. . Fredrik Olofsson Musikproduktion . . f0blog f0videoplayerosc

f0videoplayerOsc

2020-11-15 14:42 visuals

Making use of some old original Raspberry Pi Model A...

Despite having very little RAM (256MB) the Raspberry Pi Model A from 2012 can play video and sound in high resolution via HDMI. So here is how I set up four of them as independent remote-controlled video players. I used the program OMXplayer and the pyliblo and omxplayer-wrapper Python libraries. This setup will also work great with Raspberry Pi Zero and any other low-end model.

To control the players I use SuperCollider and send Open Sound Control messages, but other OSC capable programs or mobile apps will also work. There is a similar system that is controller via physical buttons (GPIO) described in the /f0blog/cheap-4-channel-videoplayer post.

Instructions for installing

This will require at a minimum a 4 GB SD card and a way to connect the Raspberry Pi to the internet.

Prepare the RPi

Burn the Raspberry Pi OS Lite image (2020-08-20-raspios-buster-armhf-lite) to the SD card
Enable SSH by creating an empty file in the root directory of the SD card called ssh.
```
touch /Volumes/boot/ssh
```
Put the SD card in the Raspberry Pi and log in via SSH.

Run the following...

sudo raspi-config #set password and hostname, overclock RPi1 to 800MHz, RPi1 GPU memory = 64
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

And run these commands to install the required libraries...

sudo apt-get install omxplayer libdbus-1-dev python3-pip python3-liblo
pip3 install omxplayer-wrapper

Copy over files

On your laptop find a video file and name it video.mp4.
Download the Python script from here below (f0videoplayerOsc.py).

Put the video and the python file in a directory (here Downloads) and in Terminal type...

cd ~/Downloads
scp video.mp4 pi@192.168.1.102:  #edit IP of your Raspberry Pi
scp f0videoplayerOsc.py pi@192.168.1.102:

Autostart

Add the following to the end of the crontab file...

@reboot cd /home/pi && python3 f0videoplayerOsc.py video.mp4

Type ctrl+o and ctrl+x to save and exit.
Restart...
```
sudo reboot
```

Now the player should launch at boot and start looping a file in the home directory called video.mp4. Send OSC messages to port 9999 to control it (see below).

It is fairly easy to adapt and add new commands to the Python player script. See the omxplayer-wrapper documentation. One can also query and send back information - for example about current position in video.

Test

Here is some SuperCollider code for testing...

n= NetAddr("192.168.1.102", 9999);  //edit IP of your Raspberry Pi
n.sendMsg(\pause);
n.sendMsg(\play);
n.sendMsg(\set_position, 1000);
n.sendMsg(\set_position, 100);
n.sendMsg(\set_position, 10);
n.sendMsg(\hide);
n.sendMsg(\show);
n.sendMsg(\set_dimensions, 100, 100, 200, 200);
n.sendMsg(\set_dimensions, 0, 0, 1920, 1080);  //display dim
n.sendMsg(\set_crop, 100, 100, 200, 200);
n.sendMsg(\set_crop, 0, 0, 640, 360);  //movie dim
n.sendMsg(\set_volume, 0.0);  //0.0-10.0
n.sendMsg(\set_volume, 5.0);
n.sendMsg(\set_volume, 1.0);  //default
n.sendMsg(\set_rate, 1.0);
n.sendMsg(\set_rate, 0.75);
n.sendMsg(\set_rate, 0.5);
n.sendMsg(\set_rate, 0.01);
n.sendMsg(\set_rate, 1.0);  //default

//slow down
(
Routine.run({
  100.do{|i|
    n.sendMsg(\set_rate, i.linlin(0, 99, 1.0, 0.01));
    0.025.wait;
  };
});
)
n.sendMsg(\set_rate, 1.0);

//zoom out
(
Routine.run({
  var num= 100;
  var w= 1920, h= 1080;  //display dim
  num.do{|i|
    n.sendMsg(
      \set_dimensions,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, 0, w/2).asInteger,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, 0, h/2).asInteger,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, w, w/2+1).asInteger,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, h, h/2+1).asInteger
    );
    0.025.wait;
  };
});
)
n.sendMsg(\set_dimensions, 0, 0, 1920, 1080);

//zoom in
(
Routine.run({
  var num= 100;
  var w= 640, h= 360;  //movie dim
  num.do{|i|
    n.sendMsg(
      \set_crop,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, 0, w/2).asInteger,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, 0, h/2).asInteger,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, w, w/2+1).asInteger,
      i.linlin(0, num-1, h, h/2+1).asInteger
    );
    0.025.wait;
  };
});
)
n.sendMsg(\set_crop, 0, 0, 640, 360);

//stop and shut down the Raspberry Pi
n.sendMsg(\shutdown)

References

github.com/redFrik/yetanotheroscmovieplayer

github.com/avilleret/rpi_osc_video_player

Attachments:
f0videoplayerOsc.py