Raspberry PI

Options can be accessed directly by the player or in settings for your player.

• Launch player on startup - Toggle this ON to make sure our APP starts when your player starts up, for example after a power outage.
• Always on top - Tells the operating system to keep our APP window above other windows. This prevents popups or notifications from showing above.
• Show top menu bar - Toggle this ON if you want the top bar to appear when moving the mouse or using the remote for your player. Toggle this OFF if you want a kiosk experience where users can't exit the app by clicking the exit button on the top menu bar. You can still access the menu with the "Ctrl + o" command.
• Optimize for touchscreen - Toggle this ON if you are planning on using our APP on a touchscreen. This setting will make small adjustments to how our APP works in conjunction with a touchscreen.
• Analytics - Toggle this ON if you need analytic data from this particular player. Read more about Analytics
• Display Orientation - This option should only be used if your player operating system does not support changing the orientation as we recommend the adjustment on an operating system level instead.. You have the option of portrait (Clockwise) and portrait (Counter-clockwise).
• UserAgent - UserAgent is a piece of text that browsers use to identify itself to the web server. Certain websites will render a mobile view if they detect Android userAgent, although the site is displayed on a big screen. With this option, you can work around this issue and spoof a desktop computer's UserAgent. The UserAgent lets you pick Default, Mobile, Desktop, or Custom.
• Reload player every day at - It is good practice to clear the cache on the player once every 24 hours. Here you can set a time that is not inconvenient, for example at night when no one is watching your TV. Rooted devices will be rebooted, unrooted devices will simply restart our app.
• Tags - If you are using tags they will be listed here. You also can find and add a tag.
• Clear cache - In case you need to clear the cache manually you can do that here. For example, if you are changing your content continually and you experience something not working as expected, clearing the cache should help as it removes any old data stored on the players' storage.
• Transfer Screen - Move screens between teams without deleting or re-linking—Transfer Screen makes screen management simple and efficient. Learn more
• Reload - Reloading your player is similar to clearing the cache. In addition, reloading will close and start the APP.
• Status - Status tells you if the APP is connected to the cloud. Green means you are connected and red means you are not connected. If you see a red status you should check the internet and wifi connection to your player.
• Device Time - The device time tells you the player's time and date. If the device time is wrong it will also be wrong in our APP and thus all time-related scheduling will be off, so make sure to correct the time on the player operating system if you are having problems.
• Resolution - The resolution is the resolution according to your player's operating system. If the operating system on the players tells us it's running HD, your content on the TVs will be optimized for HD. Please note that many devices that are advertised as 4K can only decode video in 4K but run apps in a lower resolution. This means you may see a lower resolution reported by our app, but any 4K video that you use will be still played as 4K. If you are seeing a lower resolution, you can install a 3rd party "resolution checker" app on the device to confirm the resolution from another app as well.
• Version - This is the version of our APP
• Screen ID - Also referred to as UID. The UID is the unique ID for your player.
• Disc Usage - Disc usage will tell you how much data has been used on the player's storage. We do not recommend more than max. 80% storage use.
• Android Settings - This is reserved for developers only
• Screen edges - In case you have a LED screen, video wall, or an older model TV you might have to adjust the edges so that they match your TV and the content.
• Browser - Here you can easily access the browser used by the APP to check content, connectivity, etc.
• Reset - If you need to unlink your player or perhaps link the player to another account you can use reset.

The resolution is incorrect.

Raspberry PI digital signage will try to automatically set resolution, however, sometimes it fails to detect the most optimal resolution. You can manually set resolution in Menu -> Preferences -> Display Settings.

If you can’t find the desired resolution option there, you will find more display configuration options in Menu -> Preferences -> Raspberry PI Configuration -> Display -> Resolution.

How can I put the TV on standby for nighttime?

This functionality sends a command over an HDMI cable to the TV telling it to go to standby and wake it up in the morning, Raspberry PI digital signage will remain on through the night.

NB! Raspberry PI 4 and 5 have two micro-HDMI ports, the HDMI-CEC commands are only sent over the first port (the port being next to the USB-C power). If you use the other port, the commands will not work!

If you downloaded our Raspberry PI image after April 2021, then all the required packages are included in the image and you can skip the first step of installing cec-utils.

• Install cec-utils software package: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install cec-utils (Ubuntu)
• Make sure that CEC is enabled in your TV. Different manufacturers have different names for the same functionality.
  • Tizen: Menu -> System -> General -> Anynet+
  • Philips: Home -> Settings -> TV Settings -> Easylink
  • LG: Settings -> All Settings -> General -> SIMPLINK
  • SONY: Options (On the remote) > Settings > Inputs > External inputs > BRAVIA Sync settings
  • Other brands: Most modern TVs have this functionality, try to find how your TV’s manufacturer has named it and find it in the settings.

Now that the software is installed and CEC is enabled on the TV, you can test if the TV is detected. Run the following command in the terminal:

echo 'scan' | cec-client -s -d 1

The scan takes about 10 seconds and it outputs a list of devices. If you see your TV listed (usually under device #0), then the connection works! You will also see the “Pulse Eight” device, don’t mind it, it’s a virtual interface.

You can also use our API function to trigger the TV on or off, this can be combined with a scheduled webhook service, such as https://crontap.com/

The app crashes on startup

If you installed the operating system yourself and are trying to launch the downloaded .AppImage file, and it does not start up, it’s likely because some libraries are missing. The first thing to get more info is to try and launch the .AppImage from the command line:
./PlaySignage*.AppImage
The terminal will output the error, often hinting at the problem.

bpf failure in syscall 0403 -> Try launching our app with an additional parameter:
./PlaySignage*.AppImage --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox

Why can’t I use 4K resolution?

There are some known hardware acceleration issues with video core drivers and HTML5 canvas support which we are built on. We’ve disabled the driver in favor of stability, however, it’s also possible to run Raspbian with the driver and disable hardware acceleration:

• Enable VideoCore driver in /boot/config.txt file, uncomment the following line dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
• Run PlaySignage application with disabled hardware acceleration: ./PlaySignage*.AppImage --disable-hardware-acceleration

Intranet website with a self-signed SSL certificate is not showing?

By default as a security precaution, the application does not show websites with certificate errors. However, if you need to show a website that does not have a valid SSL certificate, you can launch the app with a --ignore-certificate-errors parameter, for example:
~/Downloads/PlaySignage.AppImage --ignore-certificate-errors

How can I enable ssh?

We’ve disabled SSH access for obvious security reasons when distributing an image that has a default password. If you do want to enable ssh for remote maintenance, here’s how:

1. execute passwd command to change the password – the default password is ‘_raspberry_‘ and the whole world knows it
2. Enable port 22 in the firewall: sudo ufw allow ssh
3. Enable SSH service: sudo systemctl enable ssh
4. Start the SSH service: sudo systemctl start ssh

How do I access OPTIONS if I disabled the top menu bar?

In the APP options, you can hide the top menu bar if you for example are running a touch screen. To access the top menu bar, when hidden, you can use CTRL + O for options or CTRL + Q to close the APP.