RPI3 B+ with Touchscreen running UI

So the idea was to setup the AutoPi according to the inital kickstarter information

And based on this comment here

Since the options described in the first post are not available in this version of AutoPi I opted for first trying to use the second solution and setup a UI using the online UI to get some practical experience.

*Then installing the X environment and configuring it to run in Kiosk mode on the RPI3 based on information taken from this post
Raspberry Pi 2/3: Chromium in Kiosk mode
In short I ran the following commands in SSH:

  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get upgrade
  • sudo apt-get install unclutter chromium-browser
  • sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends xinit
  • sudo apt-get install lightdm
  • sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods
  • sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

Edit the config with (This is up to you to define based on you needs, this example should not be taken as the correct or only way):

#@lxpanel --profile LXDE-pi
#@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE-pi
@xscreensaver -no-splash
@point-rpi
@xset s off
@xset -dpms
@xset s noblank
@sed -i ‘s/“exited_cleanly”: false/“exited_cleanly”: true/’ ~/.config/chromium-browser Default/Preferences
@chromium-browser --noerrdialogs --kiosk https://my.autopi.io --disable-translate

After this you should now have a Kiosk mode RPI3 with touchscreen enabled that is using the http://my.autopi.io/ UI.

Some initial issues with this setup are the following:

  • No night-time mode for the UI, if like me you live in a Nordic country that is currently having gone in to a Gray, Dark, Wet period for the next 6-8 months. Then a bright white screen on the dashboard wont make for a good experience anytime between 16:00-10:00 a clock any day.
  • Even with a 7 inch screen the UI (without any resolution changes made) is bloated with all the “UI apps”, it would make more sense to create a UI “tab” separating the map and then any other apps if you want to get map information while driving or car information. And some auto-scaling for the apps would also be needed based on screen resolution.
  • Map interaction and update time in the UI is to slow to be used as a normal GPS since the GPS information needs to travel first to the cloud and then back to the RPI3, even with good 4G connection this is to slow.
  • For some reason I still have the AutoPi rebooting every few minutes, I have not yet had time to check the logs for why and i can not rule out it being due to my installing the above mentioned software.

Conclusion and next steps will be to expand the local dashboard with something that can address the above issues, but it will likely be some time before I can get time to learn and implement that in the available AutoPi software and code language.

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So an update on the last issue “AutoPi rebooting every few minutes”.
It´s due to ODB is not able to establish a connection and the standard timeout/power save goes in to effect. I have reported my findings to support and hope they can give me a fix for why the ODB can not establish the correct connection.
Will update with more info as I get more, and eventually include any code and solutions as I get time to implement my or others solutions :slight_smile: .

Hi,

So an update to this topic.
With the RPI update:


The above steps for autostart no longer work as expected due to the changes in the update.
Here is a link to a topic that discusses the issue, the topic is not for chromium but the solution is the same.

Issue: cant find /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
Solution:
A) Copy the content from the global autostart into your /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart or,
B) Put all your commands in the global file and don’t create a user autostart file.

Hope that helps if someone gets stuck on this.

Br,
Mikael

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Adding here a link to issue discussion with Hostapd that has a working workaround if someone runns in to the same issues.

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