This is how I set up my pi with a 10" screen to display my Home Assistant dashboard. On a pi3 the system boots and runs chrome rather quickly. On an original zero with a usb wifi dongle it takes a minute or two to get to the dashboard finally, but it is quite stable and low power using a zero for a web kiosk.
These instructions assume that:
- you are familiar with installing a pi
- you know how to get it onto your wired or wifi network
- you can edit a simple text file with any editor of your choosing
- you remember to preface commands with
sudo
as needed
Image the SD card:
- install Raspbian 'full' version to get the desktop with gui. I use Balena Etcher on a Mac to image the SD card.
- enable remote ssh access to your pi
- eject the SD card and put it back into your host that you imaged it on
- simply 'touch' a file named 'ssh' in the /boot directory of the SD card you imaged
- eject the SD card
At this point you can boot the pi:
- put the SD card into the pi and power it on
- log in as the default user 'pi' with the default os password of 'raspberry'
- when prompted, change your default password to something non-trivial that you can remember
- turn off run
sudo raspi-config
and turn screen blanking off in 'display' - remove the firstboot wizard by running
sudo apt purge piwiz -y
- if you used a monitor/keyboard/mouse rather than ssh to log in, you'll have to go through the wizard
- edit
/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
with your editor of choice. Use sudo.
@lxpanel --profile LXDE-pi
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE-pi
@xscreensaver -no-splash
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Add the following line to run a browser at boot
#
# this example brings up my home assistant dashboard, edit the url to taste
# you might want to try --kiosk mode as well to see if you like that look'n'feel
#
/usr/bin/chromium-browser --start-fullscreen http://192.168.1.171:8123/local/tileboard/index.html
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Take the final reboot and test your installation
- sudo reboot
At this point the pi should reboot and run the Chromium browser automatically.