This is a manual for a simple video-loop-player based on a Raspberry Pi (Zero).

Burn a Raspberry Pi OS Lite on an SD card. And boot up your Raspberry and connect it to your local net.
(If you want to connect your Raspberry Pi Zero over an USB cable follow this manual:Connect a Raspberry Pi Zero over USB).

Enable SSH on the Raspberry Pi in:

$ sudo raspi-config

(or create a new file named “ssh” in the boot folder).
Change password and expand file system, too and reboot.

To find your Pi on the local net one can scan it with this comand:

 $ sudo arp-scan -l

Log in with: $ ssh pi@ 192.168.???.???? on the Pi update and upgrade:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Install the omxplayer:

$ sudo apt-get install omxplayer

To create the autostart open:

$ sudo nano /etc/rc.local

and write before “exit 0” the following:

printf "  \n"
printf "    =============================================\n"
printf "    =             MY VIDEO LOOP                 =\n"
printf "    =                                           =\n"
printf "    =          wolfgang spahn 01-2021           =\n"
printf "    =         http://dernulleffekt.de           =\n"
printf "    =============================================\n"
printf " \n"

If one wants to run an additional program these line should be added:

# start LEDs blinking
printf "start to blink an LED on GPIO 27\n"
/home/pi/python/blink_02.py &

e.g.:

 $ wget http://www.dernulleffekt.de/programme/blink_02.py.tar
 $ tar xf blink_02.py.tar
 $ sudo chown root:root blink_02.py
 $ sudo chmod 755 blink_02.py

And to start the omxplayer add that:

# start the omxplayer
printf "start the video loop\n"
omxplayer /home/pi/video/myvideo.mp4 &

To run the omxplayer in the background one has to add the “&” at the end of the line.

Copy the video to /home/pi/video. It should be has to be an mp4 (H264) format.

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USB On-The-Go (OTG) for Zero

To power and simultaneously connect an USB hub to the Raspberry Pi Zero with just a single USB cable one needs an USB-OTG cable.
An other possibility would be to solder a wire between the USB sense pin P40 (of USB J10) and the ground pin P6 on the Raspberry Pi. That way every USB cable on the USB socket J10 (not “Power In”) act like an OTG cable.

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Connect a Raspberry Pi Zero over USB

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For preventing any data loss while turning off the Pi one has to change the SD card to read only: Read-Only SD Card

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