Running Picframe on a pi4 with 7" touchscreen and HDMI

[COVID-19-CTI]

Greetings!
I'm running picframe on a Rpi4 under Buster using the "official" 7" touchscreen connected by the GPIO connector. Runs like a champ.

Now today I got ambitious and thought about using the 7" touchscreen to control picframe, and an HDMI monitor to display the pictures.

I plugged a HDMI monitor into the first port, and it was recognized by the OS and mirrored the terminal at boot time ( My pi is set to boot to terminal then automatically start picframe as a service as per the wiki/instructions).

When picframe started, it treated the 7" and the HDMI monitors as if they were one large monitor. The pictures display half on the 7" the other half on the HDMI.

Is there a way to force picframe to :

• Only use the HDMI, leaving the 7" to be a terminal ?
• Only use the HDMI for pictures, leaving the 7" blank but still in the window manager, so I can open a web browser and control picframe ( http port 9000 ) ?
• Some other idea that I had not thought of but allows this?

The upshoot is to use the 7" touchscreen to control picframe, and the HDMI to view pictures.

Thanks!

[helgeerbe]

Hm,

I guess you have to start the window manager (desktop) to achieve what you want.

I would try to adjust configuration.yaml:

  display_x: 0                            # offset from left of screen (can be negative)
  display_y: 0                            # offset from top of screen (can be negative)
  display_w: null                         # width of display surface (null->None will use max returned by hardware)
  display_h: null                         # height of display surface

I would start chrome over a script:

chromium-browser --window-position=0,0 --window-size=800,600 http://picframe:9000

Never tested it. I'm curious if this is working.

[COVID-19-CTI]

After some poking around I discovered this :
If I start the window manager via sudo startx , both monitors come to life, and they are separate ....
When I open the appearance settings, it labels them as DSI-1 and HDMI-1

Is there a way to start picframe and tell it to only use HDMI-1 ?

[helgeerbe]

If you are using a pi4 you can try this https://www.thedigitalpictureframe.com/raspberry-pi-digital-picture-frame-portrait-orientation/

[COVID-19-CTI]

I'll give that a try!

In the meantime I did discover something --
I disabled the picframe autostart, and started the window manager manually. It automagically set up both screens. I opened a terminal window ans started picframe manually and it occupied the HDMI screen fully and left the smaller screen alone. The only downside was that the touch screen needs to be recalibrated, but that's another problem.
I'll try your fix as well and see what happens.

Again, thank you !

[COVID-19-CTI]

Ok I didn't have a lot of luck with that link , but I think it was because the displays are not 0 , and that's why the errors came crashing down on my head. I'm still trying to work out the other way I did it to make it stable and useful. I never was an xwindows expert of any form.

Not giving up yet :) When I get done I'll send a picture on of what I'm doing with this :)

[COVID-19-CTI]

I have achieved a moderate amount of success! I think I am just steps from the finish line with having it automated, and you might be able to help me there.

Although I have created the files to start/stop picframe as a service, they do not create the environment needed , so I am working outside of that box.

Raspberry pi 4 pictureframe with dual head :

• 1x Rpi 4
• 1x HDMI monitor attached to hdmi0
• 1x "official" Rpi 7" touch screen as DSI-1 ( GPIO)
• Raspbarian Buster

---

1. Configure the windowing system to calibrate the touch screen

• create file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99fixcalibration
• Inside that file place :
  #!/bin/bash
xinput --map-to-output "raspberrypi-ts" DSI-1
• save file and move on!

2. Start the windowing system the old fashioned way
   startx
3. Open a terminal window and start picframe
   sudo python3 run_start.py /home/pi/picframe_data/config/configuration.yaml&
4. At this point picframe should start and work its magic, but only on the HDMI minitor
5. Start chromium
   chromium http://localhost:9000

And there it is! Dual head, HDMI showing picframe , and the rpi touchscreen using the web interface to control it.

All I need to do now is find a way to point everything to automation to start on boot. The current start on boot ( as per the directions on the web site ) boots it into a different configuration in which picframe does not limit itself to HDMI, and spreads across all screens.

Any suggestions?