Basic Kit for a Newbie

Hey.

My name is Ivan. Messaging from California. I’d like to use a screen like this (non touch version: HyperPixel 4.0 Square - Hi-Res Display for Raspberry Pi - Non-Touch) to run a video (from a flash drive). Preferably I’d power it using a battery (not wall electricity).

Wondering if people might be kind enough to lemme know the simplest way to achieve this, understanding that I’m very new to this, but not a complete novice when it comes to videos, formatting videos etc. Basically, what do I need to get to make this happen.

Thanks!
Ivan

Looks like you need a regular Raspberry Pi (e.g. a 3 or a 4 - hard to come by) or a Pi Zero / Pi Zero W for this display. Do you have one already?

Hi!

Before we go into this I’d like to make a suggestion: have you considered getting an old mobile phone, getting the video onto the phone, and then putting the phone behind a square frame? That’s how i built the screen for donot-open.com and it was considerably cheaper and easier than any pi-based device. You have a fantastic screen, computer and battery, all built in, and it’s easy to use.

If you’d like to do this on a pi, I’d suggest:
getting a Raspberry Pi 3 A+ (check the spec is good enough for your video)
installing Raspberry Pi OS – Raspberry Pi
Then looking into USB power supplies

Very cool stuff! Enjoyed your site.

Regarding the Hyperpixel: the main problem here is that it is not just “another” display for the Pi where a video-player can play videos (maybe in theory, but it is not practical). You cannot run a graphical desktop-environment on such a small screen. So you have to be creative on how to make this work. The strategy is usually to drive the screen directly without the normal graphical environment.

So the challenges here will be the handling of an non-GUI environment (e.g. via ssh). You need advanced Linux skills for that. I think the solution @Joshy-J suggested is far better.

Nevertheless, if you do this to learn about Linux, the Linux environment etc., the Hyperpixel is a very nice device to play with. But without advanced skills I would not start there.

It would be a huge pain to run raspbian OS on a 72 X 72mm screen - but not impossible.

I’d say, if the only thing you want to do is open a video from a USB and play it, you could do that. If you have no experience with pi, etc. It’s probably the easiest way right now.