Streaming browser windows (Zabbix) to TV screens

Operating Systems & Open Source
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At work we have 3 “Smart TVs”: 2 MAG running android and something from Samsung.

We use them for Zabbix monitoring via the built in browser in Samsung and Chrome in the MAGs, but the session times out or the browser crashes a the time. Moving the mouse and keyboard dongle is a PITA and using the remote is a bigger PITA.

I’ve figured I’ll install a VM or take some old desktop and stream 3 browser windows from there to the TVs. It will be easier to access and manage.
The question is how to go about doing that…

So far I’ve managed to get VLC installed on the TVs to stream to them.
I figured I’ll use OBS and an nginx server using an RTP stream, except I’ve never done that before…

Anyone has any tips or better ideas?
We don’t want to run video cables to them - it will be very anoying to do so.

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Do you have to control them?

If not, playback of videos can be done through USBs/DLNA.

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i hate SMART TVs. trying to use them for something to be RELIABLE is impossible. the best thing to do is ignore the smart ‘features’ and plug in something like this.

problem solved. (seriously, smart devices are not)

2 Likes
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^^ Definitely this. And if your budget is a little higher take a look at the Intel NUC series.

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Not sure about the Samsung one, but Android has plenty of VNC viewers available. Install a VNC server (in view-only mode) on a real PC, and auto-launch a web browser to the Zabbix web interface. Have the VNC viewer apps on each of the TVs connect and share the display.

Alternatively, you can actually get a QAM modulator for $100 on eBay. Instead of using VNC or similar, you could have your own HDTV channel distributed over coax cables across the building.

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2048×2294 1.11 MB

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Got it. Stick something into the HDMI port and be done with it.
Sigh its always the “dumb” solutions that work best…
Even if I made something convoluted no one would be able go support it after me…

Thanks for the feedback.

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I’ve done with 8 TVs connected to RPis. I’ve made that x11 and chromium would start full screen during boot passing the url as a command line argument.

Simple enough isn’t? But I had to find a way so that relatively non technical people could control what was being displayed.

The startup file was controlled by Saltstack, which is kinda like Ansible. If someone wanted to change what each TV shows then they would edit an YAML file (one for each display) in a Gitlab repo. The Salt server watches the repo and upon detecting changes would push the new startup file and restart the pi.

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