[PLUGIN] Dual Display – second display for Volumio, with a MilkDrop visualizer on x86

Plugins
1

Hi all,

Volumio drives a single display out of the box: the kiosk opens on the first output and the second one stays unused. I needed both — a small panel on the front of the unit and a TV or monitor nearby — so I wrote a plugin for it.

What it does

  • The front panel keeps the regular Volumio kiosk, and the touchscreen stays bound to it.
  • The second display gets its own browser window with the full Volumio interface.
  • Plugging and unplugging the second display is picked up on the fly.
  • It clears the black border the Pi’s KMS driver leaves around HDMI output.

On x86 there is also a visualizer

The second display can turn into a MilkDrop visualizer (projectM) driven by the audio actually playing. Double tap the panel to switch it on and off, single tap for the next preset. Beat sensitivity, transition time, automatic preset change and frame rate are in the settings. Audio is taken from the copy Volumio already writes to /tmp/stream.mp3, so the main audio path is not touched.

projectMSDL has no ARM builds, so on a Raspberry Pi the plugin works as a second display only — the installer works this out by itself.

Tested on

  • Radxa X4 (Intel N100), Volumio 4, 1600x600 HDMI panel + 1920x1080 monitor
  • Raspberry Pi 4, Volumio 4, the same pair of displays

Ordinary landscape displays are what it is built for. Portrait panels, DSI especially, work once their rotation is sorted out with Pi Screen Setup and Touch Display, but that part is fiddly. Pi Screen Setup itself works fine alongside — it sets up the boot side, this plugin lays out the windows.

Install

git clone https://github.com/Geser-777/volumio-dual-display.git
cd volumio-dual-display
volumio plugin install
sudo systemctl restart volumio

Then reboot so the output layout takes effect. On x86 the installer downloads projectMSDL and the presets, so it needs internet.

Translations

Eleven languages are included. Only English and Russian were written by a native speaker — corrections are very welcome, as are new languages. Details in the README.

Repository and full README: GitHub - Geser-777/volumio-dual-display: Second display and MilkDrop visualizer for Volumio · GitHub

It is not in the plugin store yet. I would like a few more people to try it on their own hardware first. If you do, please say what you ran it on — board, displays, how they are connected — and what went wrong, if anything.

Thanks!
Konstantin