This small script is used for simple digital signage applications on the Raspberry Pi. It has been tested on a Pi 3.

It will loop through a folder of videos and pictures, displaying them on the screen for a period of time. Videos (with or without subtitles) are also supported through omxplayer.

python displaypy.py [-h] [-q] [-r] [-nc] [-s SECONDS] [-p PERIOD] /absolute/path/to/content simple|lobby

python displaypy.py -q -r -s 15 /home/kiosk/slideshow simple

• path
  Absolute path to the content directory.
• simple or lobby
  Simple mode displays all the images in a folder.
  Lobby mode displays a default image, override images when applicable and intersperses slideshow images.

• -h, --help
  Show a help message and exit

• -q, --quiet
  Don't display no content error.

• -r, --random
  Sort the content randomly before playback.

• -nc, --nocointoss
  Play videos every time they are encountered, don't flip a coin. Default False, coin will be flipped.

• -s SECONDS, --seconds SECONDS
  Number of seconds to display each image. Default 8 seconds.

• -p PERIOD, --period PERIOD
  Lobby mode only. How many seconds should the default images be displayed for before showing the slideshow. Default is 300 seconds (5 minutes).

For use on a typical Raspberry Pi image you should only have to install the dateutil module for python.

pip install python-dateutil

This script will automatically determine the resolution of the screen and scale still images and videos up or down to fit the screen appropriately.

This script will display the following file formats:

• *.jpg, *.jpeg
• *.png
• *.bmp
• *.mp4

A list of files is generated at the start of the script, and each item of content is displayed in sequence for the time determined by the -s|--seconds command line argument. The default is 8 seconds, and obviously videos play for their full length. The list can be shuffled after it is generated to vary the order the content is displayed. To do so use the -r|--random argument.

Should a file be missing when the script tries to load it, the list of files will be regenerated and the process will start from the beginning. This allows the content manager to update the display at any time, adding and removing images and videos as they see fit. New content will be introduced into the list once the last item has been displayed instead.

If there is no content in the folder passed from the command line an error message will be displayed on screen. This can be disabled by using the -q|--quiet command line argument which will cause a black screen to be displayed instead.

In all modes it is possible to filter content that is displayed by date, for example to only show content on one day or up to a certain date.

!UNTIL-25-02-2018!filename.jpg will display up to and including the date specified.

!ONLY-25-02-2018!filename.jpg will only display on the date specified and not before and not after.

The format is always DAY followed by MONTH followed by YEAR strictly separated by hyphens. The exact format requirement of each segment is not strict as the string is parsed by python's dateutil module. For example, month will accept "February", "02" and "Feb".

Videos are played in omxplayer. The content is filtered to only find MP4 files. There are two Media Encoder presets which are known to work nicely with the Raspberry Pi 3 in this folder.

Video content is usually much longer and more imposing than slides, therefore before an MP4 file is played a virtual coin toss occurs. If the random number generator returns a 1 then the video will play, otherwise it will skip it an move on to the next item in the list. This behaviour can be disabled with the -nf|--noflip command line argument.

To display subtitles over videos ensure that the .srt file is named exactly the same and in the same folder. For example:

/home/kiosk/display/video1.mp4
/home/kiosk/display/video1.srt

• Centralise the keyboard handling to allow smooth exit.
• Allow exit during video playback (currently have to wait for video to finish)