I'm currently putting together a project where my application will have a web based frontend and will be running on a microcontroller. In order to provide a friendly UI I would like my app UI to startup without showing any Unix screens, such as splash screen, login and BIOS. This is supposed to behave as an embedded system.
Since my app is browser dependent, I presume I'm going to need my Linux graphical desktop environment running in the background but the less I have running the better.
What is the best OS Rasberry PI for this purpose and how do I make it behave as an embedded system?
Thanks in advance.
regards,
ForeignerBR
Your solution could likely be the following:
Raspbian is the most supported operating system on the Pi at this time and most Linux Debian applications are on there. For speed Arch is the best (but has no GUI as standard).
You could then get it to login & start up into X11 automatically and then set it to launch up the web browser.
I would recommend chromium as you can start it up into a full screen Kiosk mode via the command line. So at boot it would show the command line and possibly the start of a GUI but once booted up should just display the browser.
Hope This Helps -
Ryan Walmmsley
Related
I currently have a project so basically what i want is to create an embedded linux in raspberry pi. What i want to achieve is to boot my custom made linux in my raspberry pi. I'm currently using Buildroot for that.
Here are the things what i want to happen:
Create a splash screen(How to implement this? What are the files on linux needed to edit. )
Override login prompt after booting(I want to use my own prompt which is i already created using python. What i want here is after booting my python app will be the first one to display)
Display my python application after booting.
WHAT files/configurations i need to know.
HOW to implement this. Process or a work flow.
Just like osmc or kido but i want to build my own also from scratch. Any help will be appreciated.
There are multiple components involved in splash screen. One is what you can display when u-boot starts and then the kernel takes over. You can get some information here and here. Both require re compilation of u-boot and Linux kernel. May be even some more additional steps depending on system. Also note this transition is not going to be smooth, between the logo displayed by u-boot and then the kernel.
On desktops, this is generally taken care of by software like Plymouth.
From what I understand, you want your python application to auto start after booting. Have a look at writing a systemd service for that as described here.
Sorry if I'm using wrong terminology here.
I'd like to make an appliance for users that's running from a Raspberry Pi. When it's booted, I'd like users to see my own GUI that I'll design (hopefully in PyQT but I'm not sure about that yet.)
The thing I don't know how to do: I don't want the users to see the Linux operating system on the screen at all. I don't want them to see the desktop and launch my app. I want my app to be automatically launched on startup. I want it to be the only thing accessible and visible to the users. i.e. it should be full-screen and a user wouldn't be able to exit it or interact with the OS in any way.
How can I do that?
I want to make a system which would get input from USB barcode scanner, validate it on remote server and display an answer (text and images).
I would use JavaFX or in-browser JS web application to grab scanner input somehow.
I'm planning to run this application on Raspberry Pi or plain PC.
Is there a way (or a special linux distribution) to ensure that system always loads the same way and starts JavaFX app or opens particular web page in browser?
e.g. no login page, NO update or other popups are shown.
Any other ideas? Thanks
...
Found an interesting solution here, where JavaFX GUI app is started from command line, without X-Server(linux graphical interface) at all.
I have recently done something similar, and it's not too hard. Obviously working on the Pi, you will want to use something like Linux and having limited hardware will mean that you should be minimising what you are running. Due to this, I would recomend that you run a light weight distro. Something like arch (which is what I used) allows you to build only what you want from the ground up without the need to find and compile everything like you do for LFS or Gentoo.
As for booting, the following two wikis will give you the details of starting the Gui without manual login:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Automatic_login_to_virtual_console
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Start_X_at_Login
After that, it is simply a matter of putting the command to launch your program in .xinitrc.
I am developing a program similar to xbmc but only for movies. I was wondering if there is any very simple operating system that will basically just boot and run the program I am developing? Similar to what openelec does for XBMC. I can run it on windows but I want to be able to put it on a machine like raspberry pi without having to have a whole windows or linux OS.
I hope that makes sense.
Take a look at the rather slim linux distributions specialized in embedded systems, like firewalling distros and so on.
Then, if it is a graphical application you have to make sure you boot into runlevel 5 (graphics) and configure your application as login shell for the default user.
You might also be interested in two services the openSUSE project offers: the Open Build Service (OBS) and SUSE Studio:
OBS allows you to automatically get packages of your application built and packaged, ready for use in a number of wide spread distributions.
Studio allows you to go a step further and create a custom distribution for your own purpose: you can call it 'your' operating system, completely preconfigured for your purpose, with all requried software and your own application installed. You just have to download a CD image afterwards!
I'm looking for a really really small linux distribution or process of making my own that's sole purpose is to get an air application to launch full screen and stay there; Essentially I'm building a home kitchen computer that runs entirely as an AIR app.
I have looked into using windows xp; and windows xp embedded but they pose so many issues I figured I'd try modern linux.
I have also seen TinyCore Linux which looks interestingly small but not sure what issues that poses in regards to running AIR and "hardware" accelerated display. I've also thought about stripping down an Ubuntu installation but I'm sure somebody must have done this already; google is just failing me right now...
I'm also interested in running an "embedded" version of say android and running the air app on some arm-based hardware again; with just the AIR runtimes only - although this is less preferred as it's more complex.
I'm also hooking this up to a touch screen monitor (not yet arrived) so I'll need to hunt down or write some drivers for translating the touch events into something AIR can understand... (this was my main intention for using windows in that all the drivers will just work).
What I'm after
Minified Linux kernel with JUST the drivers for the box I need
X Display with accelerated graphics support (Doesn't have to be X if AIR can run on a frame buffer?)
Running a Full screen AIR application (simple enough)
Ability to write back to the filesystem (enough support for AIR)
SSH Access for remote control
Samba for updating the filesystem (easier to maintain the system)
Touch screen support (3M Ex III I think...)
Audio support
Don't need
Don't need any window manager or any other GUI tools unless required by AIR
Don't need any toolbars or file managers or anything; The AIR app is the "OS"
Don't need any package managers or repos
Don't need multi user or logging in; everything can just run as an unprivileged account
Don't need to
I don't mind hand crafting the filesystem and configs if that makes it easier; I'm mainly looking for a "filesystem" that is as tiny as possible that I can just plop my AIR app into and write some scripts to get it to start when the X server starts
Thanks,
Chris
Try an embedded Linux build system such as Buildroot. It can build an entire system from source, and be very lightweight. The basic system is less than 1 MB in size.
Ended up going with Tiny Core. Very tiny and quick to boot up. You can also write extensions for it and you don't have a persistent drive which allows you to just switch the thing off without worry that it's going to break something -- exactly what you need in a kitchen :-D.
My current plan is to:
Just set up a working version using Ubuntu as this is mostly supported by Adobe
Slowly strip it back and try and get as little things to start as possible on boot
Try building my own distro/package from source and selecting only the packages I need
Compile my own kernel with nearly everything turned off and just leave on the things I need