Build a kiosk with touch input and remote desktop on ubuntu 18.04
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- čas přidán 5. 08. 2019
- Hi geeks, this is my 1st time to create a tutorial video on how to build something interesting, like a kiosk, with touch screen and VNC. I'm not a native English speaker and I have left a MNC for almost 4 years, so this means I'm trying to push myself to do this with my second language instead of the native - which is a big fun.
This tutorial is accomplished by myself, but the steps, those tricks were gathered from several blog posts and articles - special thanks to them, listed below.
Reference:
c-nergy.be/blog/?p=11767
obrienlabs.net/setup-kiosk-ub...
askubuntu.com/questions/76775...
blog.csdn.net/qyanqing/articl...
Images from:
ribot.co.uk
alluae.ae
TEXT of configuration files can be found from:
fisherworks.cn/?p=2517
Written in Chinese but I suppose those files are easily located and copied to your clipboard.
Nice tutorial, fully working on 20.04 as well
Chromium has many undocumented flags that develops add and remove at a whim. One of these flags is "--kiosk". The --kiosk flag launches Chromium in a kiosk mode that only shows the web page with none of the menus or noise. Technically this flag could be removed at any time, but it's been around for about 4 years. I don't know if it also shuts off Chromium's auto-updater or not. I found the --kiosk flag super handy for my needs and I hope you do to
Amazing
Great tutorial!
I have seen that native lightdm configuration also has vnc server, as mentioned in the archlinux lightdm page. I am looking for a solution to load a GTK app instead of chromium though (I understand the steps). Also, is there something to detect the monitors without the use of xrandr (prior to xorg setup)?
感谢大神分享
Hi MrYimgilike!! excelent video! How can I remove the flag button from the on-screen keyboard?
hi, thanks for the video, how can i prevent, to close the app via touch screen? eg. swiping 4 fingers up or one finger from the bottom left to right. Thanks
Hi Keso, sorry I'm not aware of the finger gestures on closing an app like Chromium. If this kinda stuff works with Ubuntu out of the box, I think it's supposed not to be that hard to turn it off by disabling some settings or even remove some packages, right?
Maybe not a Kiosk but a remote display like a digital menu
alright but how do make a multi app kiosk ubutu?? i mean something similar to windows tablet mode but with only a few applications like firefox, pdf reader and maybe a simple text editor, and mind you i dont want the user to be able to touch the settings or etc.
Yeahh, thank you. Not sure if I should go for Raspbian or Ubuntu (for raspberry) for a Kiosk with touch
For RaspberryPi I would consider Raspbian as 1st choice, which has better ecosystem and tutorials from communities. And none the less, ubuntu is another debian-like stuff, written in the release file in each of them.
@@MrYungilike Thanks, a simple kiosk based on Raspian runs now ,:-) ... I just check-out vue.js (as one of the choices)
@@kwynintelligence435 good to hear that you're quite sophisticated to play with vue.js, too. I don't know if you would also meet the Chromium update pop-up just like @hannibalZA mentioned, and if yes, we might need to consider how to deal with that - like blocking the domain by /etc/hosts
@@MrYungilike could probably run pihole in the background. Not only does it serve as a DNS server it will block DNS requests via lists. Mainly used to block ads but can block other web domains as well.
a big problem we've experienced on digital signage using chromium or even chrome is the auto-update popups that we havent been able to disable. the aw-snap and session restore hacks are fine, just cant kill that auto-update
resorted to using qutebrowser, set to fullscreen, remove/disable tabs and statusbar.
yep, what you mentioned is an issue I've experienced here, too. I was not trying to take action to prevent the update popup though. But... what firstly jumps out of my mind is - can't we redirect the traffic that searching update, to some invalid address, through things like /etc/hosts or /etc/host.deny? Since most kiosk really doesn't need to visit a domain out there like update.chromium.whatever, right?
And as you mentioned, another browser might be a good alternate, but the precondition is, your web application have been or will be accepted by your developers, thoroughly tested for the new browser.
@@MrYungilike what about Firefox?
I don’t need the auto login function? Is that possible?
How to Remove the desktop environment and just use startx
When you are running it on a touch screen and slide your finger top to bottom when chromium is in kiosk mode it causes it to exit. I tested on ubuntu 20
You can désactivate gestures from Ubuntu setup
Really good tutorial. For me to do this is impossible since I have zero knowledge of Ubuntu or even Linux. I am wondering if you could help me out with a kiosk likes yours. We can talk more about this in details on skype or by mail. Hope to hear from you.
Hi Wing, what's your use case or requirement of a kiosk? Actually you can make a kiosk with Windows, too, if you really need. I'm kinda just not a win fan. And there are some Android kiosk stuff which you can buy and just config something in it, and it gonna work like charm.
Anyway if you need further advice, find me thru www.linkedin.com/in/fisherworks/, which has my mail addr on.
Do you know how to do this on a Android or Google Media player box?
Am I have to be use ssh?
4:07 just use nano text editor.
Do you know if it's possible to keep the top bar from the desktop in the kiosk? I'd like to have that for displaying the time and connecting to wifi on my kiosk.
The question is interesting. Let's clarify - what you need is a digital clock and wifi settings on top of the chromium window, instead of a top bar - since most "bars" are task bars, which might bring some side effects, like switching to another application, or even getting chromium to be killed by user interactions - not a kiosk anymore.
If the clarification above is true, then we need to figure out how to have a clock and wifi settings without a "normal" taskbar. Solutions shown on my horizon could be, 1) a different window manager which gives you a "special bar" that will refuse to be covered by chromium kiosk mode, and the bar still have a clock and wifi settings on it; 2) displaying time and wifi settings in your application (web application in chromium? using http API to handle wifi settings).
So the question and solutions are here, but sorry I don't have this kinda requirements to let me explore a viable technical solution to it. Or maybe Android even Windows might already have better in-a-set solution for this? Not sure yet.
If this question was asked by my boss, and this need to be resolved in something like a week, I might choose to add a digital clock in my web application. As for the wifi settings, can be done in terminal console (CLI) af first, then I gonna have more time to find out a better way, maybe a total different hardware/os/application design.
@@MrYungilike Yeah I actually don't really need the clock, but I will need some way for the user to be able to connect to wifi since I will be delivering it to a place where I don't know the network configuration. I guess all I really need is some network connection gui included in the kiosk. My thoughts are maybe I can customize firefox or the top menu bar on ubuntu to show a wifi gui when you press a button and nothing else.
@@Scouty208 It's better to find out some other solution(s) to meet this special needs. Oh... there might be another nice way here is, you write a simple-to-use CLI bash script, then on the deployment phase, tell the onsite guy use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to interact with the kiosk and setup wifi with something like a Rii mini X8 keyboard. Otherwise, if you really need this to be perfect, I mean only with the on-screen-keyboard and touch screen, for ubuntu, I'm afraid you can only consider writing HTTP API based wifi setup tool (which also do this through bash command behind the webpage) by your own and let user visit the page in chromium.
@@MrYungilike What about installing webmin (or something similar) so the setup can be accessed by the browser?
@@TheKuptis sure and that's probably the best way to get rid of physical peripherals during the setup/config phase.
hi this has been very useful. I am only having one issue. can't login via ssh. if i do ssh user@someip it just hangs there. it works from the same network (if my machine is also connected with same wifi). but not with different network. any solution plz?
could be a route issue, if it works as you said - ok in the same network, and hangs with different.
Hi, did you know if it is possible for Chromium kiosk to return home page if idle for 60 seconds ?
you're gonna need to do that in your web app, more precisely, by javascript.
I have touch monitor. And I can swipe from up, and close the chromium. How I can fix that?
oh well, didn't aware of that earlier, I guess maybe another browser?
@@MrYungilike maybe, but I use another OS. Xubuntu)))
Hi Mr Yungilike this can be done on windows as well right?
Well, that's probably ok, never tried that though... not a win fan anymore, but it should work as expected.
Do you know if this will work with Ubuntu 20.04?
deployed the 20.04 for my kid as his desktop, but not tried the fully-auto kiosk on that yet.
Anyway, the 18.04 should have 3 years lifecycle from now (2020), and the 20.04 still have time to be tested.
Great tutorial, i use php application for kiosk, i want to let user to shutdown the computer through my php application, how to do that ? I from Indonesia
I use python framework for API, and what you need gonna be easy - use the python lib SubProcess to run Linux shell command with sudo permission in a django/flask http API.
Alt+F4 kill browser... any ideas to prevent this? thanks!!! ;-)