I have previously written about digital sign solutions, not here, and I wanted to create an updated how-to on Anthias, which was previously known as Screenly OSE. Essentially, it is still Screenly but with its own more unique name for differentiation. Some things have changed and not all the instructions out there seem to work for me. This is a guide for future me and you too if it suits you.
Bottom Line Up Front: Anthias is a great digital signage project that makes managing messages and information incredibly easy and quite convenient. There are a few catches with Anthias and in order help navigate those, I am going to provide a step-by-step to set it up to make it work well for you and save you the time and trouble of searching for answers for a few of my problems I had with it.
Hardware
The total cost of using a lower end Raspberry Pi 4 along with everything you need should run you less than $100. A keyboard is required for initially setting it up. Because the Raspberry Pi is such a small and light device, it is easy to tuck behind a TV or monitor.
- Raspberry Pi4 – 4GB | $62.00
- Raspberry Pi4 Case | $10.00
- USB Type C Power Supply 15W | $8.00
- MicroHDMI to HDMI video cable (6ft) | $10.00
- MicroSD Card, 32GB or more | $8.00
- USB Keyboard (only required for initial set up)
Software
There are a number of ways to get image the SD Card for the Raspberry Pi but my preferred and easiest method I know to make this happen is to use the Raspberry Pi Imager from Flathub or the Snap Store. This makes it easy to install the image right onto the SD Card.
Note: I am going to deviate from the instructions from the Anthias Github. There is an Anthias image you can install but it was not a successful installation and I did spend quite a bit of time with it. I did read someplace that you will have better success using the script to install it for which I completely agree.
Install Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye)
Using the Raspberry Pi Imager, you first need to select Choose Device and select what is appropriate for you. In my case, I am going with the Raspberry Pi 4. I have also used this on the Pi 3 with great success.
Next, select the Choose OS. Look for Raspberry Pi OS (other) to get to the Legacy 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS
I have found that the only version that has worked well for me is the port of Debian Bullseye. When I have tried to use Bookworm, the script fails to complete when installing Anthias.
I do have to tip my hat to the developers that worked on Raspberry Pi Imager. I appreciate how it only shows removable media and not all your drives. Select the desired Mass Storage Device from your list.
When the three main steps are complete, select Next.
I strongly suggest that you do apply some customized settings to smooth out the rest of the process. Select Edit settings.
In the General Settings, you are free to change the Username to something other than Pi if you wish. If you plan on having this connect to a wireless network, it is also recommended you set that up here as well. Don’t worry, it is easy enough to make changes using raspi_config at a later time. You should also set the Wireless LAN country and local settings to what is appropriate for you.
Under services, enable SSH and use password authentication, unless you wold prefer to only allow public-key authentication only.
Once that is done, select Save then Yes to apply the customization settings. You will have to agree one more time to write to the SD card and let the imager do its job.
Once that is complete, remove the SD Card from your computer and move it to the Raspberry Pi. Connect the HDMI to the port closest to the USB Type C power connector, your keyboard, and Ethernet if applicable.
Install Anthias
To make the installation of Anthias more convenient, I recommend you SSH into the Pi and to run the installation script. After you log in, type:
ip aThen look for the IP address of the device.
Then, I would recommend you SSH into the Pi from another box.
ssh pi@172.18.4.39Install curl, as this is not in the Lite version of Raspberry Pi OS.
sudo apt install curlFrom there, run the this in the terminal to begin the installation.
bash <(curl -sL https://install-anthias.srly.io)Follow the prompts as you see fit for your purposes. I would, however recommend that you do choose to do the full system upgrade so you don’t have to mess about with the system after the fact. Once it is done, let the machine reboot, and you are ready to sign into the device and upload or associate content.
Adjusting Display Properties
The biggest issue I had here was getting the Raspberry Pi to display its content in 1080p on a 4k Screen. I searched for solutions and tried many of them which burned up a few hours of my life so rather than waste the research time and solution, I would just document it here for future self.
Since the raspi_config does not give you the option to set the screen resolution anymore, you have to manually go into /boot/config.txt and make the following modifications, as seen in white text below.
This first setting instructs the system to not automatically detect the screen resolution
hdmi_force_hotplug=1The next two settings are required in order to set the HDMI output to 1080p. In my testing, this will only apply to the HDMI connector nearest the USB Type C power input. hdmi_mode=16 dictates the display operate at 1080p.
hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16I couldn’t find anything that explicitly describes what “hdmi_group=1” does but all three of these settings are required for this to work. I have tested various combinations to verify all three are necessary. Of course, things could change with the next version of Raspberry Pi OS…
Features
There are three main features I find useful for Anthias. The most common is just displaying a picture. With a message of your choice. One mildly irritating aspect of Anthias is that it will not scale a picture up to the display resolution. So, for the way these are configured at 1080p, any image that is less than 1920×1080 will have a black boarder around it. It would be nice if the pictures were scaled to fit.
The second most commonly used feature is playing videos. These are generally short videos but are great because it is good to have a mixture of static and motion content or else the digital display is just lost in the sea of constant bombardment of messaging.
You can pull in remote content from YouTube or even web pages themselves as content to be viewed. This is handy for situations where you need to pull in live content like weather or some sort of live news feed. This opens up a whole myriad of possibilities for the type of content you pull in. Just one note on that, if you do add a web page, you do want to give it a little longer of time to pull in the content. It is a fresh feed every time.
Running and Displaying Content
I’m sure you can think of many applications for having a digital sign solution. Anthias is simple and great for scheduling and displaying messages for your organization or maybe even your family. That would be a bit weird, UNLESS you put a monitor on your fridge? That could be handy.
The way I am using it now is to communicate various messages important to the organization I work for to employees.
The interface is very intuitive for Anthias. I would say, of all the digital display system I have used, it is very much the most intuitive. This is great because it is easy for anyone to start managing but it also means that the feature set is a bit lighter.
Add Asset
In order to have something displayed on your digital display system, you need to begin by adding assets to it. It is as siple as pressing the Add Asset button at the top of the page which will lead into adding assets with two options: URL or Upload.
URL assets can be a link to a web page with live content or a YouTube video link. So, if you have some content that you want to play from a remote video, this will absolutely do it and do it well. Do keep in mind, that long videos do require Anthias to do some checking and for all I know it might be caching it too and will therefore take some time before it will be available.
The more common way I am using this, I am uploading content to it. Mostly pictures, jpg or png file types. Do note, you cannot upload a PowerPoint presentation on this and expect it to work. It is not compatible. It will take some training for some people to upload the right media with the right size image. There is an issue with Anthias will not automatically scale the image to the screen size. Video is no problem, so maybe that is some encouragement to add some video content to your digital signage.
Managing Assets
Once you have added some assets, they will automatically appear in the Inactive assets section of the main page. Just by toggling them you will put them in the Active assets section and by default will have a one month run before they are automatically put back into the Inactive assets section again.
Edit Asset
Editing an asset is very useful, you can manually set the start and end dates, the duration the content will be displayed on the screen and if you want to make it even easier for you, there are some more options in the Play for setting. You can have it play 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or forever. Very handy if you just want to put something up for a day or week.
Additionally, you can set content to start displaying in the future. Lets say you have some messages you want to display in for a week starting in a week, that is all tunable to your liking. This is also, incredibly handy.
What I Like
Anthias is a solid project that does what it says it will do. It has just enough features to communicate what is important well to your team of people and also provide just enough flexibility to make managing content precisely as you desire. Having the ability to schedule out future events or messages is incredibly useful.
Running Anthias on a Pi is such a great use for it. It doesn’t strain the thing and it can run for years without touching it. That said, you should take the time and keep the thing updated so that it doesn’t become compromised.
There are just enough settings to make my personal preferences managing this much happier. They have included a 24-hour clock and a date format that is ISO and works better for my eyes. That whole MM/DD/YY is absolutely the worst and if you are using this it is actively stabbing my eyes when I see it. Setting the user name and password is great for keeping out the curious intruders that you may have in your organization.
Using the Dark Reader extension on web page very much enhances the appearance of the interface. I didn’t realize I had that running as I pulled all the screen shots until the very end. But if you don’t have it, it looks totally fine without it. I really do not care for white backgrounds but I think it feels “friendlier” when that is standard.
Perhaps most importantly, Anthias is not cloud based. It runs completely locally. I find that to be absolutely necessary for several reasons. One such reason is the security it provides and having something else that chats out to the scary internet is something I am doing everything possible to eliminate when not necessary.
What I Don’t Like
Installing Anthias from the Raspberry Pi imager just didn’t work and that makes me sad. That would make deploying these so much easier. Every time I have tried to use it, I have had weirdness in the behavior. One such issue was a boarder I could not clear out, totally bonkers. I am glad that the script still works fine so no complaints, really.
Fiddling around with the config.txt file to get the display right was quite a pain to find the solution. It would be nice if Anthias just scaled all the images to the screen size without having to take extra steps. It is also of note, you have to put the images on the Pi at the same resolution as the screen to have a successful display.
Final Thoughts
Anthias just might be the open source ticket to the perfect digital sign solution for your organization. If you have a need to communicate important messages to your team of people and you are tired of fiddling around with PowerPoint presentations on a bloated out Windows machine that randomly shuts off, prompting you to get a ladder to go above the ceiling tiles to replace it, this might fix your woes.
If you want to check out the more feature packed Screenly, the closed source cousin to Anthias, this is a great way to support the project as well. That gives you a lot more features, such as centralized management for multiple digital displays. If on the other hand you don’t need all that, Anthias is a perfect, non-cloud based, reliable, digital sign solution.
References
https://anthias.screenly.io/
https://flathub.org/apps/org.raspberrypi.rpi-imager
https://snapcraft.io/rpi-imager
https://github.com/Screenly/Anthias
