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.

🎛️ 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 pi user locally or via ssh (ssh pi@raspberrypi.local)
3. Install player autorun by executing curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jr-k/obscreen/master/system/install-autorun-rpi.sh | sudo bash

---

🐳 Run with docker

Install docker if needed

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

With docker (for test)

# Prepare application data file tree and prepare player autostart file
cd /home/pi && mkdir -p obscreen/data/db obscreen/data/uploads obscreen/system && touch system/start-chromium.sh && cd obscreen

# Run the Docker container
ocker 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 /home/pi/obscreen/system/start-chromium.sh:/app/var/run/play \
  jierka/obscreen:latest

Or with docker-compose

# Prepare application data file tree
cd /home/pi && mkdir -p obscreen/data/db obscreen/data/uploads obscreen/system && touch system/start-chromium.sh && cd obscreen

# 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

---

📠 Run system wide

Install

# Install system dependencies
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y git xinit xserver-xorg chromium-browser unclutter python3-venv python3-pip

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

# Install application dependencies
python3 -m venv venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

# Add some sample data
cp data/db/slideshow.json.dist data/db/slideshow.json

# 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 (for test)

python3 ./obscreen.py

Start server forever with systemctl

sudo ln -s "$(pwd)/system/obscreen-manager.service" /etc/systemd/system/obscreen-manager.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable obscreen-manager.service
sudo systemctl start obscreen-manager.service

To troubleshoot you can check logs

sudo journalctl -u obscreen -f 

---

👌 Usage

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

✨ 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