info-beamer video wall

This example code shows a way to play different fullscreen videos on different devices at the same time. You can use it (for example) to build a video wall consisting of four screens each connected to it's own PI.

Preparing the PIs

You have to repeat this step for each Pi you want to use.

Install Raspbian. Download info-beamer for the pi and extract the tar.gz somewhere. This readme assumes you extracted the tar to /root/info-beamer-pi.

Please follow the instructions in /root/info-beamer-pi/README.txt to make sure your Pi has enough video memory available. You can test info-beamer by running:

$ /root/info-beamer-pi/info-beamer /root/info-beamer-pi/samples/hello

This readme also assumes that this readme and all related files (node.lua, master.py, ...) are in /root/videowall.

Copy the videos(s) you want to display to the directory /root/videowall. Only h264 videos are supported.

Create the file playlist.txt and add one or many lines consisting of the video filenames that should be played. It might look like this:

video1-left.mp4,video1-right.mp4
video2-left.mp4,video2-right.mp4

The first line tells the system that you want to play video1-left.mp4 on the first device and video1-right.mp4 on the second device at the same time.

Videos should match the aspect ratio of each screen. So don't try to play 4:3 videos on a 16:9 screen. They should also have the same length, otherwise the screen showing the shorter video will show the last frame of that video until the other screen(s) complete their video.

You are not limited to only two videos. You can add as many videos in a single row as you have screens/devices available.

Making sure info-beamer starts after booting

Edit /etc/rc.local and add the following line before the existing exit 0 line:

INFOBEAMER_ADDR=0.0.0.0 /root/info-beamer-pi/info-beamer /root/videowall &

This will start info-beamer each time the Pi starts. Make sure you have ssh access configured for the Pi, otherwise the screen will be black after booting since info-beamer will show a black screen while waiting for video playback.

Be careful: This setup assumes that your network is trusted. Any machine in the same network can control which of the provided videos is displayed on each screen.

Starting playback

Once all PIs are configured it's time to start playing videos. One of the PIs (or any other computer) will act as the master server that coordinates playback.

This readme assumes that one of the previously configured PIs acts as the master. Start the master program like this:

cd /root/videowall
python master.py playlist.txt 192.168.1.50 192.168.1.51

This assumes that the PI for the first screen configured uses the IP address 192.168.1.50 and the second one uses 192.168.1.51. Yours probably have other IP addresses, so be sure to change those values. You have to provide the same number of screens as you have videos configured in your playlist.txt file.

If this is running successfully you might want to add those lines to /etc/rc.local as well. It might look like this (be sure to change the IP addresses as well as there number to match your setup) on the master PI now:

INFOBEAMER_ADDR=0.0.0.0 /root/info-beamer-pi/info-beamer /root/videowall &

cd /root/videowall
python master.py playlist.txt 192.168.1.50 192.168.1.51 &

Feedback?

Please get in contact if you successfully use this setup or have any questions.