Raspberry Pi Instagram Slide and Video Show

About

I'm a volunteer at the Idea Fab Labs maker/hacker/artspace here in Santa Cruz, and I was asked to set up a Raspberry Pi for our weekly open house and for IFL booths at events, so that all you had to do was plug it into a large monitor and it would start running a slideshow of Idea Fab Labs' Instagram feed of photos of projects, facilities, and events.

I had written my original Raspberry Pi Instagram Slideshow version in Python using the Tkinter GUI, but when I was asked to update it to include Instagram videos as well as photos, I rewrote it (still in Python) using the Kivy Framework, and am running it on Raspberry Pi 2 Model Bs running Raspbian Jessie and Raspbian Stretch.

If you'd like to do a similar installation with your own Instagram feed, the instructions below will walk you through getting the slide and video show set up on your Raspberry Pi.

Because (at least as of September 2017) the Instagram API in Sandbox Mode only gets the 20 most recent photos and videos from an Instagram account, and in the interest of both reducing bandwidth and being able to run the slide and video show even when your internet connection is down, once an hour the program checks Instagram to see if any new photos and videos have been posted to the account, and if so, downloads them to its instagram_photos_and_videos directory. (If you like you can also copy other jpg and mp4 files to the directory and they will also be included in the slide and video show -- for that matter I used the InstaG Downloader Chrome Extension to download all the photos and videos from the Idea Fab Labs Instagram feed that were older than the 20 most recent, so they would be in the instagram_photos_and_videos directory too.)

Release notes

Version 1.2, April 9, 2020

• Updated to work with Instagram's changes to the format of the photo and video URLs returned by their API. Because of the changes the program had no longer been extracting the [filename].jpg or .mp4 part of the URLs correctly to save new media files to disk as, and then likewise was not displaying the new media files because the filenames they had been saved as didn't end in .jpg or .mp4

Version 1.1, May 22, 2018

• Now works with Python 3 in addition to Python 2.

• Now includes a setting for whether or not audio is played along with videos.

• In trying to track down the occasional hanging issue described below, I found that explicitly stopping videos (in addition to letting them just come to the end themselves) and switching from Python 2 to Python 3 seemed to fix the issue under Windows (with the Kivy platform you can run your Python code on Windows, Mac, other Linux versions, Android, and iOS in addition to on the Raspberry Pi), but unfortunately, on the Raspberry Pi, eventually it will still hang and need to be power-cycled. :-( I'm thinking that some kind of memory leak may be going on, with there eventually being not enough available memory to play the next video, and, again, hope to find and fix this problem for good at some point.

Version 1.0, September 27, 2017

• I'm still working on tracking down an issue where the slide and video show will occasionally hang seemingly randomly while loading a video. As the program is otherwise working, I decided to go ahead and put the initial version up on GitHub now, but I hope to find and fix the bug soon.

Known issues

• "Error loading texture" error messages: Every time the program loads a video, an "Error loading texture" message gets printed to the console or terminal window. On one hand I haven't found a way to get rid of them yet, but on the other hand, the videos are playing just fine regardless.

Getting the slide and video show set up on your Raspberry Pi

I know these instructions look really long, but that's because I'm trying to be thorough rather than because they're super-complicated. Anyway, follow these instructions to get the slide and video show set up and running on your Raspberry Pi:

1. Command-line vs. GUI?

   The slide and video show doesn't require the Raspberry Pi GUI desktop to run, and because of the limited resources of the Raspberry Pi vs. playing videos, I would recommend that when running it you have your Raspberry Pi boot to the command line rather than to the GUI desktop, but you can run it either way.

2. Configure your Raspberry Pi to connect to your Wifi if you haven't done so already

   To download Instagram photos and videos (or for that matter to continue following these instructions) your Raspberry Pi needs to be connected to the Internet. If you haven't already done so, do the following to select your Wifi network and enter the password:

   • Here's the official Raspberry Pi documentation on setting Wifi up via the command line.

   • Or for Raspbian Wheezy and the LXDE GUI desktop, in the Raspberry Pi GUI Menu select Preferences and then WIFI Configuration.

   • Or for Raspbian Jessie or Raspbian Stretch, with the Pixel GUI desktop, click the Wifi icon at the top right of the taskbar.

3. Configure the Raspberry Pi to allocate more memory to its GPU (graphics processing unit)

   At one point when I was wrestling with Kivy and video I followed a suggestion to use the instructions on this RPiconfig page to add the line

   gpu_mem=128
   

   to the /boot/config.txt file. For this particular application this may or may not actually make a difference, but you might want to experiment with that or different gpu_mem values.

4. Python 3 or Python 2?

   The Raspberry Pi Instagram Slide and Video Show Python code will work with either Python 3 or Python 2, but as described in the steps below, how you install Kivy and the required Python libraries, and how you run the program, will vary a little depending on which version of Python you want to use. Basically, for Python 2 you will be running python and pip, and for Python 3 python3 and pip3.

5. Install the Kivy framework on your Raspberry Pi

   Follow the instructions at https://kivy.org/docs/installation/installation-rpi.html to download/install/compile Kivy on your Raspberry Pi.

   Note: The instructions in the above link are for Python 2. If you want to run the Slide and Video Show with Python 3 instead, then wherever the instructions specify the pip program you should enter pip3 instead, and wherever they specify the Python program you should enter Python3 instead.

   Warning: Installing Kivy (including its dependencies) can seriously sometimes take hours to complete on a Raspberry Pi, so start it sometime when you can just let things run.

   On Raspberry Pi 2 Model Bs running Raspbian Jessie or Raspbian Stretch the Kivy installation went very smoothly (despite taking a long time). However, when I tried to download/install/compile Kivy on another Raspberry Pi 2 Model B that was running Raspbian Wheezy, I got so many error messages that I wound up just upgrading that system to Jessie before proceeding.

6. Install the Python requests library

   The slide and video show uses the Python requests library to talk to the Instagram API -- install it by entering the following at the command line or into a terminal window if you want to use Python 2:

   sudo pip install requests
   

   Or if you want to use Python 3:

   sudo pip3 install requests
   

7. Create a directory for the slide and video show, and copy the files from this repo into it

   Create a directory instagram_slide_and_video_show in the /home/pi/ directory, and copy the files instagram_slide_and_video_show.py, instagram_slide_and_video_show.bat, and instagram_slide_and_video_show_gui.bat from this repo into it. (Or if you prefer you can use a different slideshow directory name and/or location, adjusting its name/location in subsequent steps accordingly.)

8. Edit instagram_slide_and_video_show.bat and instagram_slide_and_video_show_gui.bat to specify Python 2 or Python 3.

   Use a text editor to edit instagram_slide_and_video_show.bat and instagram_slide_and_video_show_gui.bat so that depending on whether you're using Python 2 or 3, the line for the Python version you're using will be uncommented, and the line for the other version will be commented out.

9. Make instagram_slide_and_video_show.bat and instagram_slide_and_video_show_gui.bat executable.

   Make the files instagram_slide_and_video_show.bat and instagram_slide_and_video_show_gui.bat executable by entering the following at the command line or into a terminal window:

   chmod 755 /home/pi/instagram_slide_and_video_show/instagram_slide_and_video_show.bat
   chmod 755 /home/pi/instagram_slide_and_video_show/instagram_slide_and_video_show_gui.bat
   

10. Get the Instagram access token for the account you want to use with the slide and video show, and enter it into the program code

    There are other ways to download Instagram photos than their API, but I used their API. When I was using the Instagram API for another project last year, all you needed to do to download photos from an account was to register as a developer and get a client id, but now you have to go through a lot more steps to generate an access token for the account you want to access. To get the access token I followed the instructions on this How to get Instagram API access token and fix your broken feed page, and as I do some Django development I used the Django development server (as python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 on my Windows system) in their "your favorite MAMP, LAMP, Node whatever you use to create a local server" step.

    When you get the access token you need, use a text editor or IDE to substitute it for "put your access token here" in the line

    self.INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN = "put your access token here"
    

    in instagram_slide_and_video_show.py.

11. Set the Raspberry Pi to run the slideshow automatically when it boots

    • If your Raspberry Pi is set to boot to the command line:

      Follow the instructions on the official Raspberry Pi rc.local page to add the line

      /home/pi/instagram_slide_and_video_show/instagram_slide_and_video_show.bat &
      

      to your etc/rc.local file.

    • If your Raspberry Pi is set to boot to the GUI desktop:

      The issue here is that you want the program to run not only after the Raspberry Pi boots, but after the GUI loads.

      What worked for me was following the instructions in one of the posts in the How to launch programs on LXDE startup topic in the raspberypi.org forums, doing

      • For Raspbian Wheezy with the LXDE GUI desktop: sudo nano /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

      • For Raspbian Jessie or Raspbian Stretch, with the Pixel GUI desktop: sudo nano /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

      to edit the autostart file, adding the line

      @/home/pi/instagram_slide_and_video_show/instagram_slide_and_video_show_gui.bat
      

      to the end of the file, and saving it.

12. Disable the Raspberry Pi screensaver

    It's great to be have the Raspberry Pi set up so that all you have to do is plug it in and the slide and video show will start, without needing to have a keyboard and/or mouse connected, but pretty sad if it only lasts for ten or fifteen minutes until the screensaver blanks the screen. :-(

    • What worked for me with Raspbian Jessie and Raspbian Stretch set to boot to the command line was following the consoleblank=0 instructions on the official Raspberry Pi "Setting the Screen Saver/Screen Blanking" page.

    • What worked for me with Raspbian Wheezy and the LXDE GUI desktop was following the "2 – Disabling the blank screen forever" instuctions in this How to Disable the Blank Screen on Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) HackLab post.

    • What worked for me with Raspbian Jessie and Raspbian Stretch, with the Pixel GUI desktop, was adding the line xserver-command=X -s 0 dpms to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf as described in this Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange comment.

Running the slide and video show on your Raspberry Pi

Once you've followed all the above steps, reboot your Raspberry Pi, and once it finishes booting the slide and video show should start running automatically.

Or if you didn't want to set it to run automatically, you can just run it from the command-line (if you're running the GUI desktop then this would be in a terminal window) by navigating to the /home/pi/instagram_slide_and_video_show/ directory and entering the following if you want to use Python 2

python instagram_slide_and_video_show.py

or, for Python 3

python3 instagram_slide_and_video_show.py

at the prompt.

The first time you run the program, it will create an instagram_photos_and_videos subdirectory, and you'll see messages about photos and videos being downloaded before it starts displaying them.

If your Raspberry Pi isn't connected to the Internet, or if you haven't obtained an Instagram Access Token for the Instagram account you want to use, and entered it correctly as the self.INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN value at the beginning of the code, you'll see error messages about that instead of photos and videos.

If at any point you want to close the slideshow, just press Esc.

Note: Photos and videos uploaded to Instagram can definitely vary in aspect ratio, and sometimes small Instagram photos in particular will have sort of built-in borders above and below, but if all of your photos and videos are displaying with large black borders around them, with none of them having any edges flush with the edges of the monitor or TV, you may want to try adjusting your Raspberry Pi's overscan settings to improve the appearance.

Slide and video show configuration options

The first time the program runs, it creates an instagram_slide_and_video_show.ini file in the instagram_slide_and_video directory, which you can edit to configure the following program options:

• Whether the program displays photos and videos in random order, in the order they are in the instagram_photos_and_videos directory, or in sorted lexicographic order (the default is random).
• How long the program displays a photo before moving on to the next photo or video (the default is 15 seconds).
• Whether videos are played with or without sound (the default is with sound).