Install the Lumicast Raspberry Pi OS image (easy)

In this guide we are going to prepare a Raspberry Pi to serve as a dedicated Lumicast player. This is done by flashing an OS image onto a SD-card, which is then used by the Raspberry Pi. The second part is about configuring WiFi when the player is booted.

We do our testing using the Sandisk Extreme SD cards. The SD card is extremely important for the performance of the Raspberry Pi and therefore playback of Lumicast.

Before starting, it is important that you are able to connect the micro-SD card of the Raspberry Pi to your computer. This can be done in several ways: using an SD-adapter if your computer/laptop has an input for it or using a USB adapter.

1 - Head over to https://lumicast.com/downloads and download the latest Raspberry Pi OS image. This will download a .img.gz file.

2 - In order to get this image onto an SD-card, we are using Etcher. When you start this program, you can select the downloaded .img.gz file.

3 - At “Select target”, select the SD-card you want to flash the image onto.

4 - Simply hit “Flash!” and wait until Etcher says your image has finished flashing.

5 - Remove the SD-card from your computer and place it in the Raspberry Pi.

6 - You can now boot your Raspberry Pi. It will automatically restart once to finish initial configuration.

If you are not using cabled internet, you will need to use a WiFi connection in order to connect to Lumicast.

Recommended way: through Lumicast

Connect a USB keyboard (and optionally a mouse) to the Raspberry Pi. Hit ‘M’ on the keyboard, then using the arrow keys or mouse, click on ‘Wi-Fi configuration’.

Find your network using the up & down keys and click on the network. Enter the password, then hit ENTER or click on ‘Connect’. Once successful, you will see a check mark behind the network, indicating that your Pi is connected.

Hit ESCAPE to get back to the player.

Alternative way: through the terminal

You can do this by connecting a keyboard to your Raspberry Pi and hitting the following keybind: CTRL + ALT + n

This will open up a terminal window which shows you the networks that are in range. Use the keys on the keyboard to navigate to the network you want to use and fill in its encryption code (password). After that, navigate to the quit button to exit this terminal window and bring back the focus to the player. Your player should now be connected to Lumicast.

If you have successfully connected your device to the internet, you can check whether or not your device is able to connect to Lumicast by pressing “M” on your keyboard. This opens up the service menu, where you can easily see connection details:

Both of the dots should be green, indicating a good connection to the Lumicast service.

The image you used to setup the Raspberry Pi (potentially) contains an older version of the Lumicast Player. In order to ensure everything gets updated to the latest versions, you can follow these steps.

Once you have added your player to your workspace in Lumicast and you still see the icon that indicates your player version is outdated,

… you can easily resolve this by refreshing the player. It should update to the latest version.