Clean boot into chromium-browser kiosk mode with Tinkerboard S for touchscreen app

[tyrelkostyk]

Hello all,

 

My team and I are trying to use the ASUS Tinkerboard S (running Armbian Bionic v4.19.7, i.e. ubuntu bionic 18.04) as a platform to host a webapp,  with a touchscreen as the user interface. 

 

We've successfully set up the Tinkerboard S to open chromium-browser in kiosk mode on startup using systemd, and a script that launches `chromium-browser --kiosk --app=server_url`.

 

Our next step is to customize the boot process with the following changes:

- none (or as few as possible) lines of text while the services are starting up

- include a splash screen with our company logo, if possible

 

Any advice on how to accomplish this or where to look to get started would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Igor]

5 hours ago, tyrelkostyk said:

Our next step is to customize the boot process with the following changes:

- none (or as few as possible) lines of text while the services are starting up

 

Redirecting boot log to console (/boot/armbianEnv.txt) and disabling getty service?

 

5 hours ago, tyrelkostyk said:

- include a splash screen with our company logo, if possible

We only developed this for Allwinner hardware platform and without research its hard to tell if there is a lot or little work to get the same result.

Spoiler

 

 

 

[tyrelkostyk]

Hi Igor,

 

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I am unaware of how to redirect the boot log using /boot/armbianEnv.txt. I tried setting verbosity=0 which changed nothing, and disabling the getty service appeared to have no effect either.

 

That video you sent me seems perfect for our use case. How did you achieve that? Is there another forum post that describes how to achieve this? I searched the entire forum and was unable to find it, if so.

 

Thanks!

[tyrelkostyk]

Figured a big part of it out - I simply added console=tty0 to the /boot/armbianEnv.txt file. Didn't realize this was an option until I scoured through the arm /boot/boot.cmd file. Thanks again!

 

Another issue (I can post this as a separate post in the forums):

How can I hide the mouse pointer at all times? Like I said this is for a touchscreen application.

 

[Igor]

25 minutes ago, tyrelkostyk said:

How can I hide the mouse pointer at all times?

Can't find info in my head while Google should know, perhaps under "hide mouse pointer xorg"

[martinayotte]

43 minutes ago, tyrelkostyk said:

How can I hide the mouse pointer at all times?

Googling "turn off X11 cursor" revealed that starting X with "-nocursor" option is the way to go

[tyrelkostyk]

Also figured out how to disable mouse cursor at all times, permanently (until undone):

 

in the /etc/default/nodm file, find the line with nodm_x_options='-nolisten tcp'  and add '-nocursor'  , ending up with nodm_x_options='-nolisten tcp -nocursor' 

[Igor]

13 minutes ago, tyrelkostyk said:

Also figured out how to disable mouse cursor at all times, permanently (until undone):

 

in the /etc/default/nodm file, find the line with nodm_x_options='-nolisten tcp'  and add '-nocursor'  , ending up with nodm_x_options='-nolisten tcp -nocursor' 

Cool. You will need to adopt this fix for lightdm since we change it to lightdm + autologin https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/1404 

 

"switched from nodm to lightdm display manager by default: nodm has one cosmetic bug which makes the desktop reload when you initiate shutdown. You think it already unloaded, but it loads again ... than it shutdowns. Its a known bug in this display manager for years and nobody wants to fix it. I really don't want to deal also with that. armbian-config way was already switched to light display manager, autologin function is implemented"

[tyrelkostyk]

On 7/2/2019 at 11:11 AM, Igor said:

Cool. You will need to adopt this fix for lightdm since we change it to lightdm + autologin https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/1404 

 

 "switched from nodm to lightdm display manager by default: nodm has one cosmetic bug which makes the desktop reload when you initiate shutdown. You think it already unloaded, but it loads again ... than it shutdowns. Its a known bug in this display manager for years and nobody wants to fix it. I really don't want to deal also with that. armbian-config way was already switched to light display manager, autologin function is implemented"

Okay great! Fixing that cosmetic shutdown bug will be nice. When will the next release build be? Assuming that that's when this change from nodm to lightdm will be launched.

[Igor]

3 minutes ago, tyrelkostyk said:

When will the next release build be? Assuming that that's when this change from nodm to lightdm will be launched.

If you make an image on your own fix is already there. If you use pre-made images - I already start with images rebuild. Soon, those days.