Submitted by drew on

A PiPresents pipresents.wordpress.com/ show (we're talking about a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian) can be set to end at a time of day, but it does not have a way to set a day of the week. I have created a workaround for this using the standard Linux cron scheduler and some bash scripts.

Let's take a look at the first script. I think the comments explain it well enough. I named mine pp.sh. Be sure to make the file executable after you create it.

#!/bin/bash

# the name of the profile should be passed to this script
profile=$1

# show a black/blank screen
qiv -fmisC -d 5 /home/pi/media/common/blank.png &
# stop any running PiPresents shows
kill $(ps aux | grep pipresents.py | awk '{ print $2 }')
sleep 3;
# start the new show with the given profile and in the home folder below
python /home/pi/pipresents/pipresents.py -fb -o /home/pi/media -p "${profile}"

Now add an entry in cron to start the show. Run cron from your normal user (pi) in a terminal with crontab -e. The entry below starts a profile named 'myshow' at 8:30 am every sunday.

30 08 * * 0 /home/pi/pp.sh myshow

That's really all there is to it.

However, I also have a script to turn the screen on and off as part of the schedule, which would have a cron entry like this to turn off at 1:00 PM.

30 08 * * 0 /home/pi/screen.sh on; /home/pi/pp.sh myshow
00 13 * * 0 /home/pi/screen.sh off

Screen.sh looks like this.

#!/bin/bash

export XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=":0"
export XAUTHLOCALHOSTNAME=localhost

if [ "$1" == "on" ]; then

  # see if we're already on
  state=$(tvservice -s | grep -oE 'DMT|CEA')
  echo "${state}"
  if [[ $state = "DMT" || $state = "CEA" ]]; then
    exit 0
  fi

  # turn on
  tvservice -p; 
  sleep 1;
  fbset -depth 8
  fbset -depth 16
  xrefresh
  sleep 3;

  # see if we're really on
  state=$(tvservice -s | grep -oE 'DMT|CEA')
  echo "${state}"
  if [[ $state = "DMT" || $state = "CEA" ]]; then
    exit 0
  fi
  exit 1
fi

if [ "$1" == "off" ]; then

  # see if we're already off
  state=$(tvservice -s | grep -o  'off')
  if [[ ${state} == "off" ]]; then
    exit 0
  fi

  # turn off
  tvservice -o;
  sleep 5;

  # see if we're really off
  state=$(tvservice -s | grep -o  'off')
  if [[ ${state} == "off" ]]; then
    exit 0
  fi
  exit 1
fi

Another improvement might be to turn off the PiPresents show when turning off the screen and turn on the screen based on some input.

Tags
Raspberry Pi

Timer

The timer can count up from a time in the past or count down towards a time in the future.

The timer's appearance and the format of the time (and text) is very configurable. You can hide it's border, it's background, set the color and glow effects.

Sound Recorder

This is a simple recorder that records directly to an MP3 file. Recording can be paused and resumed.

The recording window has a compact mode and can be set to stay on top of other windows, so it can be out of the way, yet still visible.

When done recording, you can playback the recording or upload the file to an FTP site.

Download

RocketDock with multiple bars\docks

Submitted by drew on

It seems there is plenty of interest about how to make RocketDock work with two or more docks or bars. Most answers say to use additional docking programs--one for each dock you want. Or use a commercial program that offers multiple docks. I think RocketDock is excellent except I want more than one. I finally figured out how to do it!

Let's first point out that RD is licensed under the Creative Commons license and it explicitly says "You are free... to Remix--to adapt the work." And also to redistribute.