Lobby TV microcontroller project [complete]

Success at last.

I got my RPi configured with dynaframe (for the slideshow) and rclone (for google drive sync). I have tested it with my own google drive and TV. It works very nicely. The slides gets updated within couple of minutes of me adding or deleting files from my google drive folder.

Please let me know when is a good time for us to install in on the Lobby TV. I need to remove my google drive account and add whoever is going to manage the slideshows.

@David and I installed the RPi on the Lobby TV yesterday evening. Bellow is the summary of the install

  1. RPi physically located in the Electrical/Electronics room
  2. The RPi has a small wireless USB keyboard/trackpad. It will allow us to operate the RPi when needed
  3. Dynaframe (slide show software) starts automatically at the start of the RPi without any user intervention
  4. RClone (Google drive) syncs/mounts automatically so that dynaframe can use the synced pictures and videos
  5. Dynaframe Web interface can be reached at http://192.168.0.247:8000 . @David tested in on his iPad and I tested it on my Phone.
  6. We were able to change the settings of the slideshow e.g slide duration, fade duration etc etc
  7. As i mentioned earlier, We can upload files to the RPi using the Dynaframe admin web interface
  8. We tested the setup with my personal Google drive. I was able to update the slides over the internet by adding/deleting files from my google drive slideshow folder.
  9. I logged out my google account from the RPi before leaving Asmbly

Future steps needs to be taken to make the slideshow work

  1. Log in to Asmbly’s google drive in the RPi running RClone
  2. Create a folder (in Asmbly’s google drive) where we will put pics and videos for the slideshow
  3. Assign that folder in the start up script of Dynaframe.
  4. Alternatively upload pictures directly to the RPi using the admin panel of Dynaframe
  5. Design a better mounting system for the RPi so that it’s not just sitting on a random workbench in the EE room.

Thanks to @David for helping me set up and test the system. @David and @valerie , Please let me know if you have any other questions and/or concerns. Also let me know if/when do you want to me to come over and finish setting up the Google drive account for Asmbly in the RPi

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Very exciting to have this long desired project moving forward. Thank you @lagnajeet!

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Thanks so much @lagnajeet! Great work and great to have it documented.

This is the folder that we’ll be using – _____LobbyTV - Google Drive

It is viewable for anyone with a link so I’m wondering if we actually need a user login at all. One thing I’m wanting to verify is if having a shortcut link for a video that has a different physical location in the drive is enough or if we will end up needing to make copies into that folder. No biggie either way, will just need to know for folks doing content management.

We definitely need to get it locked down from a security standpoint ASAP. We only have a few people who should have admin access.

Thanks @valerie .

  1. Any video has to be copied to the target folder. For example I can open the link you posted above and se e there is a shortcut to a video file but I cannot open it. Same will happen with dynaframe for it to do slideshow
  2. Dynaframe expects files to be local in RPi. The RClone google drive app mounts a google drive path in the RPi to make dynaframe think it is accessing local file. For that to happen RClone needs a google log in. It doesn’t (should not) have to be an admin’s google account. It can be any google account and we share the LobbyTV folder with that google account.

Please let me know if it’s doable.

Thanks

Perfect, thanks for the quick answers on those! I’ll email you info for a special account for this lobby TV :slight_smile:

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I suppose we can mark this as done. RPi is running dynaframe slideshow on the lobbyTV.

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Yes, this is complete! :tada:

It’s running great, thank you again so very much for your work on this @lagnajeet! We’ll add more content to it soon and being able to just drop it into that Google Drive folder is so wonderfully fantastic. Really helps us be able to have the content maintenance be managed by a diverse team. :pray:

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Hey @lagnajeet,

Thanks again for your help on this! Yesterday the wifi at the space went out briefly, and it seemed the RPi had trouble automatically reconnecting to the drive folder when the wifi came back. Is there any way to make that happen automatically? I’m not sure if it ever ended up reconnecting, but it hadn’t by the time I left the space last night.

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I will be there anyway around 5pm. I can have a look and also I can look around on the internet to see what could be a possible solution.

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While working on Dorian yesterday, and looked at the TV setup. Awesome, guys! It was sitting iny the top of the bench though, so I took some spare 3mm and cut a quick walk mount box for it. It’s mounted behind the electronics door.

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I’ll put the TV remote in there too so everything stays together.

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If it doesn’t fit, let me know. It only takes a few minutes to make another.

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I noticed we have more videos playing on the TV now. They look great.

But I observed there is some amount of noticable lag when playing videos. I suspect the videos are very high quality. Therefore, very large file size. The TV itself is 1080p and does not seem to have a huge dynamic range in terms of color or contrast. @valerie , we can perhaps drop the video quality i.e. the size to make the playback more fluid. If you want I can do it.

Let me know.

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Thanks @lagnajeet, that would be great if you could help troubleshoot that! I’ll add you as an editor to the folder with these files.

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Thanks. I will do it this weekend.

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I replaces three big files with the same video converted to smaller file size. Please let me know if they are playing ok on the TV or not.

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