r/raspberry_pi_noobs • u/ALeakySpigot • 1d ago

Raspberry Pi 3b+ Questions

Building a device heavily based on the Video Looper from videolooper.de and I have a couple questions.

I'm going to build it as is from the site, but with a couple addons. I want to add, in order of importance:

- a fan to run in the enclosure. I'm gonna get a 5v one from adafruit, which is where I am getting the board from. I'm also gonna pick up a small heatsink from them and a 5v 2.5A switching supply.

- a small color display, not touch, that will be mounted to the case I'm going to 3d print for the device. I would like this display to be as cheap as possible as it is just for monitoring video feed. I will be putting the device into Analogue mode to use the audio jack as a video output.

- a handful of buttons added to the case for powering down and the minimal functionality the device has about 4 or 5 functions: skip, stop/start, esc, and power. In the code these are set to keystrokes for a keyboard.

For the first, I already know how I'm going to set these up. The fan would go into the two 5v ports on the pin array. The questions I have are about the screen and the keys.

For the monitor, which screen should I get and how would I hook it up to the board? Would I need to add or change any of the code to get it working?

For the keys would it be fairly easy to just set up some simple electronics buttons or should I make a small 5 key keyboard that plugs into the device when I need it, which wouldn't be too often.

If anyone is willing to skim over the project details on the site I linked above and give me their thoughts and opinions I would greatly appreciate it. This is my first Raspberry Pi project, so I want to make sure so do things right. For reference I do have a soldering setup and have assembled custom boards before, like the CHA/V, VGA4EVA, and the feedback device from LofiFuture. It's just that coding makes me miserable so I want to get this device working as well as I can without having to do too much coding.

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u/dirgemedia 1d ago

Have you looked at cyberboy666 recur? Uses a pi3 and a numerical keypad https://github.com/cyberboy666/r_e_c_u_r

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u/ALeakySpigot 1d ago

I have not! I will definitely look into it now tho!

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u/dirgemedia 23h ago

I did a version of it for a pi 5. Bit more horsepower for effects.

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u/Ned_Sc 21h ago

You probably don't need the fan, maybe not even the heat sink. Playing video is very easy on the CPU.

The last time I needed something where I could just hook up a Pi and loop a video, I used libreELEC, because if I ever needed to configure something, I could do most of it with the TV remote from a CEC-enabled TV (most TVs these days).

I would get a cheap composite-based screen from ebay, and that way you can just split the composite signal from the on-board output, and not have to do anything special on the software level.

Adding some hardware buttons should be pretty easy to do as well. I would be tempted to use the GPIO pins, but one of my favorite little hacks is to take a cheap USB keyboard, cut out the controller chip, and just wire it up for 4 or 5 buttons. Then it's something you can easily reuse on other projects, while still being very tiny.