How to use gPhotoShow to build a digital picture frame - Part 5
Remote Control your digital picture frame
Since I already have an MQTT broker installed on a Raspberry PI board using MQTT to control the picture frame was an easy choice.
MQTT plugin subscribes a number of predefined topics, when one of them is received the command is executed. For example I configure the root path "PictureFrame", when the topic "PictureFrame/pause" is received pause is toggled. If slideshow was playing now is paused, if it was paused now it's playing again.
To send command from an Android smarthphone you can use "MQTT Dash" app, it's free and easy to configure
There are lots of command available but I just configured a few buttons for actions I use more often:
Pause: Pause/resume slideshow
Next: Skip to next image
Monitor: Power on/off monitor
Rescan: Starts a scan of the configured folders
Family, Landscape, Wildlife: Sets/removes a filter based on keywords to display picture with specific subjects
Last 30 days: sets a date based filter to display recent pictures
Here is how the Wildlife button is configured:
The topic is "PictureFrame/kwd_filter" the On text is "wildlife" and Off text is empty. In this way the first tap sends "wildlife" and activates the filter, second tap sends an empty payload and removes the filter.
If you don't have and MQTT broker you could use the "Udp Remote control" plugin. This simple plugin accepts the same commands as the MQTT plugin but you can send them with any program app that can send UPD text packets. For example on android there are "UDP/TCP Widget" and "IOT Remote control"
