RPI Video Receiver

From Alpine Linux

Raspberry Pi Video Receiver

Todo: The directions below are for Alpine 3.18.3, do they work on 3.21.0? The chief concern is the rpi-video-decoder.tar.gz file


One of the benefits of using Alpine Linux is that the SD/MMC is always mounted read-only. It will not wear out, and it's safe to power-off the device any time. Additionally the boot process has been given a professional look so that only the splash screen is displayed.

The boot time is about 60 seconds. It should speed up ~10 seconds after https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64766 is fixed.

Quick demo:

The overlay image contains the following changes:

  • fbsplash.ppm provide the splash screen with the Alpine logo
  • cmdline.txt has "blacklist=fbcon" appended to disable video console
  • a default overlay is provided to play BBC world news
  • root password is set to 'rpi'

To build the configuration overlay:

 apk add openssh chrony omxplayer
 vi /etc/network/interfaces        # eth0 configured for dhcp
 vi /etc/conf.d/omxplayer          # to configure TV-channel URL
 rc-update add networking
 rc-update add chronyd
 rc-update add sshd
 rc-update add omxplayer
 rc
 rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*            # so you get new ssh key on boot
 lbu commit