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For over two years now I have had a dedicated Raspberry Pi running an app I wrote that plays a kind of TV schedule all day long. It was my way of capturing some

For over two years now I have had a dedicated Raspberry Pi running an app I wrote that plays a kind of TV schedule all day long. It was my way of capturing something like the programming I grew up with as a kid. I have to have all the content on attached storage since I don't want to rely on online sources. But then of course the app is simply pulling up a file at a given time of the day and playing it with a media playback library in Python. Unlike television when I was young, there are no commercials. Dead time is filled at random from lists of "shorts" that are kept on the hard drive as filler. (These in fact might include Looney Tunes cartoons or shorts, music videos, etc. scraped from YouTube.) The schedule aspect means that there is a theme to the content and when it plays rather than just serving up random content from the drive. The Wednesday evening movie is always a western for example. Learning shows (courseware) and yoga in the morning, kid's shows around after-school time, a comedy series in the evening, mysteries on Mondays, etc. The biggest shortcoming of the app is that I have no trial way to create the schedule short of a Mac OS app where you have to hand-add each show. When I get time I want to have a mechanism to specify "time slots" for content and have the app do an adequate job of preparing at least a stand-in schedule. (Maybe I'll finally get around to getting this going this Fall or Winter. I hesitate to even point out the repo since it is so half-baked, but if you check my GitHub and look for "UHF", you'll find the last checked-in versions.) On any given day, I can load a web page I set up that shows today's schedule. Since the schedule that the app uses is just a JSON file, the web front-end just uses the same JSON file: parses to find today's content: https://engineersneedart.com/UHF/ https://engineersneedart.com/UHF/

KoolKat23 1y ago
ErsatzTV will suit you well, or perhaps atleast provide inspiration to deal with the issue you mentioned.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  I'll play with it, thanks.
splitbrain 1y ago
This sounds interesting. How big is your library of content? And did you do this for yourself or the whole family? If the latter, how does your family interact with it? Is it automatically running on a central TV? Or on their personal devices?
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  I have like a 500GB drive with about enough content for a year of programming. It was for me — although it is fun to think the kids could plop down and watch Speed Racer like I did. Unfortunately the girls were grown up before I created it. Yeah, it's running all the time. The wife stops and watches from time to time — having to check the web site to see what a particular movie is. She got drawn into Columbo on Wednesdays when she was supposes to be working (from home as it were). I'll stop too from time to time to watch an old Little Rascals or How It's Made. There's something about it just coming on rather than your having to make an effort to pull up the content. I guess just like TV.
  - aaronbaugher 1y ago
    Yeah, I know several people who will turn on a streaming channel of old shows and watch whatever comes on, when they could just as easily pick their favorite episodes. I wonder if it's because we grew up with that, making it a comfort thing, or if there's really something more appealing about not knowing exactly what you're going to watch next. Same thing with music: I have thousands of songs downloaded and can listen to my favorites anytime, but I kinda miss having a good radio station I can tune in and hear something I wasn't expecting, even if it's not as good.
    - JKCalhoun 1y ago
      I think I like the serendipity of wandering by and The Last Picture Show is on, or whatever. As for music — I have all my stuff on a large SD card and it is in a player 24/7 on shuffle/repeat. So, yeah, I never know what's coming on. (Playing on a lowish volume in a different room, FWIW.)

KoolKat23 1y ago

ErsatzTV will suit you well, or perhaps atleast provide inspiration to deal with the issue you mentioned.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
I'll play with it, thanks.

splitbrain 1y ago

This sounds interesting. How big is your library of content? And did you do this for yourself or the whole family? If the latter, how does your family interact with it? Is it automatically running on a central TV? Or on their personal devices?

JKCalhoun 1y ago
I have like a 500GB drive with about enough content for a year of programming. It was for me — although it is fun to think the kids could plop down and watch Speed Racer like I did. Unfortunately the girls were grown up before I created it. Yeah, it's running all the time. The wife stops and watches from time to time — having to check the web site to see what a particular movie is. She got drawn into Columbo on Wednesdays when she was supposes to be working (from home as it were). I'll stop too from time to time to watch an old Little Rascals or How It's Made. There's something about it just coming on rather than your having to make an effort to pull up the content. I guess just like TV.
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  Yeah, I know several people who will turn on a streaming channel of old shows and watch whatever comes on, when they could just as easily pick their favorite episodes. I wonder if it's because we grew up with that, making it a comfort thing, or if there's really something more appealing about not knowing exactly what you're going to watch next. Same thing with music: I have thousands of songs downloaded and can listen to my favorites anytime, but I kinda miss having a good radio station I can tune in and hear something I wasn't expecting, even if it's not as good.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    I think I like the serendipity of wandering by and The Last Picture Show is on, or whatever. As for music — I have all my stuff on a large SD card and it is in a player 24/7 on shuffle/repeat. So, yeah, I never know what's coming on. (Playing on a lowish volume in a different room, FWIW.)