Submitted 4 months ago by chazwhiz@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
For instance an RPI that just boots straight to a full screen browser with nothing else. I’ve used Magic Mirror but I want to switch to a web based dashboard instead.
RPi Digital Signage is really good. Binaryemotions.com. it’s built thoughtfully for a bunch of different situations. The kiosk mode paired with some sort of start page would work.
I like Fully_Kiosk on android, but it’s paid.
Microsoft Windows surely?
/s
The number of kiosks that are stll Windows NT would make you shudder.
hey, I didn't memorize my NT key for nothing
Windows 7
If you can get your head around it, NixOS is perfect for this. It’s what we use at work. You configure chromium to open full screen on a certain webpage, instant dashboard with next to no overhead.
Ooo I do love me some Nix modules. Any particular options to look out for in order to configure something like that?
At work, we use PiSignage for a large overhead screen. It’s based on Debian and uses a fullscreen Firefox running in the labwc compositor. The developer advertises a cloud service to manage multiple connected devices, but it’s completely optional (superfluous in my opinion) and the standalone web UI is perfectly usable.
I have a pi3 with a 20" touchscreen that I'm using. Raspbian booting to magic mirror. It works, but Magic Mirror is slow bloated/slow that I'm not happy with it. I'm about ready to make my own QT based signage - I suspect it will be much more performant as well as more flexible. Still it is a lot of work and so I hesitate to bother (even if version one could be done in a day - I have enough other projects).
Realistically, any LTS distro from a netinstaller that can use a kiosk compositor like cage. So realistically, the usual suspects of Debian, OpenSUSE, AlmaLinux, RockyLinux (or a derivative of one if the native distro doesn’t support Raspberry Pi). Then you just have cage open the browser of choice on startup (e.g. chromium --start-fullscreen <url>) and you have a lightweight and relatively secure web kiosk.
Cage is not what I want from a kiosk. I want window management, I just want a few fixed windows in fixed positions. Sometimes I want to rotate between a few windows. I'm running Magicmirror now which gives what I want, but it is too slow and too locked into the everything is a web app model.
I’ve used Armbian and DietPi. Currently running a magic mirror on a Rock64 and a NAS on an ODROID HC4. Of the two OSes, I think I’d recommend Armbian. Skip installing a DE and just get a basic X session with a simple web browser.
Note that MagicMirror is web based, so the setup steps for putting up a web browser would be similar.
I do exactly this with Armbian and an Orange Pi Zero 3 for a little Home Assistant display.
Autostart a browser in kiosk-mode on boot. Nice and simple.
I also made an image of that SD card if I ever need to set up another.
Kaes3kuch3n@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’ve been using chilipie-kiosk for a few projects. It‘s easy to set up and I‘ve never encountered any problems with it.
It‘s basically just a lightweight Debian installation which launches Chrome in fullscreen mode on startup, opening either the preconfigured URL or the one that was open at the end of the last session.