this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
27 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

54368 readers
1120 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm trying to find a good solution for displaying Google Slides presentations on TV screens at our nonprofit. It should be something simple, that is easy to maintain, as the presentations change daily. Any ideas where I should start looking?

top 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] digger@lemmy.ca 16 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I do something like this for work. I'll share what I use. Take what works for you, leave what doesn't. My feelings aren't hurt.

Hardware: I have two TVs that are driven by Amazon Fire sticks. The software is an Android app, and we picked up the sticks on sale for $20 each. I've not tested the software on other hardware, but it should work on any Android based device. I have plans to switch to Android on a Raspberry Pi or similar. It's only matter of time before Amazon breaks my setup, but for the time being (and for the last two years) this works without issue and was extremely cost effective.

Software: I want to recommend "Slideshow" by Milan Fabian. It's an incredibly full featured slideshow app that will display anything that you throw at it (image files, videos, PDFs, spreadsheets, and more). It can also display web based things like a webpage or YouTube video. You can set timers so that certain content is displayed certain times of day. You can set times and dates so that content that is no longer relevant is no longer displayed. My description here really doesn't do it justice. You should check it out.

My use case: I work for a school that is in a shared space. Beginning at 7am, the TVs show a slideshow of announcements from the school. It also cycles a music playlist of MP3s that are uploaded to the device. At 4pm, the TVs switch over to a web-based dashboard of where individual classes are in the building and which supervisor is closing the building (I built the dashboard in Home Assistant and it is unrelated to the Slideshow app). At 6pm, the screen goes black and the music shuts off until 7am the next morning. Because we share the space, there is a different slideshow that shows on the weekends based on what that group wants to display. When Monday comes back around, it's back to my content. My team builds our slideshow in Canva and then pushes it to the device, but you could easily use Google Slides.

[–] baconmonsta@piefed.social 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for your input!

I'm already using https://pisignage.com/ for automatically advancing slides in the building. Now I just need a simple presentation tool to manually advance the slides during classes

[–] digger@lemmy.ca 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Tell me more about your use case.

[–] baconmonsta@piefed.social 1 points 15 hours ago

We offer digital workshops for teenagers. We have tv's around the building for signage use and for the occasional screen mirroring. Then we have mobile tv's on wheels to use for welcoming presentations while new participants sign in. Currently we use laptops for that but it's a pain and takes time when we need to find a laptop somewhere and set it up for each screen and laptop. Preferred would be something that can just dangle from the back of the tv and we could update the assets on it via wlan. This should be doable.

[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I really appreciate your detailed suggestion and description of what you've done. Especially, I like that you attribute the app developer. You're a good egg.

Do you need any particular kind of fire stick? Do they require an Amazon login?

[–] inzen@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I don't have actual experience doing this myself but in my opinion what you are looking for is kiosk mode. Here is an article https://www.raspberrypi.com/tutorials/how-to-use-a-raspberry-pi-in-kiosk-mode/ Edit: Here's an article about autoplaying a slideshow in google slides. You can set it as chrome homepage or pass the url as a parameter when staring chrome (I think) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/google-slides-autoplay-how-automatically-play-step-by-step-jha-rwzac

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

Walmart sells the onn android tv sticks for $15 you can customize them and change the font end so that it's just a few apps that are easy to navigate to.

[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 hours ago

How far apart are the TVs?

If it's cheaper and/or easier to run ethernet between the TVs, you can use HDMI-over-ethernet extenders (like this one). Fewer PCs/SBCs to manage that way.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

A non-hacky solution would be to buy a cheap used mini-pc with an HDMI output. eBay is flush with ones from businesses. You don't need a ton of horsepower for Google slides. Just make sure the PC is complete and working so you don't have to buy additional parts. If you can prep a raspberry pi for a Linux install you can do the same with a mini-pc and get more performance for less money.

[–] baconmonsta@piefed.social 1 points 15 hours ago

We're already using raspberry pi's running pisignage, which are showing google slides (amongst other stuff) in the building. The only downside is that pisignage only supports automatically advancing slideshows. We need something where the coaches can advance the slides in their own speed.

[–] vogi@piefed.social 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Maybe not really answering the question, but what goes against using an HDMI cable? It would "be something simple, that is easy to maintain, as the presentations change daily."

Assuming you all have laptops ofc.

[–] baconmonsta@piefed.social 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Laptops are expensive, we need several of these running the same time

[–] vogi@piefed.social 1 points 18 hours ago

That makes sense :)

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 0 points 16 hours ago

We use Appspace at work. Or Azulle HDMI stick PCs if we want something with a full OS.