Building video sign

[cteno4]

Well a decade ago I had used a surplus personal video player that I picked up for about $50 to put a 2.4" video wall on a tomix highrise. Worked well but there was a reason they were surplus as they were a pain to get started and would randomly shut off. They also died, I got a second for $20 and it died too. Doug Coster has me send him one and it lasted a few shows and died (he later replaced it with a psp unit).

 

A couple of years ago I tried some simple and cheap Chinese MP4 car video players to do this again, but again the menu system to get them started required a lot of button pushes and a few components would get very hot when played for more than an hour.

 

I finally got on ebay again and picked up another mobile MP4 player for about $7. It's a simple little unit with a 1.8" screen (22.5' scale screen). It only has 4 simple momentary buttons for the control, and the setup and startup are very simple.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blue-6TH-GENERATION-MP4-MUSIC-MEDIA-PLAYER-FM-Movie-Player-1-8-LCD-SCREEN-/261921951543?hash=item3cfbc3cf37:g:c4YAAOSwstxVdrFc

 

Only real downside is that it uses the AMV video codec which is a cheap modified motion jpeg codec that is used by a lot of the cheap players and not usually supported by a lot of standard digital video software out there. But I tracked one down on the Mac and was able to generate the files and they play fine on the unit. The resolution is 160x120 and its 16fps.

 

If you plug it into a usb power source via the micro USB port the unit will stay on indefinitely. You can set the unit to continuously loop the videos. I've run it now for 24 hrs and all the components have stayed nice and cool!

 

The screen can be easily detached from the motherboard by resoldering a 20 pin ribbon pcb with some fine extension wires or ribbon cable. The 4 momentary buttons can also easily be resoldered to extension wires to conviently mount them in the structure to do the few clicks needed to set the unit playing when powered up. Takes a 2g micro SD card to store the files (and that can hold hours of AMV files!) and that's a couple of more bucks.

 

So nice little project for $10!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[NXCALE]

Hi. I had in mind building a video/screen sign since I got some Tomix/Kato buildings. However, I was not sure which screen to pick up so I just postponed it.

By the way, I could be wrong but I remember reading an old thread of one of your attempts about this topic.

 

A couple of years ago I tried some simple and cheap Chinese MP4 car video players to do this again, but again the menu system to get them started required a lot of button pushes and a few components would get very hot when played for more than an hour.

 

This is great information and it is good to know the project works well, thanks for that!

 

p.s. I also want to try it so I just ordered one of the MP4 player.

[cteno4]

Nxscale,

 

Yeah I've been playing with this a long time! I think this is my 6 or 7th unit!

 

This one looks like the best option I've found so far. It seems pretty rugged and inexpensive.

 

You do have to go at the little metal case with a pair of nippers to get to the guts. Clip the little thin bezel strips in the center then take some needle nose or the nippers and just start rolling them back. At the curved edge you just bend that back. Kind of like opening an old fashion sardine can with a key! I tried prying the ends off but they and the guts are jammed in there too well.

 

I also like it as its 5v which I have pretty much standardized on as my auxiliary power feed.

 

I picked up some of this ribbon cable last night, it looks to match the pitch of what is on the unit.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321843944050?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

Jeff

Edited January 23, 2016 by cteno4

[Dani]

Thanks for the info!!! I already bought one, and will try to connect it to an Arduino to manage it from the software (Rocrail), as I do with sounds or illumination.

 

Cheers,

Dani

[cteno4]

Dani,

 

cool, the only real management would be for the boot up sequence. would be a few simple on/off to do on like 3 isolated switches to get it to fire up the video play. basically you can set it to loop all the videos on the card and it remembers that. just have to hit the right button to go to videos (it turns on defaulted to music), then choose video, then hit the play. each push just separated by a few seconds (one is longer as it needs to scan the memory card for all the videos when you choose the video playback feature.) would be wonderful if you came up with a simple little arduino setup to make it all auto boot on power up!

 

i am tempted to just let this one i have keep playing for a week or two straight to see how robust it really is! 

 

waiting for the ribbon cable so i can move the screen further from the board. ill just then move the switches to the roof top where they can be done from there. once the card is loaded with videos i doubt ill need to ever pull that again. then just wire up the 5vdc with the little rare earth magnets so it can be pulled off easily if needed to get at the memory card.

 

i should start work on a bezel for the screen for the outside of the building. its pretty good as the screen is only about 3mm or so deep so about how deep those big video screens are on the sides of buildings.

 

jeff

[NXCALE]

Hi. Keep us updated about how things go with the flat cable and thank you for the information Jeff.

[Robert46]

Nice post.. I just realized the video sign using mini MP4 player..  :)

[cteno4]

I've just started the player going here, going to run it for a week and see.

 

I've been looking at the 20 pin connectors to see if I can do one that would take the ribbon cable well (some lock down on the ribbon cable directly) so that a smaller hole could be cut in the building (a thin slot like 1x20mm actually) to feed the cable thru. W.o that a hole close to the size of the screen would need to be cut to pass the wired screen thru or solder the cable once passed thru a slot.

 

I'll keep fiddling. Maybe if I come up with a good solution I'll make some kits for sale for those that don't want to do the tearing apart and soldering stuff!

 

Jeff

[cteno4]

Just an update

 

So I torture tested the unit playing it for days on end and it did fine. Also picked up the slightly cheaper version. Has a different different form factor but otherwise the same system it appears, but looks to be harder to tear into. Slightly different button configuration. The original square form factor looks to be worth the extra buck for easier removal and maybe easier button replacement.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-1-8-Digital-MP3-MP4-Player-LCD-Screen-4th-FM-Radio-Music-Video-Movie-Media-/351605106954?var=&hash=item51dd4c290a:m:mtNB8l_cFoEXhmmOVRubW1A

 

Also got the 1mm pitch ribbon cable, but decided to get a pressure connector to solder to the pc board as that will allow just the cable to be passed thru the building in a very thin 20mm wide slit. Also makes the soldering easy and no hacking needed on the flat ribbon cable. Those should be here in a week or two.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[maihama eki]

Hi,

 

I bought one of these little players in your first post with the same thing in mind.

 

Can you give a little more detail on how you generated the AMV files?  I got hung up on that.

 

Thanks.

[cteno4]

Maihama,

 

Yep that is a challenge! It's not a standard codec. One came with software for the pc, but it was on one of those mini CDs that only work on tray loading machines which I no longer have (along with the of not being turned in for a few years now!). I did find a few video encoder programs out there for sale (all appear to be the same basic code just rebuilt into slightly different interfaces and codec ranges). For the demo versions they either do only the first 5 minutes of a longer piece or only half the file on shorter pieces (a cleaver person can get around this...). They are $20-40 to buy the full versions. I may purchase one of them so if I do I can do conversions for you. If you have trouble converting them, pm me and I can get you some of my files. I have a bunch of commercials and music videos. At some point I want to pull those Tommy Lee jones coffee commercials and get them transcoded to Amv, they are fun!

 

It is the one big limitation on these, but I guess it gets them out of some licensing and paperwork. It's a pretty dumb motion jpeg codec at low size and frame rate, but good enough for this purpose and can't shake a stick at haivng something like this for less than $10!

 

Here are the ribbon cables that will work with these. They have exposed contacts on one side that you can slip into the smd connector and solder the existing ribbon cable to on the other end as the screen flex pic connector has nice little finger contacts to solder onto these.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5pcs-130mm-Length-20Pins-1-0mm-Pitch-FFC-FPC-Ribbon-Flat-Cable-Forward-Direction-/321843944050?hash=item4aef64da72:g:d10AAOSwHnFV3Qvl

 

And the smd connector you can just slip the end of the ribbon cable into and solder to the pc board.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/360656645090?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

Edited February 23, 2016 by cteno4

[maihama eki]

Thank you, Jeff.

 

If I could find conversion software that appeared even mostly legit, I would probably buy it.

[cteno4]

Yeah they all look sketchy,mbut I used one that I had used from that company a long while back and appear kosher. It is the one big problem with these! Let me know if you want me to do some encoding for you.

 

Jeff

[kvp]

I would assume the free FFmpeg package should be able to encode to your format without extra hacking as most commercial programs just wrap this encoder package.

[maihama eki]

That looks promising, kvp.  Thanks.

[cteno4]

Couldn't find the amv codec in the directory. Base stuff not so easy for the regular modeler to use. I had a simple interface someone made for the package like 3-4 years ago and at that time they didn't have the currently used cheap Chinese PVR codec at the time either...

 

Btw I bet these different packages are all based on the libs and jsut custom interface apps then.

 

Jeff

[maihama eki]

I haven't tried downloading it, but under General Documentation

 

https://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html

 

2.3 Video Codecs

 

It does show AMV Video encoding and decoding as being supported.

 

It is just the basic code without any nice interface.  You may be right that this basic core is used by the different packages with the interface being the differentiator.

 

Maybe I will try it.  There could be some learning curve on getting all the options right though.

[cteno4]

So it does, I was looking for the codec list on the site but missed that! Codec must be under a different file name.

 

I'll give it a whack to. The command line formatting is not super tough.

 

Yeah the interface just needs to format the commands to send to the core code and that does all the work!

 

Jeff

[gavino200]

Did this project ever pan out? Do you have any pictures of the finished scene?

[cteno4]

Gavin, I've not mounted these little guys into a building yet, but hope to get a few functioning in the spring in buildings for the club layout this spring. Too many other projects and was more curious if the system would be hardy enough to use and I think they are.

 

they are easy to take apart and frame into a building as a medium sized billboard.

 

here are a few rubs with using these or any other dvrs, cell phones or game players  like this.

 

1) you need access to a few buttons to turn them on and put them into playing all videos on the memory card. You have to be able to see the screen while you push the buttons to navigate the menus. You could either wire these buttons (usually 2 or 3) to a control panel or wire the buttons to the roof of the building.

 

2) the codecs used in the cheap dvrs is usually obsucure ones that can be harder to convert video files to. Always be careful when hunting for software to do obscure things like this as many can come from unverified and trusted sources that could be Trojan horses.

 

3) the cheap and even more expensive dvrs are just that cheap and can blow out. That's why I did a bunch of torture testing on the little car ones to see if they would hold up well with long periods of playing. It's easy and inexpensive to buy a bunch at a time to have backups if some do blow and good to do so if going down the cheap DVR path as these change all the time and the model 6 months from now may not fit your framing and building customization. I'm use to buying backup hardware for exhibits all the time as this is a constant issue with an installation meant to last many years and equipment cycles and even major tech standards reving constantly and new stuff just can't get slapped in the old hole with the old software and wiring unless the same equipment.

 

when I first tried all this like 14 years back I used nice little pvrs that were expensive at the time, but were on sale cheap (still like $50 at the time on sale) and it turned out because they tended to blow out after like 20-40 hrs of playing. Luckily I had it mounted inside the building as the unit did not gracefully come apart and I could just get it playing and slide it into the building. Later when the first blew out I was able to get a couple for like $20 and used them until they were dead then no more around. They also were a pain as they wouldmrandomly just shut down or go back to a menu, these were early units and not al that well tested out! I'll hunt up more of those pictures. Folks have done the same slide in the whole unit with smart phones and game players.

 

http://japanrailmodelers.org/photos/_city/pages/page_33.html

 

4) more expensive smart phones and game players will be expensive and not guaranteed to work well in this situation, but usually work with all the standard video codecs and wrappers. Taking apart smart phones is tough as they are meant to be extremely compact and rugged and not designed to be take apart much at all. The cheap dvrs on the other hand are simple and designed to be easily assembled and thus come apart pretty easily. Game boys and smart phone also are usually pretty large screens at scale. Even the smallest smart phone screen is like a 50'+ diagonal screen!

 

5) need to make your install to be something you can easily remove from the layout (i.e. Easy reach and easy power plug) and come apart to get access to guts to replace, change memory card, or fiddle with.

 

its easy and cheap to experiment with the little cheap dvrs and see if it's for you, they are like 5 bucks and an hour or two to get one torn up and a few videos running. Grab one and mess around, the biggest headache can be the video formats. I have some here I can send you in amv format most of the cheap ones use.

 

The alternate paths is to developer a small video screen that can get hooked up to simple video sources like a rasbury pi or arduino. This would need a micro video controller for the very small screens. I think there is an arduino shield that does something like this if memory serves me right. 

 

Mrp on the forum did I think a pic board that did more simple anmimated signs on smaller oled screens. These are cool, but require a lot of programming and we knowledge to create.

 

i keep hoping someone will start making something fun likemthis for the train market. There are now small oled screens the size of keyboard keys like 64x64 pixels that could have cool apps for a bit of station electronic signage and such. Arduino and rasbury pi components make it cheap to drive pretty complex stuff now. I was talking with a client that was using smaller (like 10") monitors hooked to rasbury pi computers that were playing videos thru a little frameless web browser window. Turned out to be a very simple way to remotely use these and simply control what was playing on each pi by what video was on each page. Simple macro started the pi up and loaded the browser and correct web page on power up. There are many commercial systems that basically do just this but this was something the guy came up with in an evening and the controllers were like $30 and took 10 min to setup! Problem is hdmi monitors don't come small enough for our use!

 

cheers

 

jeff