How to use a black screen in Python?

Question

For a project I am working on right now, I need to play a number of videos that get triggered via GPIO. That part I got working with omxplayer, my question has to do with the transition to and from the videos.

What is a good way to make and use a black fullscreen? I tried some things with Tkinter and pygame, but those seem to stay in the foreground and not give way for the videoplayer. I also thought of using a black HTML page as a background or another similar workaround.

I am looking for a push in the right direction to make efficient use of the time before my deadlines. Does any of you have experience with this? Should I continue investigating Tkinter/pygame or should I try and find a workaround?

Thanks a bunch in advance.

Answer 1

Why don't you just use framebuffer image viewer fbi?

When you need to "black" out the screens you start it and when you get an input from GPIO you kill the framebuffer and make way for the video?

You can load your blacking image from the console without X but it also works on X if you are running it.

The man page is here - It is pretty powerful especially if you just need it on the console level. You can also look at fim