Coming soon
Denslide
A slideshow you leave running. Full screen, a folder of photos, a schedule, and more than one screen on the same rotation.
Nothing to install yet. The repository stays private.
What it is
Denslide is a page that fills the screen and stays there. No window, no toolbar. It asks a small server which picture is current, fetches that file, fits it to the display, holds it, and runs the transition. The page does not pick the order. The server does, from a YAML file and the clock.
More than one screen can follow that rotation at once. A browser on a headless machine and a Denframe on the wall are two clients of the same config. Denframe is the frame. Denslide is the software the frame runs. The case, the parts, and the card image belong with the frame.
The first version is a folder you already have, on the machine or on a network share. Cloud albums are later, if they happen. The job of the first cut is a screen that keeps cycling, a schedule that swaps what it shows, and a settings page that writes the same YAML it read.
First version
- Photos from a folder on the machine, or a folder on a network share. An NFS mount is the share this is built for. Files copied onto a frame’s own storage are just another local folder.
- How long each picture stays up.
- Fit, scale, crop, or size the picture to the screen.
- A hard cut, and a fade.
- A settings page for the YAML: sources, hold time, fit, transitions, and templates.
- Several screens on one config, showing the same picture at the same time.
- A schedule with an explicit timezone. Family photos on weekday mornings, sports outside those hours, a black screen or a still at bedtime.
After that
- A screen can keep its own place in the list, or its own shuffle. Left alone, every screen still stays in lockstep.
- An upload onto the frame’s own storage can be scaled so the long edge fits the panel. A USB stick or a network share is never rewritten.
- HEIC and AVIF, for phone libraries. JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP are the first set, and an animation plays as it is. A still taken from an animation is later, because that means rewriting the file.
- A hobbyist update that pulls a pinned version and keeps the photos and the settings. Later, a sealed frame that updates the app and the system from a signed image, and boots the previous one if the new one does not come up.
- A switch that takes the frame off the network. While it is off, the frame plays only what is stored on the device and a USB stick. Shares and cloud albums stay dark. Turn it back on to copy files in.
- Two kinds of frame. A touchscreen can open settings on the glass and ask for the network to drop. A screen with no touch has a slider on the case and nothing else. If both exist, the slider wins.
- Copy a library from a USB stick, a share, or a cloud onto the card, with a cap so the photos cannot fill the system. After the copy, the frame can play with the stick unplugged and the network off.
- A central server for lightweight frames. A lobby screen asks for a set of templates, and that set can change by the clock: a morning look, a lunch note, a black screen after hours.
- Video, with the sound, for the length of the clip, then back to photos until the next one.
- Cloud albums, such as APOD or Amazon Photos. Not the first version.