giving up"

Shows(mediashow):
start, video1, picture1(pictures),video2, picture2(pictures), video3, picture3(pictures),.

Medialists
start, video1, picture1(pictures),video2, picture2(pictures), video3, picture3(pictures).

track
video1 ( at the beginning: open picture1; at the end: close picture1)
show (show to run video2)

Video2 starts then Video3 and then Video3 starts Video1

Where is my mistake?

[KenT]

Video and slideshow(pictures) plays 3 times and then there is no more slide show. If i move mouse or press "any key"then it starts again correctly and slide show ends after 3 time.

Moving the mouse should not affect Pi Presents. It sounds like you have not disabled screen blanking using a command line option.

Sometime I see in terminal window: "unclutter: someone created a sub-window to my sub-window! giving up"

Ignore this, its a spurious error message.

Shows(mediashow):
start, video1, picture1(pictures),video2, picture2(pictures), video3, picture3(pictures),.

Medialists
start, video1, picture1(pictures),video2, picture2(pictures), video3, picture3(pictures).

track
video1 ( at the beginning: open picture1; at the end: close picture1)
show (show to run video2)

Video2 starts then Video3 and then Video3 starts Video1

Where is my mistake?

[akirasrebirth]

Hi.
Is it possible to show a live feed from a pi camera or from a USB webcam as a video track in a radiobuttonshow?
thanks

[KenT]

Hi.
Is it possible to show a live feed from a pi camera or from a USB webcam as a video track in a radiobuttonshow?
thanks

It is not possible but somebody has modified PP-next to do it

My suggestion to him at the time was

In pp_imageplayer.py

In display_content:
camera = picamera.PiCamera()
camera.start_preview()

In end:
camera.stop_preview()
camera.close()

This was for still images, I think it would be possible to change it slightly for video.

[lurchi]

I am currently preparing an exhibition of musical instruments in a museum. For the purpose of providing sound samples I use a PP hyperlinkshow - a screen full of buttons with the instruments' name on them. All is running smoothly - except one thing: I cannot use special characters (German umlauts) on the buttons. But I would like to use them.
Is there anything I can do about it?

TIA - Ulrich

[wwagonman]

No Audio:

I have installed Pi Presents-next on a RP2 model B but the audio portion of my mp4 file does not play. I can switch between HDMI and local sound, but only get static, no audio from the video. The video on my USB stick does play audio when run on my windows laptop.

Any help is appreciated,

Lee

[KenT]

No Audio:

I have installed Pi Presents-next on a RP2 model B but the audio portion of my mp4 file does not play. I can switch between HDMI and local sound, but only get static, no audio from the video. The video on my USB stick does play audio when run on my windows laptop.

Any help is appreciated,

Lee

Pi Presents just uses omxplayer to play mp4's. Try using omxplayer from the command line to see if your video is broken. instructions at https://github.com/popcornmix/omxplayer

You can see what Pi Presents sends to omxplayer by using the -d command line option on PP.

[wwagonman]

Thanks Ken, That was enough info for me to figure out to run omxplayer on it's own and determine that I did not have a USB or hardware issue (video and audio played fine).

Now that I knew the problem was within Pi Presents-Next I was able to find my error. When I first got it running, I had no audio output to my HDMI display. Eventually I found the info on how to force HDMI audio and made those changes. In between however, I had set the audio level in Pi Presents to "50". That apparently overdrives the audio channel so much that only static is heard. Returning to the default "0" resolved my problem.

Thanks for the help and a great product.

Regards,

Lee

[donvukovic]

I would like to use BLE sensor modules to display data on an interactive display.
The data from the BLE sensors would change the display appearance.
Has anyone use the Bluetooth module on the RPi3 ?

Thanks
Don

[justtoby]

Hey Ken,

First of all i want to apologize for my English in advance.

I love the work you have done. I managed to get a raspberry pi up and running. It will start pipresents automaticly on a reboot. Now i have some people around here who want to display images. So i have chosen for the liveshow. It works fine when you select a map/folder for the media. But i want to use media from a USB stick. So i tried to use the first live map pointing to /media/pi/USB where USB is the name of the USB stick. This is not working.

Is there a workaround to use a usb stick to contain the media for the liveshow?

Cheers,

Toby

[alexanderVV]

Hi, KenT.

Please tell me how to add an image to a button on the screen and the animation when you press it gpio buttons? The idea is so that when you press the gpio button, button-image on the screen is press too.
Sorry for my English....

[QPRsteve]

Apologies if this has been covered,

I am total noob to this game, my idea is to use pp on a pi zero to constantly loop a PowerPoint presentation, is this possible with pp?

Any tips on how to do this?

I have seen some basic ideas on YouTube but there not very informative for the total beginner

[KenT]

Use of a USB stick for a liveshow is described in the manual.

Hey Ken,

First of all i want to apologize for my English in advance.

I love the work you have done. I managed to get a raspberry pi up and running. It will start pipresents automaticly on a reboot. Now i have some people around here who want to display images. So i have chosen for the liveshow. It works fine when you select a map/folder for the media. But i want to use media from a USB stick. So i tried to use the first live map pointing to /media/pi/USB where USB is the name of the USB stick. This is not working.

Is there a workaround to use a usb stick to contain the media for the liveshow?

Cheers,

Toby

[KenT]

Sorry PP cannot do this. Good idea and its on my to do sometime in the future list.
Ken

Hi, KenT.

Please tell me how to add an image to a button on the screen and the animation when you press it gpio buttons? The idea is so that when you press the gpio button, button-image on the screen is press too.
Sorry for my English....