RPi Zero W kiosk

README.md

Summary

Setup RPi Zero W as a kiosk

Step

1. write Raspbian Lite image to a SD card
2. enable ssh

touch /boot/ssh

3. setup WiFi

/boot/wpa_supplicant.conf

country=US
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="MySSID"
    psk="SSIDPASSWORD"
}

4. inert the SD card to RPi zero w and boot-up 5.Autologin in Console

sudo raspi-config

• Select “Desktop / CLI” and then “Console Autologin”.

6. Install openbox and x-server

sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends xserver-xorg x11-xserver-utils xinit openbox

7. install chromium browser

sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends chromium-browser

8. Start chromium automatically when X started

/etc/xdg/openbox/autostart 

# Disable any form of screen saver / screen blanking / power management
xset s off
xset s noblank
xset -dpms

# Allow quitting the X server with CTRL-ATL-Backspace
setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

# Start Chromium in kiosk mode
chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --disable-infobars --kiosk 'http://www.google.com'

9. start x automatically

~/.bash_profile

[[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]] && startx -- -nocursor

Reference

• https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-kiosk/
• https://bdking71.wordpress.com/2018/11/06/setup-an-information-kiosk-using-a-raspberry-pi-zero-w/

I've done many retries, it seems chromium does NOT support RPI Zero W, however, I decided to use an old RPI B2, it worked fine (Chromium in Kiosk Mode)

I've been trying to get this to work. startx would give me permission errors, which I fixed the following way:

# add user to tty group to allow opening /dev/tty1
sudo usermod -aG tty pi

# fix inability to open vertual console (as per https://gist.github.com/alepez/6273dc5220c1c5ec5f3f126e739d58bf)
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-legacy

Then create /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config and add the following text:

allowed_users=anybody
needs_root_rights=yes

Chromium no longer supports the raspberry pi 0, so you can use firefox instead. I decided to use firefox ESR in hopes that it would use less memory. Simply change the chromium call to this:

firefox-esr -kiosk 'https://google.com'

This launches X, but after 18 minutes the screen is still black, so something must still be wrong. Any further input is appreciated.

EDIT 2024-07-06: It turns out that the most recent version of firefox doesn't want to run either. I tried looking into Midori but I don't think it has a kiosk mode. I'll probably be switching to an old pi 2 as well.