[IDEA] MOODE Startup Spashscreen

[TheOldPresbyope]

So I've posted a crappy video on YouTube to show where I've gotten to with minimal surgery on moOdeOS. (Don't do what I did: using a smartphone to make technical videos is an exercise in frustration):

moOde Splash Screen

This was on an RPi3B+ with a Kuman 3.5-in HDMI LCD display mounted on it. The boards mate via the GPIO pins and using a cute little HDMI-HDMI jumper between the two boards.  This guy was cheap.

An OLED display would have been superior in almost every way but did I mention this guy was cheap? Because of the optical characteristics of the LCD screen and its backlight, I had to shoot the video off-axis, hence the keystoning, and some of the unevenness in focus and intensity. The color rendition is awful because I had no control over the camera settings.

In this 53s video, the power is switched on at t=4s, hence the flash and then the LCD board's firmware generated advertisement. Once the framebuffer is displayed you can see that I've suppressed all the usual niff-naff like raspberry logos, boot messages, and blinking cursor.

In this version, I did not use plymouth. I used the framebuffer imageviewer to display an image I made for a splash screen. The image doesn't show up until 13s after I turned on the power---it takes that long for the root filesystem to become available. Then we get into burble after about 30s because, I'm assuming, the Xserver grabs the framebuffer as it begins to initialize. Finally, the moOdeUI asserts itself after another 10s or so.

This isn't great performance but it's a beginning. One way to shorten the time it takes for the splash screen to appear would be to use plymouth instead of fbi, although I'm still arm-wrestling with plymouth in the raspbian lite environment. Another way would be to push the fbi activity into the initramfs so it can initialize earlier. I'm working both angles but I'm really interested in the latter approach because I've got plans for an alternative to moOde's local display using the framebuffer directly instead of using chromium/X11.

Details to follow.

Regards,
Kent

PS - @DRONE7

Yes they deliver wine by the glass. Of course the glass in question contains 750ml and requires the manual removal of a contrivance before I can drink from it.

[pkdick]

So I've posted a crappy video on YouTube to show where I've gotten to with minimal surgery on moOdeOS. (Don't do what I did: using a smartphone to make technical videos is an exercise in frustration):

moOde Splash Screen

This was on an RPi3B+ with a Kuman 3.5-in HDMI LCD display mounted on it. The boards mate via the GPIO pins and using a cute little HDMI-HDMI jumper between the two boards.  This guy was cheap.

An OLED display would have been superior in almost every way but did I mention this guy was cheap? Because of the optical characteristics of the LCD screen and its backlight, I had to shoot the video off-axis, hence the keystoning, and some of the unevenness in focus and intensity. The color rendition is awful because I had no control over the camera settings.

In this 53s video, the power is switched on at t=4s, hence the flash and then the LCD board's firmware generated advertisement. Once the framebuffer is displayed you can see that I've suppressed all the usual niff-naff like raspberry logos, boot messages, and blinking cursor.

In this version, I did not use plymouth. I used the framebuffer imageviewer to display an image I made for a splash screen. The image doesn't show up until 13s after I turned on the power---it takes that long for the root filesystem to become available. Then we get into burble after about 30s because, I'm assuming, the Xserver grabs the framebuffer as it begins to initialize. Finally, the moOdeUI asserts itself after another 10s or so.

This isn't great performance but it's a beginning. One way to shorten the time it takes for the splash screen to appear would be to use plymouth instead of fbi, although I'm still arm-wrestling with plymouth in the raspbian lite environment. Another way would be to push the fbi activity into the initramfs so it can initialize earlier. I'm working both angles but I'm really interested in the latter approach because I've got plans for an alternative to moOde's local display using the framebuffer directly instead of using chromium/X11.

Details to follow.

Regards,
Kent

PS - @DRONE7

Yes they deliver wine by the glass. Of course the glass in question contains 750ml and requires the manual removal of a contrivance before I can drink from it.

Hi Kent,

I just had a look on the video you posted: for a first trial, it is much better than what I currently have!  Thank you in advance !

Best regards,

[TheOldPresbyope]

I decided to order an official 7" Raspberry Pi Touch Screen because that's what most folks are using with the local display function. I did this so I can avoid getting wrapped up with artifacts that may be down to my little Kuman display.

The order is supposed to arrive tomorrow. When it does I'll revisit this issue.

Regards,
Kent

[TheOldPresbyope]

OK, my Element14 model of the Raspberry Pi 7in touchscreen arrived and is now installed on an RPi3B+.

For grins, I took the same version 0 code demonstrated previously, created an appropriately sized moOde splash image, and tried it on the 7in touchscreen.

You can see the result in another slightly less bad video on YouTube. Again ignore odd color rendition from my cellphone camera/software, especially the lovely blue bloom of the LED backlight when the camera can't find a color reference point.

There are far fewer visual artifacts with this display than we saw on the 3.5in LCD display HAT.  I think that's due both to the different interface (dsi vs hdmi) and to the different firmware in the two devices.

To me, the only seriously annoying artifact is the 2s flash of white screen before the moOdeUI kicks in, which I believe is due to the X11 server startup. I haven't found any hints online yet which help.

There's still that ca 10s blank screen at startup but it will take serious recoding to deal with it. Manaña, maybe.

If this looks usable to anyone, I'll put my code and splash image along with a short writeup on github and post a link to it in the FAQ and Guides section.

Regards,
Kent

[JST1963]

Weird how fast people forget...

All this was nicely explained and tested by a guy "Georgets" almost 2 years ago. This mod has been on my moOde player ever since, and it still works.

http://moodeaudio.org/forum/showthread.p...ght=splash

[TheOldPresbyope]

Yikes. I plumb forgot, if I even looked at it at all...excuse is I wasn’t interested in local display at the time. Apology to Georget. There’s a minor difference which has him editing various system files that my approach avoided but the core work to use fbi as a service is the same. He also started with Tim’s default image to create the splash image. Reassuring to see I wasn’t missing something.

Thanks for refreshing my memory banks

Regards,
Kent

[Cardone]

Hello Kent,
the instructions given in the link work very well ....
I tested it with Raspberry Display and Moode 4.2 image ....


Ciao
Zeferino

[TheOldPresbyope]

Hello Kent,
the instructions given in the link work very well ....
I tested it with Raspberry Display and Moode 4.2 image ....


Ciao
Zeferino

Hi, Zeferino

Thanks. Good to hear it's working for you. I'd expect it too since Georgets and I independently arrived at the same use of the framebuffer imageviewer. I'm not a graphic designer so the splash image I have is based solely on moOde's current default cover. His is nicer but tied to r4.2.

I'll push my work to github anyway, both because it offers an alternative to the system configuration and because I still want to pursue an next version.

Regards,
Kent

[Cardone]

Version 6 .....

[TheOldPresbyope]

Version 6 .....

Most excellent!

Let's be presumptuous here. Can you also make ones for moOde 7 and 8 so we're prepared for the future?

And, oh yeah, if Tim wants to include your image he will need to know he has the right to use it.

Regards,
Kent