I want to build a case with a thin monitor with a pie attached that would act as a “now showing” in our basement media room. I just would want it to pull the plex image of what we are watching. I need someone to talk through it with me.
That idea sounds cool… But I wonder if purchasing a cheap tablet, dedicated to the room that has the Plex app installed would be easier. You could still mount it, use it to start what you are watching, and then have a cradle or something it sits in, with the screen set to never turn off. You could then pull it out of the cradle to double as a remote, especially if you have a guest over that wants to watch something.
Just a thought…
@sthomaschefsky@Hotmail.com said:
I want to build a case with a thin monitor with a pie attached that would act as a “now showing” in our basement media room. I just would want it to pull the plex image of what we are watching. I need someone to talk through it with me.
Using a tablet would only show what you last selected via the tablet. If you use any other device to control your basement media room client, it would not update. So as @aaron.r.mills says, you’d have to use it as a remote constantly if you wanted it to be accurate.
You could setup a raspbian rPi and either run a PlexPy deployment from it or from another location on the network. Then you could open a brower to full screen and just leave it on the front page. It wouldn’t be a fullscreen image of just what you were watching. It would have the other information as in the screenshot below.
You could also fork the PlexPY code to customize that front page display to better meet your vision, or ask the PlexPy team to do it for you as a feature request.
I will say though, if you have multiple users on your server, it may not be possible to query now playing data for a specific user or device. I haven’t looked at the code but I think it returns it all. So if that’s what you want, you’d need to parse out the data you want and custom display it.
[EDIT]
Correction: If using the PlexPY solution without alterations, you’d want to setup an auto-refresh of the webpage though, as the other data like Statistics and Recently added doesn’t update automatically. Activity section with the ‘now playing’ section does, however. You can even turn off different sections displayed in the home page if you just wanted the Activity stream.
Someone actually has built this before.
Take a look
release forum thread:
@OttoKerner said:
Someone actually has built this before.release forum thread:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/226628/rel-plex-movie-poster-display
Nice!
Now who’s got the hook up on cheap thin screens? 
Wouldn’t a digital photo frame work? Those have fairly high resolutions as well as HDMI input (Perfect for RPi) and are relatively cheap (Like $50).
@Valdhor said:
Wouldn’t a digital photo frame work? Those have fairly high resolutions as well as HDMI input (Perfect for RPi) and are relatively cheap (Like $50).
The point is that it happens automatically with the above solution.
With a digital photo frame, you have to find the poster, combine it with a bit of text and then save thios as a jpeg. Then you have to walk outside the theater room and insert a SD card with the jpeg into the frame.
Unless there are now photo frames with WiFi…
@OttoKerner said:
@Valdhor said:
Wouldn’t a digital photo frame work? Those have fairly high resolutions as well as HDMI input (Perfect for RPi) and are relatively cheap (Like $50).The point is that it happens automatically with the above solution.
With a digital photo frame, you have to find the poster, combine it with a bit of text and then save thios as a jpeg. Then you have to walk outside the theater room and insert a SD card with the jpeg into the frame.
Unless there are now photo frames with WiFi…
I think @Valdhor meant they could be re-purposed with a rPi as a cheap thin screen.
@Valdhor, did you have a link to one you had in mind with HDMI input?
I wouldnt buy something for this, i would just reuse an old tablet or phone to check a webpage and use the Plex server for this service
@benjaminwolf said:
I think @Valdhor meant they could be re-purposed with a rPi as a cheap thin screen.
Indeed I did. But there are some that use WIFI as well.
@Valdhor, did you have a link to one you had in mind with HDMI input?
@Valdhor
It must have HDMI inputs to use an rPI 2/3. The first link looks like it would require some type of serious mod to add an input. WiFi with a webserver to upload photos to wouldn’t work with the project code above. Maybe you could hack it into the base hardware, but that’s for another forum.
The second link is listed for rPi 1B/2/3 but it only has video connectors for rPi 1 B. You’d have to use an adapter for rPi 2/3. And for those prices, I’d probably just get a regular LED monitor/TV instead of the 7" models. But I suppose I’d prefer a movie poster size(ish) experience, rather than a small picture frame version.
I have so much to learn on Plex … I have Raspberry Pi’s a few 2 and a 3. I am pretty good with the coding on those. I just started Plex less than a month ago so the learning curve on what I can do. I was thinking a low profile monitor with a frame and the PI attached Now I just need to figure out if that github will work. The building is not the issue it is my knowledge with Plex but I am glad to see someone else had the same sweet idea!
@benjaminwolf said:
It must have HDMI inputs to use an rPI 2/3. The first link looks like it would require some type of serious mod to add an input. WiFi with a webserver to upload photos to wouldn’t work with the project code above. Maybe you could hack it into the base hardware, but that’s for another forum.
I thought the OP wanted to display a static image of the movie poster? With that first link all you would need to do is use the code from GitHub (Or create your own) to locate an image (Probably on the web but could also come from local) and upload it to the cloud (Free with that item). The frame loads in the image via WIFI and Voila - Movie Poster.
Other than that you could probably just go with an LCD monitor - newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824112027. That one’s new but you could get one real cheap used on eBay or from a garage sale.
Note that all this would require a secondary RPi - you can’t use the one that is being used for Plex (I may be wrong but I think that may have been one of the thoughts).
