Like the cleaning of a house...
Here we are in the year 2025 2026 and yet another modification of Brandon Withrow's Simpsons TV Waveshare-version TV build.
This one includes some great changes from Jeremy Whelchel's updated version, notably the touchscreen support and adds onto those as well for more recent Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye, Bookworm) support.
The core issue in making this project in 2024/25/26 is that the original guide uses the legacy version of RaspberryPi OS (Buster) along with a video player omxplayer that no longer works on the newer version of the OS. Jeremy's version uses a newer player mpv that unfortunately I also could not get to work on the newest OS (Bullseye) (2024-03-12, Lite) on a PI Zero. I didn't want to rely on the legacy OS, so I wanted to see if I could get it working in the modern OS using trusty ol' VLC.
After much thrashing here it is.
As new Raspberry Pi Os's are released I am trying to occasionally revisit and update if needed. main branch should always be the latest tested; see branches or releases for older releases like v11 (Bookworm).
OS Lite 32-Bit Bullseye (12) Raspberry PI Zero W VLC
A number of changes in the newer versions of PiOS make things overall easier, but different from the original build. I'll note them here as I encountered them. Notably the only settings needed in the config.txt are the gpio and specific screen dtoverlay settings.
Despite the instructions in the Waveshare Wiki, using the config provided for the Bookworm and Bullesye branches of PiOS would not work for me. After lots of trial and error I ended up using the same config they had posted for the legacy Buster branch, and for that still worked. Still use the same dtbo files they provide in the link above.
config.txt
dtoverlay=waveshare-28dpi-3b-4b
dtoverlay=waveshare-28dpi-3b
dtoverlay=waveshare-28dpi-4b
I have also made a Futurama TV and I decided to try a slightly larger screen. Here are the changes I made for the larger screen.
config.txt
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi
dtoverlay=waveshare-touch-35dpi
Still logged into the Pi, install vlc by running
sudo apt install vlc
The touch script also makes use of a simple python package to make communicating to VLCs http server easier. Newer versions of PiOS also don't seem to include evdev so we can install that too.
Depending on your system, you may need to use
pipxinstead or use the flag--break-system-packagesif you encounter issues installing withpip.
apt install python-vlc-http
pip install evdev
The updated touch.py in this repo should be more resilient to other types of screens and eventbus order. It also includes a constant at the top
to use if you rotate your screen that will ensure the touch inputs are also rotated.
As of OS 12, rc.local isn't included (mentioned in the original guide as the method to override pin output) but you can still do the same with a service file (also included in this repo):
gpio-init.service
[Unit]
Description=GPIO initialization
Before=tvplayer.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/raspi-gpio set 18 op dl
ExecStart=/usr/bin/raspi-gpio set 19 op a5
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Update the permissions on the start.sh script to allow it to be run from the service.
chmod +x simpsonstv/start.sh
VLC will also not run as root from the service files, so make sure that your .service files have a user entry in them. The ones included in this repo do, but make sure the user matches the actual user you have setup on your Pi.
I also used an updated version of the 3D model by Freakadude that printed and worked very well.
Further notes from Jeremy's version that are helpful:
The Waveshare 2.8" screen has capacitive touch that wasn't used in the original
build. I added a simple touch.py job to listen to screen events and send a
handful of commands to the video player. Be sure to add a corresponding systemd
service.
You can:
- Touch left side of screen - seek back 15 seconds
- Touch middle of screen - play / pause
- Touch right side of screen - seek forward 45 seconds
- Swipe from left to right - next video
- Swipe from right to left - previous video
It's much easier to manage the videos when they are on a separate FAT partition on the SD Card. Rather than copying over the network or mounting another thumb drive, the card can be plugged in to a normal computer and files can be copied to a mounted partition.
After initially flashing Raspbian (and editing config.txt, etc) but before first boot, which will auto-resize partition to take up all the remaining free space, create a new fat32 partition at the END of the free space. But still leaving enough room for the original linux partition to grow. I left 10GB. This was done using Gparted on a separate linux machine.
Later, once the RPpi is up and you are logged in, you can manually resize the ext4 partition, via something like:
# Resize the ext4 / partition
sudo parted
> print
> resizepart 2 8G
> <ctrl-D>
# Extend the ext4 filesystem to fill up the partitioned space.
df -h
blkid
sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2
df -h
Finally, auto-mount the videos data partition at /video
sudo mkdir /video
Then add the following line to /etc/fstab
/dev/mmcblk0p3 /video vfat defaults 0 2
I also glued in the screen upside down, since the bezel was better covered by
the 3d printed housing that way. To invert the screen, set display_rotate=3 in /boot/config.txt
Switched from Micro-USB to USB-C for the power input. Use something like this Adafruit USB Type-C breakout board. Make sure the breakout board has CC resistors that properly indicate 5 volts--otherwise this won't work with C-to-C cables.