Mathieu Abati

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PapitoBox - an all-in-one, offline media player for grandparents ​

I worked on this project for my grandfather.

He wanted to be able to watch his movies without handling DVDs, and also be able to pause and resume playback where it had stopped.

These were fairly old films, here is the list:

  • Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939)
  • The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940)
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
  • Samson and Delilah (1949)
  • Poison Ivy (1953)
  • Mogambo (1953)
  • Niagara (1953)
  • The Robe (1953)
  • Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
  • River of No Return (1954)
  • Vera Cruz (1954)
  • East of Eden (1955)
  • Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
  • The Night of the Hunter (1955)
  • Giant (1956)
  • The Searchers (1956)
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956)
  • Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
  • The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
  • Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
  • Rio Bravo (1959)
  • Ben-Hur (1960)
  • The Guns of Navarone (1961)
  • El Dorado (1966)
  • The War Wagon (1967)

Design ​

Given the image quality of these films, it was not necessary to use hardware capable of decoding high-definition video. A Raspberry Pi 1 Model B was therefore chosen.

The films were stored on a 2.5" SATA hard drive.

The device is controlled using a radio remote and its USB receiver.

The chosen operating system is LibreElec, which uses Kodi to manage and play the media library. LibreElec and Kodi were configured to remove any unnecessary features and directly display the available films with their DVD covers.

The most interesting part of this work was designing a case in FreeCAD, which was then 3D printed. I created the short assembly video at the beginning of the page using Blender, mainly as an excuse to learn how to animate a 3D scene with this software.

The 3D models as well as the FreeCAD project can be downloaded on the project's Printables page.

Although this case was designed for a Raspberry Pi 1, it can easily be modified in FreeCAD to accommodate other models. It will require moving the mounting posts and possibly adding openings for some connectors located on the same side as the HDMI.