Portrait Mode With Bookworm and Raspberry pi4 ?

[michaelpaar]

helgerbe,

Is it possible to invoke portrait mode using Bookworm and a pi4?

Regards, mike

[sapnho]

I get this question quite often these days.

The old instruction set doesn't seem to do anymore: https://www.thedigitalpictureframe.com/raspberry-pi-digital-picture-frame-portrait-orientation/

Any thoughts on how to achieve this with Bookworm?

[sapnho]

Now that we have solved Bookworm + Wayland, does Portrait mode work again?

[adammhaile]

Now that we have solved Bookworm + Wayland, does Portrait mode work again?

Sadly no, @sapnho - I just came here to try and find a solution. I followed the directions at the link you posted above, but of course that doesn't work as you noted. I have yet to find an actual solution.

I'm running a Pi 4 with the latest and updated Bookworm Lite OS and latest picframe.

One thing of note is that xrandr -q displays XWAYLAND0 instead of HDMI-1 - I did try to insert that into run_start.py script but it had no effect:

from picframe import start
import os
os.system("DISPLAY=:0 xrandr --output XWAYLAND0 --rotate left")
start.main()

[paddywwoof]

With the latest setup we use wlr-randr (for turning screen on and off) which should allow --mode and --transform arguments. See https://manpages.debian.org/testing/wlr-randr/wlr-randr.1.en.html

What happens if you run that on the command line while picframe is running?

PS something like

wlr-randr --output HDMI-A-1 --mode 1080x1920 --transform 270

[adammhaile]

What happens if you run that on the command line while picframe is running?

Closer! So, when I run the following command (my display is 2560x1440) it does rotate the display:

wlr-randr --output HDMI-A-1 --mode 2560x1440 --transform 270

One thing to note is in your example you swapped the resolution values in the --mode option which wlr-randr does not respect, noting that it's an unsupported mode. It seems you only need the --transform part....

However... It doesn't quite actually work. I did this initially while picframe was running and the display rotated but picframe didn't get the message and the images looked all stretched.

So, I tried adding the command above to the run_start.py file just like in @sapnho 's original article and that did nothing. Both after restarting the picframe service as well as after a full reboot.

[paddywwoof]

@adammhaile I'm away at the moment so can't check up on this properly, but I seem to remember that I put a couple of variables into the configuration.yaml file to force the correct dimensions on rotated screens. Try setting display_w and display_h, see what that does.

Paddy

[adammhaile]

@paddywwoof Closer still! So, if I set: display_w=1440 display_h=2560

It does work but only if I run the following command AFTER the picframe service has started: wlr-randr --output HDMI-A-1 --mode 2560x1440 --transform 270

It does nothing still when it's in run_start.py I'm not familiar enough with the code to know where/how to make it run that command after the fact...

[adammhaile]

In the meantime, I added an option to rotate images on load, which should solve the problem at least for my specific needs:

https://github.com/helgeerbe/picframe/pull/414

[paddywwoof]

Adam, that's a tidy solution to your problem. It might be even easier, and save adding niche code to picframe, to write a five line python script to just rotate images and save them as a one-off job after copying them to the raspberry pi.

I will look into the issue of when wlr-randr should be run to rotate the screen, once I'm home.

Paddy

[adammhaile]

write a five line python script to just rotate images and save them as a one-off job after copying them to the raspberry pi

I did consider it... probably what I'll actually end up doing. But I was curious how the code worked and thought maybe it might be generally useful beyond my use case.

[paddywwoof]

Yes definitely worth putting up anything that solves a problem for you as it could well help someone else down the line.

I'll test it all out when I'm home but I think I would try putting the wlr-randr line at the end of start_picframe.sh possibly after a pause to let picframe settle. Probably leave run_start.py unchanged.

[adammhaile]

@paddywwoof that was it! With the following set in configuration.yml:

  display_w: 1440
  display_h: 2560

And the following start_picframe.sh:

#!/bin/bash
source /home/admin/venv_picframe/bin/activate # activate phyton virtual env
picframe &  #start picframe
sleep 5
wlr-randr --output HDMI-A-1 --mode 2560x1440 --transform 270

It works great. The sleep might be too long, but 5 works fine so I guess I'll leave it. Thanks so much for the help!

[sapnho]

Updated it in the article. Thanks, @adammhaile