Play local video in full screen via browser mod

Configuration
1

Hi everyone!

After searching the internet and this forum extensively for days for a solution - and not finding any - I finally decided to post my question here in hope that someone would have a feasable solution for me.

What I want to do:
I have a movie room in my house where I would like to put a screen on the wall, which basically should act as a digital photo frame, but with the exception of it playing videos instead. My idea was to put a raspi zero 2 w behind an unused monitor, both of which I still have lying around and install a basic browser with the homeassistant frontend running on it.

In the browser I would like to have the videos running via the browser_mod custom integration and switch between them through automations based on wheather the projector is on or not (moving movie posters when I’m watching a film, other private videos when I’m not watching)

The problem:
Before even setting everything up, I decided to test my idea with a locally stored media file on my windows browser and found that the video plays back in a popup overlay.

service: media_player.play_media
target:
  entity_id: media_player.edge_work
data:
  media_content_id: media-source://media_source/local/Solar Wind.mp4
  media_content_type: video

Is there any way to have the video automatically playback in full screen mode or does anyone have another/ a better idea to achieve what I want?

2

Sounds more like a job for a media player, like Plex or Kodi.
These could then be controlled by HA.

3

Hey! First of all thank you for your reply. I have never messed with KODI before.

Is it possible to install it on my Pi Zero? Does KODI act as a normal Media Player in Homeassistant? Meaning can I stream my videos to it like any other Mediaplayer entitiy? Does ist have the option to automatically use full screen?

Sorry fir the many questions, but once it is all done I promise to share my project so everyone here can profit! :see_no_evil:

4

I am not sure it can run on a RPi0 and i am not sure any media player can.
It is simply too demanding for a RPi0 in my eyes.
Maybe a RPi0 2 can otherwise I would recommend at least a RPi3.

For the rest of the questions it can do it all.
People use it to make complete home cinemas a d control it from HA.

5

Great! Then I will definately try! It wont hurt trying it out on my Zero 2 W, since I have it here anyways. I’ll post if it works or not.

6

Came here looking exactly for this. I’m trying to use an old Samsung tablet and browser_mod to play local videos full screen.

Goal is to play videos from within automations based on different scenarios.

I have Fully Kiosk Browser as well and assumed one or both integrations could simply play videos full screen. Will keep digging into this.

I’ll download the Plex app from the Play Store but I believe there is a subscription fee?

7

Glad to know I’m not the only person in the world looking for a solution to this problem. As soon as I’m home tomorrow evening I will start tinkering with this.

Even though I Imagine in Case KODi actually does work on my device, I will probanly invest in a cooling system…

1 Like
8

Haven’t been able to tie it all together for my use case quite yet, but I did get Kodi up and running and playing a video from Home Assistant in full screen.

Seems like an Android Tablet will not work too well for what I’m trying to do. Fully Kiosk Browser in conjunction may be the path forward, but as of now, managing the device seamlessly may be a challenge. Will continue testing and report back.

A Pi + Kodi will likely be more straightforward as in @entemery’s use case.

9

I believe I have something workable using Fully Kiosk Browser and Kodi on the Android tablet. Out of the gate, I will admit that there are probably better ways to do this. But it works!

First, I installed the Fully Kiosk Browser and Kodi apps on the Android device, then set up those individual integrations within HA.

Fully Kiosk is really good at controlling the tablet, giving me the ability to turn the screen on/off, turn on the screensaver, restart the device completely and more. It’s set to run on reboot and keeps the tablet in Kiosk mode. The key piece for me was to set the Application to Run on Start in Foreground within Fully Kiosk to Kodi. This way, I have the ability to always make Kodi run in the foreground by simply restarting Fully Kiosk from HA.

Further, I followed Lewis’ tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb9Qe4fjt24&list=WL and set up a battery charging automation to keep the Tablet battery nice and fresh.

Lastly and for the win… I simply call the Media Player: Play Media service in my automations to play any video from my HA media library in fully screen.

I plan to trigger different videos based on different scenarios throughout the day. Now if I could just figure out how to set up looping in Kodi…

TL:DR - @entemery Kodi seems to work well!