Low Xibo frame rate on RPi3+AndroidThings

Hi,

I have installed Android Things 1.0.4 (with the android-things-setup-utility-linux) and Xibo 1.8.107 (over the adb) on a Raspberry Pi 3, nothing else.
I have asigned a Playlist with a Picture, a Webpage (dynamic HTML5) and a Video (h264, FHD, 60fps).
All played well on Windows Test Clients (with more Powerfull PCs) and even with Xibo 1.6 on a Raspberry Pi 1 (or 2?) under Linux.

My Problem: All content (the Video and the Webpage) renders really slow (i would say ~5fps).

I don’t know what I done wrong!? I read that in Android Things hardware acceleration is on by default, so I think I can’t do something in that direction!?

Does anybody know how I can get a usable System?

The Raspberry PI computers are not officially supported due to their low hardware specification. If you are having issues with Layouts not displaying correctly, this is due to the Raspberry PI lacking the power needed to run Xibo effectively.

I would strongly recommend using a different Android device for Xibo. I have included a link below to our recommended Hardware Guide for Android, all of these devices have been tested.

Many Thanks.

OK. Does this mean Xibo 1.8 is so much slower then 1.6 or is Android the bottleneck? As I write, I have an older (customer) system with an, I checkt it now, Raspberry 2 with Raspbian and Xibo 1.6 and all works perfectly smooth since some years now.

The problem is that we would update this custom build Box, we are embedded device developers, to Xibo 1.8 and therefore we need an… at least Raspberry “style” (connections, layout, price) system. I have looked through your recommended list but none of these are naked single-board computers.

The issue is not related to 1.8 being slower, but that the Raspberry PI does not have a high enough Hardware Specification to run it smoothly.

I acknowledge that you have a customer that has been using Xibo 1.6 with Raspberry PI 2, which I’m pleased to hear, however Xibo was not designed for Raspberry PI.

The Recommended Hardware Guide is a list of suggested devices that have been officially tested. I’m sorry to hear that you cannot see a suitable device for your setup. This does not mean that no other devices other than on this list will work reliably, only that we cannot officially guarantee their performance as they will not have been tested.

I hope you are able to find a suitable hardware solution. You may find other users have written posts about their experiences with various devices, which could be helpful when considering an alternative to the Raspberry PI.

Many Thanks.

OK. When I have to search for other devices, stronger than the Pi3, what are the minimum hardware specs “Xibo for Android 1.8” needs to run smoothly (CPU Type/Cores/GHz, RAM, Flash Size/Speed…)?

I do not have an official minimum hardware spec for the Xibo for Android Player, however the hardware listed in the Recommended hardware guide should provide some pointers regarding specs.

Whilst this is not an official recommendation and I cannot guarantee its performance, the ODROID boards, namely the C1+ and C2 both support Android and so may be worth considering when looking for an alternative.

Whilst there is no obligation for you to do so, if you find a hardware solution that works for you, it would be much appreciated if you could post about it on the Forum. Many users are looking for feedback from others using alternative hardware solutions, posting about your experiences will therefore help the Community.

Many Thanks.

Thanks!

And yes, if I find something that works for us I will share that information :). At the moment we are using an Up-Board 4G/32G with Win.10 x64 IoT and that works great but it is a bit pricey compared tho the RPi2 ;). Therefore we search for a cheaper solution.

That sounds great, thank you in advance for sharing your experiences with the Community.

Many Thanks.

It’s a real limitation that Xibo doesn’t work on Pi (or it’s rip offs). There are plenty of other signage systems that use Pi with quite impressive results - so saying there is generic lack of processing / GPU power is perhaps a little disingenuous. The Xibo business model (£15 for a licence, then dirt cheap / free host your own CMS) is brilliant in comparison to other approaches of ‘£quite high per month’, but requiring the ‘recommended’ £100+ Android players ruins many experimental / non profit / speculative business cases.

The problem is that the Android subsystem cannot run well on the Pi’s.

Playing video/images full screen like Screenly does is one thing, you can stream to the GPU directly - composing a display with multiple assets is ‘expensive’ and requires a proper GPU which the Pi’s simply does not have (the VideoCore IV has been present since RPi 1 and back then was already very old tech and does not support modern OpenGL/CL instructions)

So everything is done on the CPU and even there the latest Pi 3 is only an ARMv7 at 1.2GHz (2011 tech) and a 300MHz GPU in order to reduce the cost and increase profit margins; Even the $25 tv boxes has for a while now had ARMv8.

Anything relatively optimized for Android with a decent GPU should work.

I’ve been using a firetv stick sideloaded with xibo. Works well for what i want it to do.