reinzor/videowall

Video wall with multiple tiles that enables synchronized video playback, mirrored or tiled.

Videowall

Video wall with multiple tiles that enables synchronized video playback, mirrored or tiled.

Demo videos

Description	Video
6x RPI Zero - 720p - Big bug bunny
2x RPI Zero - 720p - Big bug bunny
2x RPI Zero - 720p - Simpsons
4x RPI Zero + laptop - 720p - Fantastic 4

Installation

Software

Raspberry PI

Installation prerequisites

• Raspbian Stretch Lite
• Raspberry Pi 3 / Raspberry Pi Zero (other Pi's not tested)
• Videowall repository is your current working directory

Installation from source

• Install Raspbian Stretch lite on an sd card of at least 4GB
• Place an ssh document in the /boot partition to enable direct ssh access
• Login to the raspberry pi and start the installation:

sudo apt-get -y update && \
sudo apt-get -y install git && \
git clone https://github.com/reinzor/videowall.git && cd videowall && \
./install_raspberry_pi_stretch_lite_autostart.bash

This installs the videowall software and enables a client service on startup.

Ubuntu x86

Installation / usage instruction video: https://youtu.be/XLXoX8bj2vA

Installation prerequisites

• Ubuntu x86 16.04 LTS (other versions not tested)
• Videowall repository is your current working directory

Installation

./install_ubuntu_x86.bash

Hardware

Raspberry PI

Components per client without cables

• Raspberry PI zero
• Micro USB 2.0 naar Ethernet 10/100 RJ45 Network Lan Adapter Card
• 4GB+ Micro SD card

Cost ~15 USD per client

Quick start

Make sure you have sources the setup.bash from the root directory. This will set the Gstreamer plugin paths and appends the videowall library to your PYTHONPATH.

Server

scripts/web_server

Client

scripts/client

This is automatically started on a raspberry pi after installation. Can be manually started on an ubuntu x86 environment.

How to create release image

• Create a git tag and update release notes
• Ensure new MAC generation on startup

sudo rm -f /etc/network/mac

• Create .img file on Ubuntu host computer (insert sd card):

sudo fdisk -l # Get the disk name of the sd card
sudo dd bs=4M if=/path/to/disk of=/path/to/image.img

• Shrink the image using pishrink.sh

sudo ./pishrink.sh /path/to/image.img /path/to/shrinked_image.img

• Create a tar.gz from image file:

Right click, compress, tar.gz

References

• Cinder GST Sync Player
• Override getty1
• Vigsterkr pi-wall
• Gstreamer mmal for smooth video playback on RPI
• Gstreamer sync server for synchronized playback on multiple client with a gstreamer client server set-up
• Multicast Video-Streaming on Embedded Linux Environment, Daichi Fukui, Toshiba Corporation, Japan Technical Jamboree 63, Dec 1st, 2017
• omxplayer-sync
• pwomxplayer
• dbus vlc
• dbus tutorial phython for MPRIS
• dbus omxplayer
• GPU memory 90 degrees omxplayer
• Remote dbus control
• GST OMX
• GST MMAL
• Disable Boot text

videowall's Issues

Wiring and screen capabilities

I cannot tell from your documentation-- can you have the video span more than 2 screens? I noticed you had 4 screens running videos but only two screens were connected. Is it possible to have more than two screens playing the same video?

How did you connect the Pi Zero to the Raspberry Pi master? WiFi connection?

Super interested in this project. I am a student and just learning how to program and I thought this would be a good project to learn from!

Thanks so much!

Is it possible to use dual monitors (RPi 4)?

Hi, thanks for creating a great package.
Would your package support the RPi 4's dual monitors (hdmi), such that I only need 1 RPi 4 per 2 screens?

Media server sync should also cleanup remote files

Add CI for raspbian

See https://www.tomaz.me/2013/12/02/running-travis-ci-tests-on-arm.html

Error while uploading file to webserver

While uploading a file (big_bug_bunny or whatever other file) there is an error:
Video should have an AVC (h264) encoding.
Another missing Gstreamer module perhaps?

Client display showing ip address and timer

Can you please add a feature to remove the timer and ip number on the client screens?

Clients not shown in list

In the webserver only one of my clients is listed. Both clients are active in dhcp, logged in, and displaying the image that the server sends.

Namespace Gst not avaiable

Installation on RasberryPi and Ubuntu went fine.
When I start /scripts/client it needs more arguments, I tried client rpi eth0 but it complains "network is unreachable" while I can ping the server. Does the pi need an ip address to work?
When I start /scripts/web_server on Ubuntu it complains "Namespace GST not available".

Could you please give a description of the purpose of all the files in /scripts and /test, and also a working example setup for a working video wall? Especially an example to play a video on the server that is displayed by the client?

Also a description on how the system is supposed to work would be most welcome.
Thanks

1080p displays

I need to make a video wall using 3 x 1080p displays. However in your README you only talk about 720p. I was wondering if this program can make a 1080p resolution.

Raspbian Buster Install Script MMAL can't install

Hello,

I use raspbian buster and when i use install script then after mmal make parameters give to me error. Pleas look screenshot.

Thanks.

Problem with sound

I would like to add sound to the project. My choice was to implement it on the client side on Raspberry Pi. To test I constructed some gstreamer commands:
gstreamer audio channel. works,
gstreamer video channel. works,
gstreamer audio+video channel. works sort of. Video and audio plays but sound is intermittent. Also with the option sync=false after the sound channel.
Also when I play video+sound the movie takes 8 second longer to play. Probably that is the reason sound is intermittent.
Any ideas?

Add ci

Integrate Travis ci

desktop

hi friend wanna know how to mirror the desktop to piwall? beautiful work.

Using WiFi instead of ethernet cables

Hi,

I would really appreciate if you can expand on the README file for setting up. I am a beginner in RPi but I have general knowledge about programming and couldn't exactly follow the setup.

Specifically, I am confused about the set up heading as "
Components per client without cables". Then it lists "Micro USB 2.0 naar Ethernet 10/100 RJ45 Network Lan Adapter Card", which presumably requires an Ethernet cable (per RPi zero) to a router/switch. If I use RPi 1/2/3/4 or RPi Zero W, could I use wifi connections instead of ethernet cables to do this?

Of course, that also made me think of how much data is being transmitted from the Master RPi and the Slave RPis. If I understand, the Master cut the video accordingly and send small pieces to Slave RPis. That feels like, the computational power is all put on Master RPi, and the Slave RPi simply need to stream this small pieces (e.g., 1/9 of 1080p video, if a 3x3 video wall is made) as they come in. How many/big videos were you able to play to how many screens? I'd appreciate your comments on these computational and connection requirements!

Thanks!

videoscale too slow on raspberry pi zero

https://github.com/reinzor/videowall/blob/master/src/videowall/player/player_client.py#L99

http://gstreamer-devel.966125.n4.nabble.com/Videoscale-too-slow-on-raspberry-pi-How-to-get-the-video-full-screen-td4689368.html

Find another way to upscale the video or make it full screen

I would like every client to crop play a specific region of interest of the master video. With use of the videocrop element, I am cropping the desired part. I am currently using the ximagesink attached to a Gtk.DrawingArea() in order to make it fullscreen. However, when I do not scale up the video to the desired resolution, I get black borders around my video instead of upscaling is. So I tried the videoscale element to upscale the video. However, this turns out to be too slow on the Raspberry pi. I have read online that it is not using hardware acceleration so this makes sense.

Is there a good alternative to obtain a full screen cropped video on a raspberry pi? Currently I am using the following pipeline:

filesrc location=file.mp4 ! qtdemux ! h264parse ! omxh264dec ! videocrop bottom={} left={} right={} top={} ! videoconvert ! queue ! videoscale add-borders=false ! video/x-raw,width=1280,height=720 ! ximagesink

And I attach the ximagesink to the GTK drawin area.