Hello,
Apologies if this has already been posted. I had a look but could not find this specific issue. I am a newcomer using Raspi so my knowledge is very limited, but I followed the steps for installing the info-beamer files on my Raspi 4 and when I started up I got this message:
Does anyone know what might be the issue? I had originally installed Raspberry Pi OS using NOOBS on another microSD with no issues, so I am pretty confident it is not the hardware.
Thank you!
Something odd is going on. I think those messages are from the HDMI diagnostics screen. I’m not sure whether or not NOOBS uses EFI (the volume name suggest that?). Not entirely sure what all the log lines mean. Do you have an external USB drive attached?
I think NOOBS repartitions the SD and you might end up with multiple FAT partitions. Maybe you placed the info-beamer installation files on the wrong one when you unzipped the install.zip file?
An alternative approach would be to use the file system image installation method using install.img.gz instead, for example using the Pi Imager software. If you start that from a command line, you might even add the arguments so it directly shows all available info-beamer OS options.
Thank you!
I used the alternative approach you suggested and it worked with no more issues. I had originally tried on both Mac and Windows machines: first formatting the microSD FAT32 and then extracting the zip to the microSD as in the instructions. I ran into the same boot issues with both methods. On closer inspection however, these errors seem to come up regardless of whether the OS successfully boots or not so I believe it is unrelated. Perhaps the booting issue had something to do with the formatting of my microSD although it is not the same one I used for NOOBS.
Thank you again for the assistance. I have another broader question that may perhaps be answered in another category, but since I’m here already…
I’m hoping to use info-beamer on 2 Raspi 4s for a dual-channel HD video projection (art installation). As I said before, I have very little experience with Raspis, so I was hoping for something fairly simple to implement and use. I have been playing around omxplayer-sync and networking the two Raspis using a cross-over cable. I’m not entirely happy with this solution as it seems to lose sync and is not entirely easy to implement and control.
Am I correct in thinking that this is something that info-beamer would be good for? Could I get robust sync playback between 2 Raspi 4s and seamless looping? I’m working with two Raspi 4s playing back a single HD video file each. It would be nice but not necessary to also be able to up to playback two 4K videos in the same arrangement.
My apologies for the long follow-up questions. Thanks for you time.
I think that answered my own question. I installed the HD Image/Video Player package on both pi4s and used the sync feature. Seems to work like a charm! This is a fantastic solution for artist video installations. I’m installing this remotely so the online features make it perfect for my application.
Is there a fail safe for syncing the videos should the network go down? Could I use a crossover cable between the two units or a bridge and run it offline?
Thanks again! This is a great product/service.
Not really. At least not at the moment. Synchronization works by having the devices retrieve a correct wall clock time using NTP. This time is then used on each device independently to figure out when to start a video. When the device go offline, this will still work. But I would expect the clocks to slowly drift and they would get out of sync. If the devices start offline, there’s currently no synchronization mechanism that would make synced playback possible.
By the way: If you want even better synchronization, I would suggest you use Pi3 or below instead of the Pi4. On the Pi3, info-beamer can slowly drift the HDMI clock so frame swaps happen on all devices at the exact same time. This is (at least for now) no longer possible on the Pi4 and even if the NTP time is perfectly synchronized, two different displays might switch between frames up to 8ms (assuming you use 60Hz output) delayed.