DIY Lyric Monitor for Stage
The goal was to build a prompter for stage that works out of the box. Plug'n play, no keyboard and mouse necessary.
The centerpiece is a cheap orange pi PC, that boots and starts a slide show from USB stick automatically after power on. The slide show is steering by an USB Footswitch.
The box must be built according to the size of the monitor, i recommend a screen diagonal between 22"-24" with ratio of 16:10 or 16:9, don't use a monitor with a reflective display.
The PI use armbian-OS.
Part List
- orange pi PC
- TFT/LCD Monitor
- HDMI cable
- SD-card 16GB
- (tiny) USB stick min.1GB
- 2-port USB Hub 2.0
- FS3-P USB Triple Foot Switch Pedal or this one
- 5V/2A power supply for pi
- 2x USB cable A-B
- 2x Reversible USB feed-through (built-in socket)
- Dish for D-Type Socket
- 12V PC Cooling fan
- Old 5V USB Charger (for fan)
- 4x Rubber feets
- Cabinet corners
- mdf project panel 12mm and square timber 20x20mm
- wood glue and screws
- Structure Paint Black
Building
The dimensions of the box depend on the size of the monitor.
Look at the pictures to get an impression of how to construct the box.
The box is sealed with black structure paint. A roll brush is recommended.
Use a multiple socket outlet to supply the pi, monitor and fan.
The usb sockets are connected to the hub and the hub itself to the PI.
Interior
The pi is mounted with a bracket.
An old PC/CPU fan is used for heat dissipation. I only use a 5V supply for get him quiet.
Ventilation grille is made with an unpunched dish by drilling a lot of holes :-)
Ready Image or Self Made Image
I provide a ready image. Just unzip and use an image tool like Win32 Disk Imager to write the image to the sd card.
If you want to made your own image download armbian for pi
There are a few things to consider:
1. edit the file fstab for mounting USB stick
2. Automatically started application: MIRAGE
3. edit "50-fbturbo.conf" : Option "rotate" "ccw" (this is for monitor portrait format)
4: Armbian configuration utility, set the display resolution
Preparing the Foot Switch
The footswitch comes with a cd that contains the config app.
Plug in footswitch and simply configure the three butttons with "cursor left/right" and "home".
Press "save to key"
Now you can scroll pages and return to page 1 with "home".
Preparing Your Lyrics
To get the lyrics on the screen we need to convert them into images.
If you are using a 16:9 monitor, it makes sense to adjust the page accordingly beforehand.
Set a black background and white or green font.
This is better for the eyes and does not shine so much on the stage.
After the lyrics are written and formatted, it's time for the conversion.
There are two possibilities:
1. Use an online converter like: https://convertio.co/de/doc-jpg/ or https://www.coolutils.com/online/TXT-to-BMP
etc.
2. Export your lyrics to PDF and than use the "Export to image" function from several PDF-Viewer programs.
I use PDF-XChange Viewer.
Maybe there are Text-Editors that can directly export images. I didn't find this function in Word or Open-Office.
3. It is essential to name the first image on the stick "001.jpg". This can be for example the first song or a band logo. This is the first file that will be read, without it the application will not start.