rasperry pi

I tried to use my new rasperry pi for a signage-device (it must only display a certain web-page and autoscrolling it) in my school (borg perg). I created a SD-card with debian-wheezy - documented on the raspberry website. Then I applied the following changes:

  1. Disabling the password for pi 
    sudo vi /etc/passwd
    Deleting the 'x' in the line starting with 'pi'!
  2. Configure the keyboard for Austria 
    sudo raspi-config
    Then choose between the various layouts
  3. Configure auto-login with mingetty Be sure you have an internet connection: 
    sudo apt-get install mingetty
    in /etc/inittab exchange the line for the first tty 
    1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --autologin pi tty1
  4. Rotate the display bei 90 degrees 
    sudo vi /boot/config.txt
    append the line 
    display_rotate=1
  5. automatic start of X11 
    vi ~/.bash_profile
    append the line 
    /usr/bin/startx
  6. hide the mouse pointer, switch off screen energy management and start browser 
    sudo apt-get install unclutter x11-server-utils
    create a file 'my_autostart' in /home/pi, make it executable (chmod +x) and fill in the lines 
    /usr/bin/unclutter #hide mouse pointer
xset -dpms # switch off display power management
xset s noblank
xset s off # no screensaver
/usr/bin/midori
  7. start my_autostart automagically 
    sudo vi /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
    fill in the line 
    /home/pi/my_autostart
  8. configure midori

caveats

Midori cannot cope with CSS3 und some javascript commands are not executed that will be needed for my purpose. I hope Midori will be improved in the future concerning these aspects or a workaround ('quirksaround') had to be found.

Postscript

  1. I have installed chromium for better javascript performance 
    sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
    Chromium takes more time to start but then its javascript engine reacts faster. Of course I had to adapt the line concerning to midori in "my_autostart"-script.

    Then I wanted chromium to start maximized, "--kiosk" start parameter did not help. So I tried to simulate pressing the F11 key(full screen mode) with xdotool
    But it did not work for me - after 1 hour of trying I gave up. But I used it later - read further on.

  2. with raspi-config I increased the clock-frequency to 900 Mhz (medium) This results in a more smooth scrolling of the browser window

rasperry pi -Model B (512MB)

  1. boot into LXDE, german keyboard layout, overclocking, ssh-server, root-password especially ssh-access is very useful for changing some configuration files or to trigger a simple reboot. 
    raspian-config
  2. install the necessary packages 
    sudo -s
apt-get update
apt-get install unclutter x11-xserver-utils 
apt-get install chromium-browser xdotool
  3. hide the mouse pointer, switch off screen energy management, start browser and press F11 automagically 
    sudo vi /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
			
    /usr/bin/unclutter #hide mouse pointer
xset -dpms # switch off display power management
xset s noblank
xset s off # no screensaver
/usr/bin/chromium
/home/pi/pressF11
    pressF11 is a script, which simulates pressing F11 (switching into full screen mode of the browser) 
    cat /home/pi/pressF11

#!/bin/bash
sleep 60
WIN=$(xdotool search --onlyvisible --class chromium|head -1)
xdotool key --window $WIN  F11
  4. In a later version I substituted iceweasel for chromium.
  5. configured a static IP in /etc/network/interfaces 
    auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
#iface eth0 inet dhcp   
######################                                                                                                                                                                                       
iface eth0 inet static                                                                                                                                                                                         
address 192.168.0.248                                                                                                                                                                                          
netmask 255.255.248.0                                                                                                                                                                                          
gateway 192.168.0.1  
######################                                                                                                                                                                                          
#allow-hotplug wlan0                                                                                                                                                                                           
#iface wlan0 inet manual                                                                                                                                                                                       
#wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf                                                                                                                                                              
#iface default inet dhcp
Angsüsser Johann