Turning my tv into a photo frame but not using wifi or the internet

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Turning my tv into a photo frame but not using wifi or the internet

chrisbaby

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#272940 26-Jul-2020 14:53

I have turned my 56 inch TV into a electronic notice board and I have placed it on the roof of my garage. It is mounted inside a solid box with a strong perspex cover to protect it from all weather's and vandals.

It has hdmi input and usb input.

It will not be connected to the internet or Wifi.

I want to run a slideshow on it using HDMI if possible

Ideally if I can stand in my garage plug in a preloaded USB stick and then if happy with the SlideShow broadcast it through the HDMI cable to the TV in a continuous loop.

I'm quite happy to buy something I just don't know what is out there, I do not want to spend too much as it is going to be a free community service.

Does anyone know how to do it or does anyone know of a photo frame with a HDMi output.? I do not need sound. I intend to use it as a budget community board.

tehgerbil

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#2528975 26-Jul-2020 15:00

Just whack .jpg's on the flash drive, what model/make is the TV?

chrisbaby

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#2528978 26-Jul-2020 15:22

It is a cheap old warehouse veon tv it will not process the jpg's on the flash drive it just freezes when I try

chrisbaby

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#2528979 26-Jul-2020 15:24

I thought about a Raspberry Pi but I have not got the skills to build or program one

richms

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#2528987 26-Jul-2020 15:59

If you cant get internet to it then you are really limited in the easy raspberry pi solutions. If you can get internet to a pi connected to it then you have the option of many free solutions with a cloud platform to hold the images and let you schedule them etc - PiSignage and YoDeck are the 2 I have actually used and its as simple as flashing the SD card with their premade image and sticking it in the pi, and then using a phone to connect to it and give it your wifi details if its not on ethernet.

Otherwise you can look at Screenly OSE which is free and you connect to the pi over the LAN to add images to it, it didn't seem to work without an internet connection when I tried it last to use at work where the IT guy is anti anything. If you have a spare router you could plug it into that and use that router when you want to connect to it to change the content.

Otherwise look into standalone digital signage players but they all will cost you more than a raspberry pi and some free software.

Also if the TV is out in the open expect someone with a remote to screw with it.

Richard rich.ms

chrisbaby

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#2528992 26-Jul-2020 16:32

I hundred percent agree with the remote control situation, that's why I wanted to remove all the TV functions from it by taping over ir sensor.

I have an HDMI cable and a USB cable extending out the back through the roof of the garage.

That is also why I'm not using Google Cast or anything like that, imagine the repercussions of someone thinking they were being cleaver put porn on.

That is why everything has to be on a closed circuit. I had hoped to buy a digital frame with a HDMI output but I haven't been successful yet.

I will show your comments to a friend of mine in the hope that he might be able to put it together

regards chris

floydbloke

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#2529243 27-Jul-2020 08:26

Have you considered looking on TradeMe for a cheap media player with HDMI out and an SD card slot or USB socket to read the JPGs

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xcon

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#2529255 27-Jul-2020 09:02

chrisbaby:

I thought about a Raspberry Pi but I have not got the skills to build or program one

This would be ideal , but tiny bit of programing required (the guys allow you to download an image for the pi which is preconfigured) 🙂

I have build two of these

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wellygary

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#2529265 27-Jul-2020 09:17

chrisbaby:

It is a cheap old warehouse veon tv it will not process the jpg's on the flash drive it just freezes when I try

Will it play an Mpeg4 video file? ,,, if it will then its pretty easy to convert a bunch of Static jpegs into a mp4

Fred99

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#2529268 27-Jul-2020 09:33

chrisbaby:

It is a cheap old warehouse veon tv it will not process the jpg's on the flash drive it just freezes when I try

Have you tried resizing the JPG images to the exact resolution of the screen - and make sure TV is set to display without "overscan" (ie - there will be a setting somewhere for 1:1 pixel mapping - sometimes called "just scan" or whatever).

I tried quite a few different TV models in store (quite a few years ago) with a USB stick with jpeg images, some were extremely slow/poor at resampling ~12mp jpeg images. Even using a notebook with HDMI out, if 1:1 pixel mapping wasn't set, the images looked pretty bad (jaggy / artifacts).

If you're resizing / resampling large jpegs these days (ie using photoshop or whatever) from ~40mp to exactly 1920x1080 resolution which may require cropping the image to 16:9 format and/or adding borders. Take a look at CPU load on a computer when you're doing it - there's a lot of number-crunching going on especially if the interpolation method is set to avoid jaggy edges/aliasing - so it wouldn't surprise me if a cheap old TV struggles or freezes. If resampling the images and saving as JPG, use a high quality compression setting, especially if there are graphic patterns or text - which jpg compression isn't very efficient at compressing.

chrisbaby

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#2591582 25-Oct-2020 09:28

Hi Guys in the end all I did was convert the jpeg files to mp4 and load them onto a usb stick and the TV did the rest.

Sometimes the KISS principal is the best principal.

But thank you all for your advice.