FullPageOS Automatically Boots Your Raspberry Pi Into A Full Page Web Kiosk Mode

One of the common uses for a Raspberry Pi is a low-cost information display, powering something like a magic mirror or an animated GIF photo frame. FullPageOS is a Raspberry Pi operating system that makes that process a little simpler.

FullPageOS is set up to boot into a full-screen Chromium window on boot. This means if you’re using your Pi to power an information display, you won’t need to go through the process of disabling screen savers, editing display size and forcing full-screen mode on your own. All you need to do is install FullPageOS on an SD card, then edit a TXT file to include your Wi-Fi network info and the URL you want it to load up. This is a pretty niche little distribution for the Pi, but it should make those dashboards and other HUDs much quicker to set up.

FullPageOS

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/guysoft/FullPageOS/devel/media/FullPageOS.png

A Raspberry Pi distribution to display one webpage in full screen. It includes Chromium out of the box and the scripts necessary to load it at boot. This repository contains the source script to generate the distribution out of an existing Raspbian distro image.

FullPageOS is a fork of OctoPi

Where to get it?

Official mirror is here

Nightly builds are available here (currently built on demand)

How to use it?

  1. Unzip the image and install it to an SD card like any other Raspberry Pi image
  2. Configure your WiFi by editing fullpageos-network.txt on the root of the flashed card when using it like a flash drive
  3. Boot the Pi from the SD card
  4. Log into your Pi via SSH (it is located at fullpageos.local if your computer supports bonjour or the IP address assigned by your router), default username is “pi”, default password is “raspberry”, change the password using the passwd command and expand the filesystem of the SD card through the corresponding option when running sudo raspi-config.

Requirements

  • Raspberry Pi 2 and newer or device running Armbian. Older Raspberry Pis are not currently supported. See Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi.
  • SD card, 4GB or larger, Class 10. (Early June 2020 was the image size 3GB.)
  • 2A power supply

Features

 

 

 

 

 

 

FullPageOS Automatically Boots Your Raspberry Pi Into A Full Page Web Kiosk Mode

Developing

 

 

 

 

 

Requirements

  1. qemu-arm-static
  2. Downloaded Raspbian image.
  3. root privileges for chroot
  4. Bash
  5. realpath
  6. sudo (the script itself calls it, running as root without sudo won't work)

Build FullPageOS From within FullPageOS / Raspbian / Debian / Ubuntu

FullPageOS can be built from Debian, Ubuntu, Raspbian, or even FullPageOS. Build requires about 2.5 GB of free space available. You can build it by issuing the following commands:

sudo apt-get install realpath qemu-user-static

git clone https://github.com/guysoft/FullPageOS.git
cd OctoPi/src/image
curl -J -O -L  http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest
cd ..
sudo modprobe loop
sudo bash -x ./build

Building FullPageOS Variants

FullPageOS supports building variants, which are builds with changes from the main release build. An example and other variants are available in the folder src/variants/example.

To build a variant use:

sudo bash -x ./build [Variant]

Building Using Vagrant

There is a vagrant machine configuration to let build OctoPi in case your build environment behaves differently. Unless you do extra configuration, vagrant must run as root to have nfs folder sync working.

To use it:

sudo apt-get install vagrant nfs-kernel-server
sudo vagrant plugin install vagrant-nfs_guest
sudo modprobe nfs
cd OctoPi/src/vagrant
sudo vagrant up

After provisioning the machine, its also possible to run a nightly build which updates from devel using:

cd OctoPi/src/vagrant
run_vagrant_build.sh

Usage

  1. If needed, override existing config settings by creating a new file src/config.local. You can override all settings found in src/config. If you need to override the path to the Raspbian image to use for building OctoPi, override the path to be used in ZIP_IMG. By default, the most recent file matching *-raspbian.zip found in src/image will be used.
  2. Run src/build as root.
  3. The final image will be created in src/workspace  

Remote access

Remote GUI access can be archieved through VNC Viewer. Get the IP of you raspberry hostname -I via SSH.

The password is raspberry and is independent of password you have set for your user(s). Change the password by x11vnc -storepasswd via SSH.

Install Chrome Extensions

Press ctrl + t, it will open an new tab.

You can either install extensions frome Chrome Web Store or install your own extension.

If you which to install your own extension then you can transfer the build files via tools like rcprsync etc.

Example:

rsync -av <extension-build-folder>/ [email protected]:extensions/<extension-name>/

Code contribution would be appreciated!

Source: FullPageOS Automatically Boots Your Raspberry Pi Into A Full Page Web Kiosk Mode


About The Author

Ibrar Ayyub

I am an experienced technical writer holding a Master's degree in computer science from BZU Multan, Pakistan University. With a background spanning various industries, particularly in home automation and engineering, I have honed my skills in crafting clear and concise content. Proficient in leveraging infographics and diagrams, I strive to simplify complex concepts for readers. My strength lies in thorough research and presenting information in a structured and logical format.

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