Pi-Kiosk

PI Kiosk is yet another kiosk application for the Raspberry Pi. The main features are:

• A simple installation script for installing on a Raspberry Pi
• Includes a password protected web page for controling the kiosk
• Can be configured to use either Chromium or Midori as the kiosk browser

Applications include:

• Digital Signage
• Displaying a test pattern image or GIF
• Displaying the output of H2R Graphics as an overlay input on a BlackMagic ATEM

Supported devices

This package works on any Raspberry Pi model. It has also been installed on an Orange Pi Zero 3, running the Armbian Bookworm image. It will probably work on any similar single-board-computer running a variant of Debian, but the installations scripts may need to be tweaked.

Lower end models, like a Pi Zero W with only 512MB of memory, will not be able to display dynamic web pages, for example a moving GIF image, but can handle static images. For a Pi Zero it is recommended to use the Legacy Bullseye image, or older, to save memory. To save additional memory, use Midori instead of Chromium. Chromium is not supported on the 32 bit Bookworm image.

It is recommended to install this on a fresh copy of the Raspberry Pi OS Lite image (32 or 64 bit, depending on the model)

How to install

There are two ways to install

1. using ssh from another machine
2. directly on a Pi

Installation using ssh

use git clone, or download the files as a zip file to a local directory Run the script install.sh and specify the name of a newly installed Raspberry Pi

git clone https://github.com/DanTappan/Pi-Kioskcd Pi-Kiosk
./install.sh --pi *KioskPi* [ --browser *browser* ]

This will install the package on KioskPi, selecting the selected browser. The --browser argument is optional, options are:

• chromium (default)
• midori

It is recommended to set up the Pi user account on KioskPi to use public key login for ssh. If the user name on KioskPi is different from the current user on the installation machine, use .ssh/config to select a user name, or specify as user@KioskPi

Toward the end, the script will prompt for a password to protect the kiosk control web page. When running over ssh, it will echo the password. Deal with it.

Installation directly on a Pi

sudo apt install git -y && git clone https://github.com/DanTappan/Pi-Kiosk
cd Pi-Kiosk; ./install.sh [ --browser *browser* ]

Again, the script will prompt for a password for the kiosk control web page.

Post installation

With either installation method:

• Use raspi-config to configure the Kiosk Pi to automatically log in on the console
• Reboot the Kiosk Pi to start the kiosk

Usage

Once the installation is complete it will have created:

• a subdirectory, kiosk, of the home directory of the pi user, containing the necessary files
• an openbox configuration that will autostart the kiosk when the Pi reboots
• on Armbian images it also configures sudo to work without a password, and enables autologin for the current user on the console terminal

The default webpage to display is a placeholder. To configure the kiosk, connect to the kiosk Pi using a web browser. This will display the following webpage

• The Password field is required on all commands, enter the password which was set during the install
• To select a new URL to display, enter it into the Kiosk URL field and hit the [Set URL] button
• The program also supports an optional dropdown menu to select pre-configured URLs. Select an entry from the dropdown menu and hit the [Select URL] button. See the instructions in index.html for how to modify or remove the dropdown menu
• The [Restart Kiosk Browser] button will reload the currently selected URL
• The [Reboot Kiosk] button will reboot the kiosk
• The [Shutdown Kiosk] button will shut down the kiosk