Pi Zero media server for car journeys

#1

I’ve used a Zero running Jessie Lite to make a media server - for the purpose of streaming movies to my kids’ Android tablets on long car journeys. It’s powered by a USB battery pack.

I’ve used a Pimoroni USB hub (the white one with 3 USB ports and an ethernet jack at the end) hosting a USB memory stick and an Edimax 7811 wifi adapter. I used this reference to help: http://www.daveconroy.com/turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-wifi-hotspot-with-edimax-nano-usb-ew-7811un-rtl8188cus-chipset/.

The Pi runs
hostapd to create a wireless network
isc-dhcp-server to offer a DHCP service
minidlna to offer a media streaming service

It works fine - and can even stream two MP4 movies simultaneously. I’ve added a reset button onto the RUN points on the board. I’d like to add a soft shutdown button but haven’t spent enough time understanding GPIOs to make that work yet.

#2

This may help with the software shutdown.

#3

Thanks Richard, much appreciated.

#4

while there’s nothing wrong with the python script in the link above I would suggest taking advantage of gpiozero, not mentioning subprocess is probably the recommended method to integrate shell commands in Python at this point.

Something like this should be working, YMMV:

from subprocess import call
from gpiozero import Button

my_button = Button(26)
my_button.wait.for.press()
print("Shutting system down")
call("sudo poweroff", shell=True)

… the code above uses BCM26, so you’d wire the button to the pins parallel to the RUN pins, like so:

image.jpeg1936x1936 1.04 MB

#5

just noted you use Jessie Lite and I can’t remember if gpiozero is installed by default, so:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-gpiozero python3-gpiozero

and the doc: https://gpiozero.readthedocs.org

#6

Is there anyway to use this code for Pi Zero W?

#7

I don’t own a Zero W so don’t really know. But I don’t see why not. And with the onboard wifi you wouldn’t need the hub or network adapter either.

#8

But, the tutorial says that you will need the wifi adapter or it will not work. What steps can I skip?

And, also, can you give another tutorial link for pi zero w