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.
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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.
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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
As @alxscott said.
I followed the link https://birdslikewires.net/debian-for-openframe and download Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic and follow everything on there but afterwards run of-settings -h to find the commands to autoboot/autologon.
I then followed this link which is a bit different to the above to set up the Chromium Kiosk
https://projects-42.nl/index.php/2018/ubuntu-18-04-lts-kiosk-for-web-or-rdp/
I then used this link for the screen saver but the auto boot didnt work. as I put the xscreensaver command at the bottom of the file when it needed to go existing chromium line
This is a lot more work than the above instructions but it may help a little bit
Martyn
Just a quick update… This link helped me to get Chromium running without black bars top and bottom, and I have setup this extension to have a nice screensaver with weather and temp overlay.
I disabled screensaver but kept the screen power off settings.
That looks great but how did you install the screensaver as it looks like an extention to chrome. Is there a command line install or did you install the gui version of the OS ?
I believe you can do it via CLI; but as I installed Ubuntu to USB and have plenty of space I installed LXDE when I first booted the Joggler to make config etc. easier
Great idea to utilize the Jogglers with HA. Here just tested using Tileboard and it worked well in Windows embedded. Currently utilizing a couple Jogglers in Squeeze mode using the 1Gb internal stuff or in Windows embedded mode running using Seabios and a 16Gb SSD drive.
I have a few that have been running Ubuntu on the 16Gb SSD with EFI.
Will give this a try using the Openpeak 2 (Openframe 2) computers as they have 2Gb of play space.