Raspberry Pi Dashboard

Easily drive a kiosk display with a Raspberry Pi, and allow changing the URL displayed remotely.

Setup

This guide assumes you have installed Raspbian on your Raspberry Pi, and have it successfully connected to the network, and connected to a monitor. There are lots of guides out there to get you this far.

You can perform the rest of these updates with a connected keyboard and mouse, or enable SSH and do it remotely.

Install Ruby

You can use PiSetup to help you do this. You'll only need Ruby, not the other things it provides. You're welcome to use a different approach, but install ruby 2.6.2

Assign static IP

You'll want a static IP for your Raspberry Pi to more easily update the displayed URL remotely. Once again, there are guides available to help you do this if you're unfamiliar with it.

Install the dashboard script

On the pi (either through ssh or a local terminal) run this:

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/ministrycentered/raspberry-pi-dashboard.git

If desired, change the API_KEY, PORT and DEFAULT_PAGE in ~/raspberry-pi-dashboard/dashboard.rb.

Make it better

Let us hide the mouse cursor:

sudo apt-get install unclutter

Make it automatically start:

nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

Paste in this as the contents:

@lxpanel --profile LXDE-pi
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE-pi
@xset s off
@xset -dpms
@xset s noblank
@sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly": false/"exited_cleanly": true/' ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences
@/usr/local/bin/ruby /home/pi/raspberry-pi-dashboard/dashboard.rb
@unclutter -idle 0.5

That will disable the screensaver, disable the power savings (that turn the display off), clear any warnings from the browser, automatically start our script, and hide the mouse cursor.

Changing the displayed page

The Ruby script is a tiny web server, so you can control the displayed page by accessing special urls. The format is:

http://<ip addresss>:<port>?api_key=<api_key>&url=<url>

Example:

http://192.168.12.209:8039?api_key=ulxMkC8k3VpkBemqPmuu&url=https://apple.com

Using a Stream Deck

If you have a Stream Deck you can use the "Website" action (under System) and paste in a URL like shown above. Be sure to check the Access in background checkbox.