README

Python script that skips youtube adds automatically when skip button appears on screen.

Why?

• Youtube plays super long (but skippable with button press) ads on roku tv.
• When I have videos/podcasts playing in the background I'm too lazy to have to find remote and press buton

Usage

• Install python
• Install pytesseract
  • sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr
• Connect webcam and point at lower right of tv screen (where the skip button appears)
• Find your TVs IP addresss and set ROKU_IP env var.
• git clone https://github.com/Brian-Guenther/skip-youtube-ads-roku-tv.git && cd skip-youtube-ads-roku-tv
• pip install -r requirements.txt
• python skip_ads.py

Troubleshooting

• You may need to update your ROKU device to enable API access (Disabled by default in recent firmware update)
  • "Settings > System > Advanced Settings > Control by mobile apps" to "Permissive"
• The image to text recognition works about 50-75% of the time depending on the camera quality and glare/shadows/angle/etc.
• Set SAVE_PIC env var to 'true' and the script will save the image to your execution dir as captured_image.jpg
• Set the logger to debug to see what text is actually captured
• Move the camera around while SAVE_PIC is true and make sure you have the SKIP text clearly in frame with minimal blurriness/shadows
• Depending on how many webcams you have connected you may need to change the index from 0 (cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0))

Design

References

1. Roku TV API