ATV Testcard

[g0vdu]

I am looking for a replacement G3RFL test card generator. Ours has failed on GB3NQ the Mid Cornwall ATV repeater. Thanks in Advance John G0VDU

[aerostar]

How about a PI Zero. Move all desktop short cuts off, and make the background the testcard 640x480 works nicely..

You can go a bit further and upload various Testcards.jpgs and use FBI to play them as a slide show.

I use a normal PI but the zero will work as it is not working that hard doing this.

[g0vdu]

Thank you Aerostar for the constructive idea. I do have a PI zero but not the brains to use it in the way you suggest. 80 turns on the coil doesn't help. I wonder if you might give me some advice Off Forum and help me put GB3NQ back on air with a Test Card generator using the Pi Zero.
My e-mail address is g0vdu@yahoo.co.uk. I have been experimenting with a San Disk display but have a problem that it will not re boot from a mains failure. Hopefully the Pi will auto boot from power up.
Many thanks for your interest and the excellent caption. The G3RFL unit worked well for 18 odd years I think.

73 John G0VDU

[aerostar]

I have just pulled the info from one of my PIs, and this is what I had installed, subject to any typos it should!!!!! work.
I assume you have used the nano editor to edit/make scripts.
I am not a PI guru!, did this some years ago from info found on web and modified it to suit what I wanted.

If you really really get stuck I could prepare a PI image for you to download with some testcards - let me know I use gmail dot com
support1944
put 2 and 2 together above !

example - may be useful for others.

make a directory in /home/pi and call it testcards
upload your testcard/pics .jpg there

Script to run the slide show, just 2 lines

#!/bin/bash
sudo fbi -noverbose -T 2 -t 8 -u /home/pi/testcards/*.jpg

8 = number of seconds before next testcard, change to what you want.
save script in boot directory, call it
showtestcards.sh or what you want.sh
then make it executable
chmod +x showtestcards.sh
(do this from boot directory where the file is.)

now to run on boot up

in etc/rc.local add
sudo /boot/ ./showtestcards.sh &
BEFORE line
exit 0

NB. Character after .sh is the ampersand & (shift 7 on a UK keyboard)

[G8NXG]

You could also make use of another RPi solution from the Wiki: https://wiki.batc.org.uk/RPi_Test_Card. Very useful if you happen to have one of the early Raspberry Pi's. It offers up to 21 images to be displayed plus the optional banner at the bottom and balloons if you wish.

[aerostar]

from above info
-------
now to run on boot up

in etc/rc.local add
sudo /boot/ ./showtestcards.sh &
BEFORE line
exit 0

NB. Character after .sh is the ampersand & (shift 7 on a UK keyboard)
--------------

The above MAY not work, I looked on one of my later PIs, and had used crontab to start it at boot

this is the command to add using crontab -e from terminal command line

@reboot /bin/sleep 35 ; /boot/ ./showtestcards.sh &

This waits 35 seconds for the PI to get going to the desktop, then starts the slide show.

To exit the slideshow press the Esc key on connected keyboard.

I also have code for 2 push buttons, one to reboot or shutdown, useful to help prevent SD corruption by just pulling the plug, the other to stop the slideshow when you do not have keyboard connected.


I had looked at RPI test card and decided to continue to use the fbi version as it is not limited to number of images.

[G1BVI]

Great ideas using the versatile Rpi, might even try one myself but.....

Can the original RFL Generator not be repaired?
73

Nick