Description

picast is a simple wifi display receiver written by Python3 on Raspberry Pi. Current status is early alpha. Bug reports and contributions are welcome.

Dependency

picast depends several external utilities and some are only on Raspbian.

• tvservice (raspbian only)

• udhcpd (debian/ubuntu only)

• wpa_supplicant

• wpa_cli

• vlc

Installation and run

Run apt install command on Raspbian(buster or later) / Raspberry Pi Zero W/WH, RaPi 3B+, RaPi 4.

$ sudo apt install net-tools python3 udhcpd python-gst-1.0 libgtk-3-dev python3-gi python3-pip gir1.2-gtk-3.0
$ sudo apt install gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0 gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-1.0
$ sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-gtk3 gstreamer1.0-plugins-rtp
$ sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-omx-rpi gstreamer1.0-omx-rpi-config vlc
$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends lxde

$ python3 -m pip install picast
$ picast

Customize

When you want customize for your environment, please copy picast/settings.ini to your favorit place and edit it.

then launch picast such as follows:

$ picast --config /home/pi/settings.ini

Development

It is recommended to use virtualenv to deploy development environment. Because python3-gi module is a binding library to GTK++ libraray, so it is not easy to install using python standard pip.

It is recommended to use system’s site-packages python3-gi library.

$ sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-tools
$ git clone https://github.com/miurahr/picast.git picast
$ cd picast
$ python3 -m venv --system-site-packages venv
$ source venv/bin/activate

And then install picast as an editable development environment.

$ pip install -e .

Then you can launch in increased debug level.

$ picast --debug

Debug log

There is a debug log at /var/tmp/picast.log. It is configured in logging.ini.

IDE

It is recommended to use PyCharm professional edition, which has a remote deploy and debug feature.

Preparation

Increase GPU memory for decoding fullHD video stream. add gpu_mem=128 to /boot/config.txt

Usage

Picast search for the wireless display named “picast” on the source device you want to cast. Use “12345678” for a WPS PIN number. It is recommended to initiate the termination of the receiver on the source side. After Pi connects to the source, it has an IP address of 192.168.173.80.

These parameters are configured in settings.ini.

Autostart

Edit /home/pi/.config/lxsessions/LXDE/autostart

@xscreensaver -no-splash
@lxterminal -l -e /home/pi/picast/bin/picast

Known issues

• Latency: Limited by the implementation of the RTP player used.

• WiFi: The on-board WiFi chip on Pi 3/Zero W only supports 2.4GHz. Due to the overcrowded nature of the 2.4GHz spectrum and the use of unreliable rtp transmission, you may experience some video glitching/audio stuttering. It may be better with Pi 3B+/4 that support IEEE802.11ac 5GHz.

• HDCP(content protection): Neither the key nor the hardware is available on Pi and therefore is not supported.

License and copyright

• Copyright 2019 Hiroshi Miura

• Copyright 2018 Hsun-Wei Cho

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.