Quickly configure and control an interactive show, no programming experience necessary.
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Plug-And-Play: Control video, audio, DMX, LEDs, microcontrollers, and other common show elements with the connection modules. You can run everthing on a single computer or seamlessly connect multiple computers for large installations.
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Interactive: Trigger linked events from the user interface, connected devices, or the web endpoint. Minerva supports multiple protocols for bidirectional communication with microcontrollers (Arduino, RaspberryPi, ESP, and others) and includes a simple framework for new protocols.
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Reliable: Minerva is written in pure Rust, a threadsafe language. The software has been extensively tested (in real-world installations) and includes an optional live-backup feature to resume instantly if power is lost.
If you're on a 64-bit GNU/Linux system or 64-bit Raspberry Pi, you can use the the binary releases here and skip down to Installing Extras below. There is also a binary for 64-bit Windows, but at the moment is comes with some limitations (no Media playback or DMX).
If you're on a Mac, help us produce working binaries! We don't have an Apple device to compile them.
If you would like to contribute to Minerva, or if you are on Windows or Mac, you'll need to compile from source. Start with these prerequisites.
You'll need Rust and Node.js to compile and run Minerva.
- Installation of Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/
- Installation of Node.js: https://nodejs.org/en
Follow the directions on both websites to download and install these tools before you proceed.
Once you have Node installed, used the node package manager to install react-scripts (which is used to generate the web interface):
npm install -g react-scripts
Once you have installed the two prerequities above, clone or download this repository. Compile the web interfaces with by entering those two source directories and building the interface with Node:
cd /web_run_src/
npm install
npm run build
cd ../web_edit_src/
npm install
npm run build
cd ../
Then compile and run the program using Cargo (included with Rust):
cargo run
This will take several minutes to download all the components. You'll be left with a running Minerva instance with an example configuration loaded. You can use
cargo run
to run Minerva again (it will not recompile this time). This is a debug version (larger file, but otherwise perfectly functional).
To compile a finished copy for deployment, use
cargo build --release
The completed binary will be located in the automatically generated "target/release" folder with the name "minerva".
Extras! Everyone loves extras. To take advantage of all Minerva's features, you'll need the Gstreamer library and a Redis server.
- Sister program Apollo controls media playback directly from Minerva.
- Redis provides real-time crash recovery.
You'll need to install these tools on whichever computers you would like to run Minerva.
Audio and video playback support is built in to Minerva by default.
Minerva uses an external program, Apollo, for all media playback. The two projects are developed concurrently and are separate to improve reliability and reusability.
The most up-to-date instructions for installing Redis can be found here: https://redis.io/.
The default configuration should work just fine for most purposes. For super high reliabilty, you'll want to make sure every change is written to the disk (add to redis.conf):
save 60 1
ZMQ protocols for communication between Minerva instances are now included by default! No additional packages are required.
The Mercury protocol is included for communicating with microcontrollers over USB. The library is complete, debugged, and documented, but not publically published. Email us if you're interested!
On Debian-like systems, you may need to add your user to the dialout group to communicate over USB:
sudo adduser $USER dialout
You'll need to log out and log back in for this to take effect.
The DMX connection doesn't require any additional software or libraries to run and is included by default.
On Debian-like systems, you may need to add your user to the dialout group:
sudo adduser $USER dialout
You'll need to log out and log back in for this to take effect.
All DMX channels default to 0. This can cause confusion when the channel isn't explicitly set by the user, but is nonetheless necessary for the device to function. For example, the main dimmer channel on a light fixture needs to be manually set to 255.
It's possible to run Minerva on less-capible systems! For example, a Raspberry Pi 4 can manage most of the tasks of a full computer (video is a bit touchy).
Take careful notes of the steps to
- cross-compile Minerva, and
- setup your Raspberry Pi host to run Minerva
Note: These instructions are written for compiling the software on Ubuntu 22.04.
To cross-compile, install the correct rust target and install the linker.
rustup target add armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf
sudo apt install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf
You'll also need to add the armhf architecture to dpkg.
sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
And add these sources to the end of /etc/apt/sources.list.
deb [arch=armhf] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy main restricted
deb [arch=armhf] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy-updates main restricted
deb [arch=armhf] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy universe
deb [arch=armhf] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy-updates universe
deb [arch=armhf] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy multiverse
deb [arch=armhf] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy-updates multiverse
Make sure to add [arch=amd64] to the other sources while you're at it.
Install the dev packages for the new architecture.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libssl-dev:armhf
Compile the program using the special armhf build target:
env PKG_CONFIG_ALLOW_CROSS=1 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/pkgconfig/ cargo build_armhf
To cross-compile, install the correct rust target and install the linker.
rustup target add aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
sudo apt install gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu g++-aarch64-linux-gnu
You'll also need to add the arm64 architecture to dpkg.
sudo dpkg --add-architecture arm64
And add these sources to the end of /etc/apt/sources.list (or if also using 32 bit, combine the two like [arch=armhf,arm64]).
deb [arch=arm64] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy main restricted
deb [arch=arm64] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy-updates main restricted
deb [arch=arm64] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy universe
deb [arch=arm64] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy-updates universe
deb [arch=arm64] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy multiverse
deb [arch=arm64] http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ jammy-updates multiverse
Make sure to add [arch=amd64] to the other sources while you're at it.
Install the dev packages for the new architecture.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libssl-dev:arm64
Compile the program using the special arm64 build target:
env PKG_CONFIG_ALLOW_CROSS=1 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/ cargo build_arm64
In addition to any packages above, you need to cross compile Apollo and enable the corresponding changes to the Raspberry Pi listed there for video playback.
Hardware decoding works well for videos up to 1080p at 30 fps. There is a short delay when switching between playing videos, but there is no delay when playing a new video after the first has stopped.
This project is licensed under the GNU GPL Version 3 - see the LICENSE file for details
Thanks to all the wonderful free and open source people out there who have made this project possible, especially Mozilla et al. for a beautiful language, the folks at Arduino for the ubiquitous microcontroller platform, and the team at Adafruit for their tireless committment to open source hardware.