obscreen/docs/setup-run-on-rpi.md

Obscreen - Autorun on RaspberryPi

👈 back to readme

🔴 You want to power RaspberryPi and automatically see your slideshow on a screen connected to it and manage your slideshow ? You're in the right place.

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🎛️ Hardware installation

1. Download RaspberryPi Imager and setup an sdcard with Raspberry Pi OS Lite (🚨without desktop, only Lite version!). You'll find it under category Raspberry PI OS (other)
2. Log into your RaspberryPi locally or via ssh (by default it's ssh pi@raspberrypi.local)

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📡 Run the studio instance

### with docker run

⚠️ docker ... --rm option is not suitable for production use because it won't survive a reboot. However, it's okay for quick testing. You need to use --restart=always instead to ensure that it persists.

# (Optional) Install docker if needed
curl -sSL get.docker.com | sh && sudo usermod -aG docker $(whoami) && logout # then login again

# Prepare application data file tree
cd ~ && mkdir -p obscreen/data/db obscreen/data/uploads && cd obscreen

# Prepare player autostart file
mkdir -p var/run && touch var/run/play && chmod +x var/run/play 

# Run the Docker container
docker run --rm --name obscreen --pull=always \
  -e DEBUG=false \
  -e PORT=5000 \
  -e PLAYER_AUTOSTART_FILE=/app/var/run/play \
  -e SECRET_KEY=ANY_SECRET_KEY_HERE \
  -p 5000:5000 \
  -v ./data/db:/app/data/db \
  -v ./data/uploads:/app/data/uploads \
  -v ./var/run/play:/app/var/run/play \
  jierka/obscreen:latest

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or with docker compose

# Prepare application data file tree
cd ~ && mkdir -p obscreen/data/db obscreen/data/uploads obscreen/system && cd obscreen

# Prepare player autostart file
mkdir -p var/run && touch var/run/play && chmod +x var/run/play 

# Download docker-compose.yml
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jr-k/obscreen/master/docker-compose.yml > docker-compose.yml

# Run
docker compose up --detach --pull=always

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or system-wide

Install

# Install system dependencies
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y git python3-pip python3-venv libsqlite3-dev

# Get files
cd ~ && git clone https://github.com/jr-k/obscreen.git && cd obscreen

# Install application dependencies
python3 -m venv venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Customize server default values
cp .env.dist .env

Configure

• Server configuration is editable in .env file.
• Application configuration will be available at http://raspberrypi.local:5000/settings page after run.

Start server

⚠️ Not suitable for production use because it won't survive a reboot. However, it's okay for quick testing. You need to use systemd (detailed in next section) to ensure that it persists.

python ./obscreen.py

Start server forever with systemctl

cat "$(pwd)/system/obscreen-studio.service" | sed "s#/home/pi#$HOME#g" | sed "s#=pi#=$USER#g" | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/obscreen-studio.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable obscreen-studio.service
sudo systemctl start obscreen-studio.service

Troubleshoot

# Watch logs with following command
sudo journalctl -u obscreen-studio -f 

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🏁 Finally

• Run sudo systemctl restart obscreen-player or sudo reboot

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👌 Usage

• Page which plays slideshow is reachable at http://raspberrypi.local:5000
• Slideshow manager is reachable at http://raspberrypi.local:5000/manage

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📺 Run the player instance

Autorun for a RaspberryPi

How to install

• Install player autorun by executing following script (will install chromium, x11, pulseaudio and obscreen-player systemd service)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jr-k/obscreen/master/system/install-autorun-rpi.sh | sudo bash -s -- $USER $HOME

How to restart

1. Just use systemctl sudo systemctl restart obscreen-player.service

How to enable sound

1. First you have to reboot your device with sudo reboot
2. You have to set audio channel to HDMI sudo raspi-config nonint do_audio 1 (0 is for jack 3.5 output)

Manually on any device capable of running chromium

When you run the browser yourself, don't forget to use these flags for chromium browser:

# chromium or chromium-browser or even chrome
# replace http://localhost:5000 with your obscreen-studio instance url
chromium --disable-features=Translate --ignore-certificate-errors --disable-web-security --disable-restore-session-state --autoplay-policy=no-user-gesture-required --start-maximized --allow-running-insecure-content --remember-cert-error-decisions --noerrdialogs --kiosk --incognito --window-position=0,0 --window-size=1920,1080 --display=:0 http://localhost:5000

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✨ You are done now :)

• If everything is set up correctly, the RaspberryPi shall start chromium in fullscreen directly after boot screen and after some seconds of showing the date & time (views/player/default.jinja.html) your slideshow shall start and loop endlessly.
• Make sure that PLAYER_AUTOSTART_FILE exists and is writeable !

📎 Additional

Hardware checks

• Basic Setup For basic RaspberryPi setup you can use most of the available guides, for example this one: https://gist.github.com/blackjid/dfde6bedef148253f987

• HDMI Mode You may need to set the HDMI Mode on the raspi to ensure the hdmi resolution matches your screen exactly. Here is the official documentation: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/video.md

However, I used this one: (2,82) = 1920x1080 60Hz 1080p

How to upgrade obscreen-studio

with docker run

• Just add --pull=always to your docker run ... command, you'll get latest version automatically.

or with docker compose

• Just add --pull=always to your docker compose up ... command, , you'll get latest version automatically.

or system-wide

• Execute following script

cd ~/obscreen
git pull
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
sudo systemctl restart obscreen-studio.service