thedanbob / rpi-kiosk

Raspberry Pi kiosk with idle screen blanking

Raspberry Pi kiosk with idle screen blanking

This repo has the basic configuration you need to turn a touchscreen-equipped Raspberry Pi into a kiosk served from a webpage. It also features screen blanking when idle / touch to wake (this is more difficult to get right than it sounds).

Tested on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ running Raspbian Stretch.

How to use

Install needed packages:

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends \
  xserver-xorg \
  x11-xserver-utils \
  xinit \
  wmctrl \
  suckless-tools \
  openbox \
  chromium-browser

Copy the files to the home directory of the non-root user you wish to use:

cp -r rpi-kiosk/{.config,.xserverrc,sleep-timer} ~

tail -n 1 rpi-kiosk/.profile-snippet >> .profile

cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc .xinitrc
tail -n 1 rpi-kiosk/.xinitrc-snippet >> .xinitrc

chmod +x ~/sleep-timer

Enable console autologin with the raspi-config tool (Boot Options > Desktop / CLI > Console Autologin). If you're setting this up from root for a user without sudo this method won't work. Instead, run the script noninteractively:

SUDO_USER=some_user raspi-config nonint do_boot_behavior B2

If you're using a new user and not the default pi, add it to the video group:

sudo usermod -a -G video some_user

How it works

The configuration in .xinitrc, .xserverrc, .profile, and autostart are all that you need for a simple kiosk. If you allow the screen to turn off when idle, however, touching it to wake triggers an unwanted click on the kiosk page. To avoid this, I disable automatic screen blanking and control it manually with the sleep-timer script. Just before turning off the screen, the script switches to a second (empty) desktop. In rc.xml I've disabled the desktop switching indicator and added a mouse bind that responds to a click event on that empty desktop by switching back to the first one.

Credits

Some resources that helped me put all this together:

• https://die-antwort.eu/techblog/2017-12-setup-raspberry-pi-for-kiosk-mode/
• http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Contents
• https://superuser.com/a/1094239