Simple Raspberry Pi RTSP stream Dashboard

So, you have a Raspberry Pi and want to use it as a dashboard to display a rtsp stream without having to install a full desktop environment.  This is useful if you want to display security camera streams etc without requiring a full desktop environment or window manager.  This way it keeps your solution simple and lightweight.

Parts needed

  • – Raspberry Pi
  • – Screen

Setup your Pi

You can install the raspberry pi OS lite edition.  Once that is up and running you need to update it:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Next, install the required packages:

sudo apt install -y xserver-xorg ffmpeg

Now reboot:

sudo reboot

Once that is installed, create a service file in /etc/systemd/system/ :

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/stream.service

and paste the following:

[Unit] 
Description=RTSP Stream to attached Screen with ffplay 
After=multi-user.target rescue.service rescue.target display-manager.service 

[Service]
Type=simple 
User=1000 # User UID to run service under
Group=1000 # Group GID to run service under
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ffplay -autoexit -rtsp_transport tcp -sync video -fflags nobuffer -framedrop  -i rtsp://hotname:port
Environment="XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000" #change 1000 to the user above
Restart=always 
RestartSec=20 

[Install] 
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Once that file is saved, run the following commands

Sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable stream.service
sudo systemctl start stream.service

That’s it.  All going well your RTSP stream should now automatically come up at boot.  Enjoy