what app should I use to run a slide show on the HDMI out?

Question

We have a TV that is displaying what is basically a slide show: a series of static images that loop. Right now a windows PC running powerpoint provides the video feed.

I was wondering if there is a low-overhead software package for the raspberry pi that could run a slideshow. I would prefer not to use the X server, but I recognize there might be some really good solutions that require X. The invocation would be something like

slideshow --delay 8.0 -loop /media/1/slideshowpics/

although

while true; do 
    slideshow --delay 8.0 /media/1/slideshowpics/*
done

would also be fine. I need some way for it to pick up new pictures that we upload via the network.

Bonus points if you can get it to overlay the current IP address with a keystroke.

Answer 1

You could use my software info-beamer. Is a software to build all kinds of visualizations. I have example code ready that displays all jpeg files in a directory. Just put the node.lua together with all images into a single directory, then start info-beamer giving that directory as argument. It will automatically pick up new images that are put into the directory. You don't need to start X to run info-beamer.

Answer 2

feh is a simple image viewer that should do what you want. feh requires X11.

You can give it a list of files or directories or URLs.

It looks like you might be able to use the --info option to display the IP address.

For displaying images on the console (without X11) you can use fbi. It is not a full featured as feh but it will do a simple slideshow.

Both fbi and feh can be installed via apt-get.

Answer 3

For displaying just static images you can use fbi.

You probably want to have some control via your remote ssh session. The method below gives you that.

sudo apt-get -y install fbi to install fbi

sudo nano /home/pi/slideshow to create an easy slideshow script:

#!/bin/bash
if [ $1 = "stop" ]; then
   sudo kill `ps aux | awk '/fbi \-T/ { print $2}'`
else
  sudo fbi -T 3 -a -d /dev/fb0 -noverbose --readahead -t 3 -1 -l fileimagelist.lst 
fi

then chmod +x /home/pi/slideshow

(optionally) you can sudo nano /boot/config.txt to get rid of the black edges around the screen. For example:

hdmi_force_hotplug
hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_group=0
hdmi_mode=0
overscan_left=-10
overscan_right=-10
overscan_top=-20
overscan_bottom=-27

It might take a while before you find the right exact overscan numbers for your system.

use ./slideshow to start, ./slideshow stop to stop. In fileimagelist.lst you just list all pictures line by line. This example uses the -1 flag, so it quits after it finishes 1 cycle of the slideshow. I need that because I have a seperate script which manages the fileimagelist.lst file.

I personally wouldn't show the IP on the screen itself. Rather use a crontabbed script to ping a server with the hostname and IP. Method to do this can be found over here, I've submitted this a couple days ago on this very same site.

Answer 4

Check this project out. I think it is just what you need: http://www.binaryemotions.com/digital-signage/raspberry-slideshow/

Answer 5

I Think piSignage is suitable for your requirement . * am not sure if you can directly upload slides but you can create your slides with all the effects , the just save your ppt slide as video and upload your video to pisignage.com. It works right.you can test it out for free.

https://pisignage.com/