Pi Spooky Video

Video player script for raspberry pi triggered by button attached to GPIO

Features

🔌 USB handling

• Detects connected USB storage partitions (/dev/sdX1 style).
• Mounts a partition read-only if not already mounted (to /media/usb).
• Searches common paths on the USB (/, /videos, /Videos, /media) for video files.
• Compares file size/mtime to decide if copy is needed (avoids redundant copies).
• Copies only new or changed video files into ~/videos.
• After copying, unmounts the USB drive (but only if the script mounted it).

🎬 Video playback (MPV integration)

• Uses MPV in fullscreen with an IPC socket (/tmp/mpv-video-sock) for control.
• Starts videos paused at the first frame (default idle state).
• Shows the first frame by seeking + frame-step when paused.
• If new videos are copied from USB:
• Stops the running MPV instance.
• Starts MPV with the newest file.
• Immediately begins playback (no pause-first-frame).
• If no new files were copied:
• Always repositions to the first frame paused.
• Waits for a button press to start.

🖲 Button trigger (GPIO)

• Uses gpiozero.Button on BCM pin 24 (physical pin 18).
• Internal pull-up enabled, so wiring is simple (button between pin and GND).
• Button press → unpauses playback from the first frame.

🔁 Looping logic

• After playback finishes (EOF), automatically:
• Returns to idle state (first frame paused).
• Re-checks USB for new files.
• If new files were added, reloads them and plays immediately.
• Keeps looping indefinitely.

🧹 Process & socket management

• Cleans up old MPV IPC sockets before starting new MPV instances.
• Gracefully quits MPV via IPC before killing the process.
• Removes leftover sockets to avoid connection errors.

⚙️ Other technical details

• Runs safely as a systemd service (with GPIOZERO_PIN_FACTORY=rpigpio recommended).
• Can run either as root or as user pi with the right groups (gpio, video, render).
• Picks the newest video in ~/videos automatically if multiple files exist.
• Works even if no USB is connected (reuses existing videos in ~/videos).
• Supports multiple video formats: .mp4, .mov, .mkv, .avi, .m4v.

Install

clone this repo and run install script.

sudo apt update;sudo apt install -y git;git clone https://github.com/roymacdonald/pi_spooky_video.git;cd pi_spooky_video; sudo ./install.sh