piBroadCast

piBroadCast is a attempt at making a simple but effect home broadcast solution. This solution should be scalable and each pi will act as an individual station, programmed with old commercials and bumpers!

I would like to give credit for my inspiration around this project to Shane Mason, his work on FieldStation42 is amazing and you should check it out if you want a more feature rich solution. https://github.com/shane-mason/FieldStation42/tree/main

Why, tho?

I wanted to be able to play old media across my home via coaxial cables. Obviously going through my mid-life crisis here :-)

I also wanted to have a strict control over what is being seen by my child, without potentially giving them access to the internet. And retain the ability to cut it off if need be :Devil

The Ideal setup (mine)

The plan is to use 4 Raspberry pi's being piped into a Channel Plus Box Model 5545 Quad Digital Modulator that will result in any tv in the house being able to pickup 4 channels that are specified from the QuadRF

___________________
|_Pi 1 ______      | NAS
|_Pi 2 ______|               
|_Pi 3 ______|                    
|_Pi 4 ______|____QuadRF___Home Coaxial Setup ______ 4 Channels on reciever 

So long as you have a way to mix signals before piping it into your walls you theoretically could expand this past the 4 channels, at that point it may be more cost effective to go with a software solution instead.

4 channels is all I really need, I'm located in GA, and I plan on use channels 13, 32, 33, 34 for this project. IFYKYK

(Hey future Steven here, it turns out overriding channels under 65 is illegal here in the States... boooooooo)

Media takes up a ton of space, so how do we get it to the pi?

We can actually use a couple methods!

1. External HDD/USB
2. Network shares via samba
3. Copy files directly to the pi's internal system

not going through how to set that up...

Setting up a raspberry pi

We need to setup the the rpi 4 to output composite signal for our rf modulator.

Always upgrade your firmware before doing this, there used to be a slowdown issue that was resolved for the rpi 4 models. You may have to connect to hdmi to do this part, check out the rpi docs to update your firmware.

In config.txt

Change

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

To

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,composite

Then add this anywhere

enable_tvout=1

This will disable hdmi out, you can try autodetect but i found it is not reliable

sdtv_mode = 0 is for NTSC, there a ton of other modes to choose from check the official docs for those values

In cmdline.txt add this to the end

video=Composite-1:720x480@60ie

you can add ,margin_left=10,margin_right=10,margin_top=32,margin_bottom=32 to the end of the line above but it will have negative effects on vlc

You may need to edit your margins. YMMV.

Also depending on your composite cables red and yellow may be swapped.

If you are planning on connecting the pis to other network items make sure to set the hostname!

If you are planning on running media from an attached drive/usb, make sure to go into File_manager -> edit -> preference -> volumn management and deselect show available options.. Otherwise everytime you swap in a new drive you will get a popup

Program layout

scheduler_sub.py

This handles creating the playlists, this can be run as a standalone program but is meant to be called from the server

player_sub.py

This handles starting up vlc and running the playlists

server.py

Creates an API that allows control over what the pi and allows you to setup config remotely

Template config

Station config

Setup Steps

1. Setup RPI
   • Install Rasbian
   • Setup config.txt, cmdline.txt
   • Update OS!
2. Setup piBroadCast
   • Clone this repo
   • (optional setup auto start for the server)
     • edit /scripts/pibro.desktop, point to where ever pibro.sh is
     • copy to .config/autostart (create autostart folder if needed)
     • edit /pibro.sh, point folder to your install location
   • run ./scripts/startup.sh (installs python libs and sets up venv, you can run source ./scripts/startup.sh)
     • You may need to make the script executable, chmod +x ./scripts/startup.sh
3. Setup Media
   • This is on you, remember where your stuff is
   • If you want to use a network drive you will need to install cifs-utils (via: sudo apt install cifs-utils)
     • Make sure in your schedule template to set ///home/{username}/{mount_name} as the drive name otherwise vlc wont see the files
4. Run piBroadCast
   • if venv is not activated use . env/bin/activate
   • run python server.py
   • Post to {{ _.base_url }}/station/set provide station config as json
   • Post to {{ _.base_url }}/schedule/template/file or {{ _.base_url }}/schedule/template/data to setup the schedule templates
   • Post to {{ _.base_url }}/schedule/run/build, this will take a moment on the pi
   • Get to {{ _.base_url }}/schedule/run/schedule this will create schedules for 7 days
   • Get to {{ _.base_url }}/player/start
   • Optional: Run auto scheduler, {{ _.base_url }}/schedule/run/auto this will run the scheduler every hour
5. Enjoy!
   • Checkout the template folder for some examples for networks and station configs :-)