serial-media-srv

a media server that plays movies or images controlled by serial cmds.

This server could be used in various devices to playback movies or images based on the received serial commands.

running

There's a start script provided start.sh and a service definition for systemd as well (serial-media.service). To install the service copy serial-media.service to /etc/systemd/system adjust installation path and start/enable the service by systemctl start/enable serial-media

config

The service reads a config file (ini file) from the current directory by default (serial-media-srv.ini). It consists of sections see example. There a builtin defaults for showing images and also for playing movies that rely on omxplayer / fim.

commands

Ther service reads commands from the serial port (or other input) just as one line. Commands are always uppercase and can have arguments.

play command

PLAY <media>

plays / shows a media file (image / movie)

stop command

STOP

stop any running media, go back to a default (if defined)

playoneof command

PLAYONEOF <media1> <media2> <media3>

plays one of the media files, chooses randomly

movie playback

if a movie is playing the server remembers its name, so if the same movie is requested twice, the movie just plays on (no rewind or interruption)

install on raspbian stretch / dietpi

Beginning with version 1.0.4 the serial media server is no longer using yamuplay or omxplayer python extension (didn't work). There is also an image available to make the setup even easier, see here https://go-dmd.de/produkt/serial-media-server-image/

Base image is raspian lite stretch or dietpi. Then run / install the following commands ...

apt-get update
apt-get install omxplayer
apt-get install fbset
apt-get install fbi
apt-get install fim
apt-get install python3-setuptools
// apt-get install python3-dbus
apt-get install python3-pip

// python3 -m pip install decorator
// python3 -m pip install evento
python3 -m pip install pyserial

// apt-get install git
// git clone https://github.com/schlizbaeda/yamuplay.git

Take care to have enough GPU memory configured so that omxplayer can work

usb stick support

start script has usb stick support and dectects a mounted usb stick using media from there (requires usbmount installed)

config file

the server read an ini like config file either from sd card (/data) or usb stick. see example dir how it could look. There are defaults being used when no config file is avail. The example below has all the defaults set.

[general]
# just for testing: read comamnds from a test file
# readFrom=input.txt
# uncomment to activate a simple text based socket interface, that accepts the same commands as over serial line
# socketport=19999
# change the http port for web ui
httpport=31009
# the serial device
device=/dev/ttyS0
# the baud rate
baud=57600
# timeout in sec for reading the serial port
timeout=10

[player]
# command to use when playing videos
exec=omxplayer -b --no-osd

[viewer]
# command to use when showing images
exec=fim -a -q

image

There is also an image available based on raspbian stretch lite the could be written on a 16GB sd card using some imager tool like Win32 Disk Imager or Etcher. The image is even more customized as all startup messages on the screen are removed and a nice start animation is shown instead. You can get the image here: https://go-dmd.de/produkt/serial-media-server-image/

start

python3 img-mov-srv.py [ basedir ] [ device ]

sker65 / serial-media-srv