Push Button Media

This lets you press an Amazon IoT Button to play/display a random video/image. After that finishes, it loops through a collection of other videos.

The idea is that you have a collection of short 'prompt' videos, which are suggesting to the viewer to press the button. When the button is pressed, the 'prompt' video is closed and a random video/image is selected from a different collection.

This project was built for The Legible Bodies to use for their closing reception in the Mill Arts Project space.

Requirements

• Amazon IoT Button
  • https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/
• VLC
  • http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
• Preview
  • It should already be installed on your Mac
• QuickTime
  • It should already be installed on your Mac
• node
  • https://nodejs.org/en/
• ngrok
  • https://ngrok.com/

Setup

• add videos to content_waiting
  • these will play in a random loop while we wait for someone to press the button
• add videos/images to content_button
  • this is the content that will be used when someone presses the button
  • any video that is playable by QuickTime and jpg/png files will work
• edit content_waiting_playlist.m3u to be a playlist of the content_waiting videos
  • you can gather all the content_waiting videos in VLC and choose 'Save Playlist...'
• set up your Amazon IoT Button
  • https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/
  • this process should involve creating a Amazon Lambda function named AWSIoTButton
• cd endpoint && npm install
• configure VLC to default to fullscreen with as little UI as possible and play infinitely
  • choose 'Repeat All' in the 'Playback' menu
  • choose 'Random' in the 'Playback' menu
  • open Preferences
    • select 'Interface' and un-check the box for 'Show Fullscreen Controller'
    • select 'Video' and check the box for 'Fullscreen'
    • select 'Subtitles / OSD' and un-check the box for 'Enable OSD'

Run

• start the endpoint in one terminal: cd endpoint; node index.js
• start ngrok in another terminal: ngrok http 3000
• edit the endpointUrl variable in button/index.js to your http ngrok url
• copy the code in button/index.js to your AWSIoTButton Amazon Lambda function
• push the Amazon IoT Button to display media
  • the transition could be chunky the first time that VLC is run, but subsequent runs should be ok

What's Happening

• the button triggers the Amazon Lambda function
• the Amazon Lambda function makes a call to the node endpoint via the ngrok url
• the node endpoint checks if Preview or QuickTime is running
  • if Preview or QuickTime is running
    • it does nothing and exits immediately because something is already playing/being shown
  • if Preview or QuickTime is not running
    • it runs the main.sh script
      • this plays a video or shows an image for 5 seconds
      • then it quits QuickTime/Preview
      • and finally it plays the infinite playlist in VLC