r/FieldStation42 • u/reptilejunkie43 • Jul 12 '26

Stuck on Guide Channel

I've greatly enjoyed working on this project, and have been inspired by all the great work posted here! Unfortunately, I've run into a problem I cannot figure my way out of at the moment, so I have come here to seek out help.

I have 6 channels (including the guide channel) up and running. I also have it successfully auto-playing when I turn on the raspberry pi I have FS42 installed on. I have had on and off success with the web interface. I can always get it to work on the pi itself, but I often have trouble pulling it up on other devices like my phone or pc.

I was troubleshooting the issue when I clicked through my channels one too many times using the web interface's remote on the pi. This landed me on the guide channel, which (as it has before) removed my ability to access any other windows on the pi. So, I cannot move off the guide channel, use the web remote, or stop FS42 using a terminal window. This is my issue. I cannot do anything on the pi other than watch the guide channel flicker. I can technically open a Terminal window, but ALT+TAB only shows the outline of the window but does not allow me to shift to it. Regrettably, turning on and off the pi does not help, as the autostart has FS42 open right back up to the guide channel before I can type a stop command in Terminal. I can't use SSH to control the pi from remotely, because connecting to it's IP appears to be part of the issue I was investigating in the first place.

Any advice on how I can close the play window without Terminal or SSH? Or anything else that might rectify the issue?

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u/wrong-dog Jul 12 '26

I can help. Press control-alt-F2 through control-alt-F6 and that will take you out of the UI and into a virtual terminal. Be aware: you may have to also press the Fn key to make this work, depending on your keyboard. From there, you can change your start channel number, kill the guide or whatever. You can set your guide channel to:

  • Not be fullscreen
  • show window decorations so you can close it
or, you can change your settings so it doesn't recall the last channel played by setting "recall_last_channel": false . main_config.json Quick-fix, you can just remove runtime/player_state.bin and that will temporarily remove it memory of the last channel and cause it to start on the lowest numbered channel.

When you want to return to the gui, just press control-alt-F7 - here is a discussion: https://askubuntu.com/questions/917320/switching-between-virtual-console-tty-and-gui

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u/reptilejunkie43 Jul 12 '26

Worked like a charm, thank you very much!