Anyone here tried to use an old joggler for a front end display? I still have a couple of these hanging around… Anyone fellow Joggler users still about?
I am running 2 jogglers with squeezeplay for music… but am about to experiment on whether switching them to a web kiosk to run lovelace works better. Did you ever have a play?
They are still in the back of a cupboard!
What approach are you going to take?
I think I’ll just set up a full screen browser and build a custom lovelace view for them.
Althouth, so far last night I spent 20 minutes failing to correctly install android and Xubuntu on them to test, so it’s going to need more work and brain cells 
Please share how you get on!
I have an old jogger too, I’d love to make use of it again in a simple kiosk type setup,
Has anyone got anything working ?
Hi
I got a joggler yesterday. Ive had squeeze box on it and it looked great but my main aim is to get it in a kiosk mode and show Home Assistant. If I can get a screensaver on with the time. That will be even better too.
I also had XUbuntu on with the desktop but I then read someone who had Ubuntu 18.04 lts on and then installed Chromium in Kiosk mode but currently just got an error when trying to run xstart.
Im trying to keep the build size down but is kiosk mode better in ubuntu desktop or command line OS ?
Anyone got further ?
I have three jogglers looking for a purpose (used to use them for squeezebox also).
If you get anywhere please share!
Lets try and see what we all think is the best way forward.
- Ubuntu Desktop
- Ubuntu LTS Command Line
0 voters
I have two about to go on eBay; happy repurpose if u can for Lovelace!
So I had a bit of a play this afternoon and managed to get a fairly responsive setup going…
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Download the Ubuntu Bionic image from here and write to external USB ( I used 32GB USB3). Follow instructions for WIFI setup and root partition expansion.
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Via ssh run command
sudo of-install xserver
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Install desktop environment (I used LXDE). Also install a touchscreen keyboard (I used matchbox) and Chromium.
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Run command
sudo of-settings autostartx of
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Reboot and load Lovelace using Chrome, login and save the details.
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Via ssh again, run command
sudo of-settings autoxrun of chromium-browser
- Modify ~/.xinitrc and add the following to the chromium-browser line:
–noerrdialogs --disable-infobars --kiosk http://192.168.1.XXX:8123
- Save and reboot.
2 Likes
Hi. I did something similar, got Ubuntu 18.04 chromium kiosk all set up from a couple of webpages.
Ive tried to get xscreensaver working with a time and date too but cant get it to start on boot as I dont want the screen burning in to it.
You thought about anything like that ?
Cheers martyn
This looks great guys! I knew I held onto those jogglers for a reason!
Please share if you get any further.
I’ll give this a go tomorrow. Screen saver would be great. When I had my squeezebox setup I had an NFS share to a folder with photos in it and the squeeze software would randomly show them. Could this be achieved within the Lovelace interface?
Im using mine as a bed side item, so clock and date would be handy.
Maybe HA dashboard is the way to go as you cant get much on there and HA doesn’t rotate tabs…which would be great in this instance
@alxscott, would you mind explaining these steps, how you did this, which packages specifically you installed?
Install desktop environment (I used LXDE). Also install a touchscreen keyboard (I used matchbox) and Chromium.
Many thanks
Again, just a quick play around but…
sudo apt install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl
xscreensaver & xscreensaver-demo
Select glText screensaver configure screensaver as required, including blank screen, standby and power off settings. Exit Screensaver setup
sudo nano ~/sudo .xinitrc
Modify to show:
xscreensaver -no-splash &
above the existing chromium line. Save and reboot.
1 Like
Pretty much what i had in my autobox autostart but I had it after chromium, so moved it before and rebooted.
Any other things you planning on adding ? I thought about looking at HA Dashboards to get more on the screen or a rotating dashboard
Cheers
Martyn
Hi. Just checked and mine now has the screensaver working.
Is there a way to change clock to 24hr ? I tried loads within xscreensaver but nother worked…so i guess its somewhere in ubuntu ?
Also, is it possible to get th, rd, nd, etc next to the date ?
Cheers martyn
Hey guys, which desktop environment did you install? I install LXDE, and installed in this way:
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends lubuntu-desktop
When I reboot, I see the lubuntu splash screen, but then it goes blank, I can’t view the desktop, can;t start chromion etc…
What am I doing wrong?
many thanks
John
Not being at my laptop today. Ill get what i did other day for you