I call my project the PicoPresenter

[G+_Jason Brown]

I call my project the PicoPresenter. I had a need to fill at my church. They were doing Power Point presentations on their lobby TV to make announcements, and hijacking a laptop to do it. I found out that feh will let you loop a show, and let you add/remove pics while it ran. The only caveat being that there needs to be at least 2 pics in place at all times. I just put 2 of the same logo image in an adjacent folder, and run the show from the parent of those two.

 

I made two samba shares. One for the 2 logo images I use to keep the show running, and one for the live show that's constantly changing. The person in charge just has to export their PPTs to images and copy them to a mapped drive. No clunky web logon and upload process.

 

After rebuilding it several times, I decided to make a script. It's simple, but it makes setup mostly headless. It's only configured to work on a Pi running Raspbian, with the Pi user account as the default login.

 

It makes all the directories and shares, disables screen blanking, and adds the show to startup. I'm hoping to one day turn it into something cheap and marketable. It runs great on a Pi Zero W.

 

I'm sure the more code inclined can pretty it up for other distros. But if anyone has a need, please enjoy.

 

And be gentle, it's my first real script.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vdO9yzDfaC3MUa6eS7G3Ae6_XPtTqDD/view?usp=drive_web

[G+_Jason Brown]

It is most certainly not the most secure of setups.

[G+_Tailsthefox Pelissier]

Fur less money if have very big HDTV you can get one of those Windows 10 based intel computer sticks; That way you can do more then Power Points, you can add videos (I like that iead since i sometimes at places like comic cons, furry cons, autism cons, exe since i offern put video in to the prestion. Of corse Make MKV is used fur the DVDs and Blu-rays I used in the pass.

[G+_Jared Twomey]

I have done something similar using this project. It does videos, not pictures, but you just throw your video (or multiple) on a thumb drive, plug it into the pi, and they just start playing.

 

https://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-video-looper/overview

[G+_Jason Brown]

Tailsthefox Pelissier Are you sure a Window 10 stick is less money? I can do a pi zero w for around $20, all in.

 

Jared Twomey That's a cool project. I do plan to figure out a way to get audio and video in mine. One thing I wanted to avoid was incorporating an external storage device. The unit is not in a convenient location, and I'd like to let the person doing the work, stay in her chair. So for me, Samba was a must.

 

But yeah, I do want to modify the project to include audio and video, and not require the two place holder images. I'm thinking something powered with VLC maybe.

[G+_Jason Brown]

This was my quick and dirty way to get them to keep doing the same thing they've been doing, without stealing someone's laptop every week.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Very cool! I like the idea of something automated and easy enough for anyone to use! I wouldn't really be worried about using the default UN/PW, but I'm sure people could adjust accordingly if they're using a different authentication.

 

My cheap setup for TVs at Church has been based around a Fire TV Stick running Kodi. Llama makes Kodi start at boot then I can control them remotely. I now stream video from the auditorium to a private RTMP server, which pushes the stream to YouTube and Facebook while also giving a place for KODI to pull the video feed from. I haven't looked at doing a slide show in it yet for announcements, but I'll have to see how much effort that would take.

[G+_Jason Brown]

Yeah, I thought about incorporating Kodi, but I couldn't find something easy to setup that would fit my needs. I think Kodi might be another option, if VLC doesn't pan out for rev2.

[G+_K Branch jr]

Man you guys are reading my project list.

This is a good ideal , pi or a stick ..

 

[G+_Jason Brown]

K Branch jr please enjoy. It's super simple, but she does the job.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

I did the exact same thing last year for a church to run a presentation on 6 different tvs at the same time. Just used one SMB share from a Windows file server that was already in place.

 

If the file server is Linux based, then stick with NFS next time. Simpler to connect and less network overhead (not that network overhead matters much in this case.)

 

I couldn't come up with anything simpler than "Put the image files to be displayed in this directory" for the user side.

[G+_Jason Brown]

Travis Hershberger I'm coming primarily from the windows world, so a lot of this is new to me. Thanks, I'll look into NFS, never heard of it.

[G+_Jason Brown]

Right now it's just a single unit, managed by a Windows share. But I'm working on setting up a server/client headless install, for S&Gs. I don't have a use for a large install right now, but it's a nice, easy, fun project to pick away at while I watch cartoons at night.

[G+_Jason Brown]

Let's me pretend I'm a leet haxor