Raspberry Pi Instagram Slideshow

I'm a volunteer at the Idea Fab Labs maker/hacker/artspace here in Santa Cruz, and I was asked to set up a Raspberry Pi for our weekly open house and for IFL booths at events, so that all you had to do was plug it into a large monitor and it would start running a slideshow of Idea Fab Labs' Instagram feed of photos of projects, facilities, and events.

I wrote the slideshow program in Python using the Tkinter GUI interface, and I've tested it with Raspberry Pi 2 Model B computers running Raspbian Wheezy with the LXDE GUI desktop, Raspbian Jessie with the Pixel GUI desktop, and Raspbian Stretch with the Pixel GUI desktop.

If you'd like to do something similar with your own Instagram feed, the instructions below will walk you through getting the slideshow set up on your Raspberry Pi.

Because (at least as of September 2017) the Instagram API in Sandbox Mode only gets the 20 most recent photos from an Instagram account, and in the interest of both reducing bandwidth and being able to run the slideshow even when your internet connection is down, once an hour the program checks Instagram to see if any new photos have been posted to the account, and if so, downloads them to its instagram_photos directory. (If you like you can also copy other jpg files to the directory and they will also be included in the slideshow -- for that matter I used the InstaG Downloader Chrome Extension to download all the photos from the Idea Fab Labs Instagram feed that were older than the 20 most recent, so they would be in the instagram_photos directory too.)

You can configure whether the slideshow displays photos in random order, the order they are in the instagram_photos directory, or sorted lexicographic order (the default is random), and/or configure how long the slideshow displays each photo before moving on to the next (the default is 15 seconds), by pressing Esc to exit fullscreen mode, and then selecting Preferences ... from the Edit pull-down menu. After making configuration changes, click OK, and then return to fullscreen display by either pressing Esc again or selecting Enter Fullscreen from the View pulldown menu.

Note: I've now also written a Raspberry Pi Instagram Slide and Video Show version that downloads and shows Instagram videos in addition to photos, so check that out as well.

Getting the slideshow set up on your Raspberry Pi

Follow these instructions to get the slideshow set up and working on your Raspberry Pi:

1. Set your Raspberry Pi to autologin into the GUI desktop if it doesn't already

   The slideshow runs in the Raspberry Pi GUI desktop, so follow these instructions to set your Raspberry Pi to autologin to the GUI if it isn't already doing it: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/7261/how-to-set-my-raspberry-pi-to-boot-into-the-gui

2. Configure your Raspberry Pi to connect to your Wifi if you haven't done so already

   To download Instagram photos (or for that matter to follow the instructions link in the previous step) your Raspberry Pi needs to be connected to the Internet. If you haven't already done so, do the following to select your Wifi network and enter the password:

   • For Raspbian Wheezy and the LXDE GUI desktop, in the Raspberry Pi GUI Menu select Preferences and then WIFI Configuration.

   • For Raspbian Jessie or Raspbian Stretch, with the Pixel GUI desktop, click the wifi icon at the top right of the taskbar.

3. Do a general update of your Raspberry Pi software if you haven't done so recently

   To install updates to your Raspberry Pi, in a terminal window, run

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get upgrade
   sudo reboot
   

4. Python 3 or Python 2?

   The Raspberry Pi Instagram Slideshow Python code will work with either Python 3 or Python 2, but as described in the steps below, how you install the required Python libraries and how you run the program will vary a little depending on which version of Python you want to use. Basically, for Python 2 you will be running python and pip, and for Python 3 python3 and pip3.

5. Install python-dev and python-setuptools if you haven't done so already

   The slideshow is written in Python, and before you can install Python libraries for talking with the Instagram API and displaying photos you will need to install python-dev and python-setuptools if you haven't already done so.

   Enter the following into a terminal window if you want to use Python 2:

   sudo apt-get install python-dev python-setuptools
   

   Or if you want to use Python 3:

   sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3-setuptools
   

6. Install pip (the Python package manager) if you haven't done so already

   Type the following into a terminal window if you want to use Python 2:

   sudo apt-get install python-pip
   

   Or if you want to use Python 3:

   sudo apt-get install python3-pip
   

7. Install the Python requests library

   The slideshow uses the Python requests library to talk to the Instagram API -- install it by entering the following into a terminal window if you want to use Python 2:

   sudo pip install requests
   

   Or if you want to use Python 3:

   sudo pip3 install requests
   

8. Install a library for handling JPEG images

   Instagram photos are downloaded as JPEG images, so type the following into a terminal window:

   sudo apt-get install libjpeg8-dev
   

9. Install the Pillow Python Imaging Library

   The slideshow uses the Pillow library to display the Instagram photos, so install Pillow by entering the following into a terminal window if you want to use Python 2:

   sudo pip install Pillow
   sudo apt-get install python-imaging-tk
   

   Or if you want to use Python 3:

   sudo pip3 install Pillow
   sudo pip3 install pillow --upgrade
   sudo apt-get install python-imaging-tk
   

   You may get error messages about missing libraries for other image formats, but right now we're only concerned that the JPEG library in step 8 was installed.

10. Create a directory for the slideshow, and copy the files from this repo into it

    Create a directory raspberry_pi_instagram_slideshow in the /home/pi/ directory, and copy the files instagram_slideshow.py, tkSimpleDialog.py, and instagram_slideshow.bat from this repo into it. (Or if you prefer you can use a different slideshow directory name and/or location, adjusting its name/location in subsequent steps accordingly.)

11. Edit instagram_slideshow.bat to specify Python 2 or Python 3.

    Use a text editor to edit instagram_slideshow.bat so that depending on whether you're using Python 2 or 3, the line for the Python version you're using will be uncommented, and the line for the other version will be commented out.

12. Make instagram_slideshow.bat executable.

    Make the file instagram_slideshow.bat executable by entering the following into a terminal window:

    chmod 755 /home/pi/raspberry_pi_instagram_slideshow/instagram_slideshow.bat
    

13. Get the Instagram access token for the account you want to use with the slideshow, and enter it into the slideshow code

    There are other ways to download Instagram photos than their API, but I used their API. When I was using the Instagram API for another project last year, all you needed to do to download photos from an account was to register as a developer and get a client id, but now you have to go through a lot more steps to generate an access token for the account you want to access. To get the access token I followed the instructions on this How to get Instagram API access token and fix your broken feed page, and as I do some Django development I used the Django development server (as python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 on my Windows system) in their "your favorite MAMP, LAMP, Node whatever you use to create a local server" step.

    When you get the access token you need, use a text editor or IDE to substitute it for "put your access token here" in the line

    self.INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN = "put your access token here"
    

    in instagram_slideshow.py.

14. Set the Raspberry Pi to run the slideshow automatically after the GUI loads

    The issue here is that you want the program to run not only after the Raspberry Pi boots, but after the GUI loads.

    What worked for me was following the instructions in one of the posts in the How to launch programs on LXDE startup topic in the raspberypi.org forums, doing

    • For Raspbian Wheezy with the LXDE GUI desktop: sudo nano /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

    • For Raspbian Jessie or Raspbian Stretch, with the Pixel GUI desktop: sudo nano /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

    to edit the autostart file, adding the line

    @/home/pi/raspberry_pi_instagram_slideshow/instagram_slideshow.bat
    

    to the end of the file, and saving it.

15. Disable the Raspberry Pi screensaver

    It's great to be have the Raspberry Pi set up so that all you have to do is plug it in and the slideshow will start, without needing to have a keyboard and/or mouse connected, but pretty sad if the slideshow only lasts for ten or fifteen minutes until the screensaver blanks the screen. :-(

    • What worked for me with Raspbian Wheezy and the LXDE GUI desktop was following the "2 – Disabling the blank screen forever" instuctions in this How to Disable the Blank Screen on Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) HackLab post.

    • What worked for me with Raspbian Jessie with the Pixel GUI desktop, was adding the line xserver-command=X -s 0 dpms to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf as described in this Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange comment.

    • What worked for me with Raspbian Stretch with the Pixel GUI desktop, was following the instructions in https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/screensaver.md to install the X Windows screensaver application by typing sudo apt-get install xscreensaver into a terminal window, rebooting the Raspberry Pi after the installation finishes, bringing up the Screensaver Preferences dialog by selecting Preferences/Screensaver in the Raspberry Pi GUI menu, and changing "Mode" to "Disable Screen Saver".

Running the slideshow on your Raspberry Pi

Once you've followed all the above steps, reboot your Raspberry Pi, and after the GUI desktop starts the slideshow should start running automatically.

The first time you run the slideshow, it will create an instagram_photos subdirectory, and you will see messages about photos being downloaded in a terminal window before it starts displaying the photos.

If instead of showing messages about downloading photos, it immediately blanks the screen, this means that it was not able to download any photos to display due to not having a connection to the Internet (if there's no Internet connection the slideshow will just display stored photos, but to get stored photos in the first place you need to be connected to the Internet) or there being a problem with your Instagram access token. To see what's going on, use Alt-Tab to switch to the terminal window and see the status messages.

If at any point you want to close the slideshow, here are two ways to do it:

• Do an Alt-Tab to switch to the terminal window, and then do a Ctrl-C to close the slideshow but leave the terminal window open, or just close the terminal window to close both of them.

• Press Esc to get out of fullscreen mode, and then you can either (1) select Exit from the File pull-down menu, (2) click the X close button at the top-right of the slidehow window, or (3) do a Ctrl-C from the terminal window or close the terminal window.