kiosk-wieting-pre-show

Documenting the Wieting Theatre's RPI (Raspberry Pi) pre-show auto-start kiosk config.

Attention: Use an Alt-F4 keystroke combination to stop the kiosk and get back to a command prompt.

The Raspberry Pi is a model 3B+ running Raspbian Lite Bullseye with its kiosk configuration per Configure a Raspberry Pi as a kiosk display.

As of 19-Jan-2022 there is a second Raspberry Pi, this one a model 4B+ Raspbian Lite Bullseye with its kiosk configuration matching the original config mentioned above.

First Steps

Before you can work through the Configure a Raspberry Pi as a kiosk display procedure it may be necessary to do the following:

• Power-up the Raspberry Pi while connected to a keyboard, mouse, display and Ethernet. After a minute or two you should see a command prompt on the display.

• Run Raspbian's command line configuration tool by entering sudo raspi-config. In the configuration tool find and set the following:

  • Set the timezone to America and Chicago.
  • Set the wireless LAN country to US.
  • Set the keyboard to Generic 105-key and layout to US.
  • Enable ssh access.
  • Change the pi user password from the default (raspberry) to something more secure.

• Reboot if/when prompted to do so.

• After booting back up login to the terminal as user pi with the new password.

• Find the device's local IP address using sudo ipconfig. Look for the assigned IP address, probably of the form 192.168.0.x. Make a note of this address.

Complete Setup via ssh

I find it easiest to complete the remaining setup steps by connecting to the device from my Mac using ssh. That way I can have access to this document and other resources on the Mac AND have the ability to copy/paste from the Mac to the Raspberry Pi terminal.

To connect: ssh [email protected], repeating the IP address obtained above.

History

14-Jul-2024

• Old RPI in the booth failed with 3 bad memory blocks. Using the procedure at https://objsal.medium.com/raspberry-pi-backup-restore-from-macos-57c376937a3a to back that Micro SD card up to /Volumes/iMac500GB.
• I have my newer Raspberry Pi 4B+ working (video only thus far) here at home and will install it in the booth later today.
• Updated the "new" RPI 4B+ and installed VLC per https://groups.google.com/g/reading-hackspace/c/VJYb4x9LH8w?pli=1.
• Using the procedure at https://objsal.medium.com/raspberry-pi-backup-restore-from-macos-57c376937a3a to back the new Micro SD card up to /Volumes/iMac500GB/wieting-preshow-rpi-backup.img.gz.

20-Dec-2022

• Added Chromium logging to kiosk as documented in the attached kiosk script.
• Added my Chromium lanuch command to a new browser.sh script, and
• Added crontab specification to run the new browser.sh script every 10 minutes.

2-Dec-2022

• Something in the system, either the chromium kiosk or the /pre-show Javascript in the website appears to stop showing images after about 15 minutes.

• Mackenzie and I looked a the ~/kiosk script this evening but didn't see anything there that would equate to a 15-minute timer. I need to look at the /pre-show Javascript to be sure there's no limit there.

15-Apr-2022

• Mackenzie managed to get the kiosk to simultaneously play .mp4 tracks at random, and I set the website /pre-show to play only 15-second clips with NO accompanying audio. This works nicely now that we've secured plenty of appropriate, royalty-free music tracks from Cat Campbell Currier.

• The new .mp4 tracks are stored on the Raspberry Pi for playback, and that playback starts automatically when the unit boots up.

• The --force-device-scaling-factor=1.333 option added to the chromium kiosk startup command in the ~/kiosk file no longer appears to be working? 😦

30-Jan-2022

• Making a record of the pi user password on the Wieting's Raspberry Pi. Alt-F4 works to interrupt playback and get to a terminal prompt from the keybaord. ssh [email protected] also works from the Mac Mini in the booth.

• Added a --force-device-scaling-factor=1.333 to the chromium kiosk startup command in the ~/kiosk file on the Wieting's Raspberry Pi. It works!

28-Jan-2022

• Tasked Mackenzie with creating and classifying more 15- and 30-second audio clips.

21-Jan-2022

• Adding more 30-second, and longer, audio clips and working to convert one or two of our ads into the new pre-show format.

• Need to try and introduce .mp4 playback within the new pre-show scheme. Also looking to briefly try and extract .mp4 video from a DCP package. No DCP extraction but I got .mp4 playback working nicely!

20-Jan-2022

• There's a new dyanmic-timing branch of the Wieting website code dedicated to implementing variable timing of clips played at https://Wieting.TamaToledo.com/pre-show.

• In addition to adding dynamic-timing I'd also like to investigate rotating the video output 90-degrees. See the last half of Rotating the screen for the Raspberry Pi 4 for a possible solution.

• Giving up on the dynamic-timing approach since manipulating the setInterval and setTimeout functions in Javascript looks dicey. Instead, I've settled on the approach of using multiple pre-show objects, each 15-seconds long, to handle objects that need multiple screens or longer durations.

19-Jan-2022

• Last evening I formatted my only other micro SD card, 16 GB capacity, with Raspbian Lite Bullseye so that Mackenzie can configure it to match the setup of the 3B+ that is documented above.

• It was NOT possible to restore the backup mentioned above to this 16 GB card since the backup is of a 32 GB image.

• The 16 GB card has been installed in a pristine Raspberry Pi 4B+ where it is ready for configuration.

• Configuration is complete. It works!

• Now making a backup of the 16 GB micro SD card using the same process as before: sudo dd if=/dev/disk4 of=/Users/mark/kiosk-wieting-pre-show.dmg

• Renaming this repository and document from wieting-rpi-auto-start to kiosk-wieting-pre-show.

17-Jan-2022

• Found the key to media autoplay at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49921453/how-to-allow-video-autoplay-in-a-google-chrome-kiosk-app-in-version-66-or-later. Added --autoplay-policy=no-user-gesture-required to the chromium-browser statement in ~/kiosk and it works!

• Ok, I fixed some things in the site's code and now it works beautifully!

• Made a new backup on my Mac Mini using sudo dd if=/dev/disk4 of=/Users/mark/wieting-rpi-auto-start.dmg

16-Jan-2022

• The kiosk is working nicely EXCEPT there is apparently no HTML audio output via the HDMI port.

• The 32 GB micro SD card was backed up to my MacBook Pro per How to Back Up and Restore Your Raspberry Pi SD Card on Mac.

  • Find the micro SD using diskutil list
  • sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/mark/wieting-kiosk-no-audio.dmg

• To get Chromium audio working try: chromium-browser --disable-features=AudioServiceSandbox. Nope.