Pixframe Installation and Configuration

Install Raspbian from current image using keyboard and mouse

• Set location (country, time zone etc)
• Change pi password
• Set boot option to logon automatically into GUI
• Chose Wifi network and password [can be configured later]
• Under Interface tab set to allow SSH connection.
• Update software and reboot

Log on using pi password.

• Change root password:
  • sudo passwd root
• Amend /etc/ssh/sshd.config to
  • AllowRootLogon yes
• Do sudo ifconfig and note IP addresses for Wlan (and Ethernet and if both are present).
• Open console and do:
  • apt-get install xscreensaver
  • apt-get install feh
• From GUI menu find the newly added screensaver and set it to disable (prevents monitor sleep)
• In directory: /etc/systemd/system/getty@ttyl.service.d verify or change autologin.conf for pi.

  	[Service]
  	ExecStart=
  	ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --autologin pi --noclear %I $TERM
  

  • Check noclear.conf. Should be:

    	[Service]
    	TTYVTDisallocate=no
    

  • Verify or change WiFi configuration /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf [use appropriate SSID and password]:

    	network={
    	ssid="WifiNetworkName"
            psk="wifipassword"
            }
    		

  Thumb Drive Photo collection

  
  The scripts described in the next section will look for pictures under /mnt/photos which is where the thumb drive gets mounted. The USB thumb drive should be formatted as FAT32. Windows may not allow large size FAT32 from GUI but it can be with other software such as EaseUS Partition Master or open source software. Pictures should be copied into a folder called /photos and videos into a folder called /videos on the usb drive. Start by copying folders directly from the computer to the thumb drive.
  
  Copy photos and videos
  Use windows command line robocopy. Adjust drive letters and paths below as necessary.

    
  robocopy D:\photos *.* /S /XF:*.mov /r:1 K:photos  
  robocopy D:\videos *.mov /S /XF:*.mov /r:1 K:\videos.    
  

  
  The /S switch is coppy subdirectories recursively.
  The /XF:*.mov switch skips over any .mov files.
  The /r switch limits retries from any failure to one rather than the default million.
  
  Automate mounting of thumb drive
  Insert the thumb drive with photos (and posssibly videos) into a raspberry pi USB sockets and boot with keyboard and mouse attached.
  From a console do

   	bslk

  and

  	fdisk

  to identify the location of the thumb drive. It should be dev/sda<#> .
  Add a line similar to the one below using the sda number to /etc/fstab so that the USB drive gets mounted under /mnt:
  

  /dev/sda1  /mnt     vfat    defaults, auto, umask=000, rw, user  0  0 

  
  A mismatch between drive designation in /etc/fstab and drive location may prevent boot and require “emergency” console logon.
  Download and untar these two tarball files: panel.tar.gz and pibin.tar.gz .
  they must be run from the top / folder in order to put the scripts in the right places.
  

  root@pixiepi2:/# tar -xvf pibin.tar.gz

  pibin is needed to put scripts into /home/pi/bin and home/pi/.bashrc to call them following autologon.
  

  root@pixiepi2:/# tar -xvf panel.tar.gz

  panel is needed to put the control panel scripts into the web server control panel
  
  

  Control Panel

  
  The set of scripts listed below run from web server software and allows the pixframe screen to be controlled remotely by a laptop or a phone using wifi by going to http://[ip address or name of pixframe].
  
  Install apache2 web server.
  
  Configure the Apache DocumentRoot as /var/www/html/pi. Look in etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf.
  
  Add following code to apache2.conf (allows showing thumbnails of photos not under Apache DocumentRoot) :
  
  

  Alias "/image" "/mnt/photos"
  </Directory "/mnt/photos">
      Require all granted
  </Directory>
    

  
  Add apache to the sudoers file with this line using visudo:
  
  www-data ALL=NOPASSWD ALL
  
  These files should be in /var/www/html/pi:
  
  
  blackscreen BlackScreen.jpg BlackScreen.png boot.php dirlist.php dirlist.php.commented eth0.txt getip getstartdir.php keyboard.php killphotos killphotos.php listfiles.php makevarstore.php newdirlist.php newstart.php pickthumbs.php pickvid.php pixdelay.php PixFrameDoc.html random.php randomstart reboot.php rundelparms runsubdir runthumbs runvid runvid.php setdelay.php showip.php shutdown.php slidesubdir.php style.css thumbs.php thumbsubdir.php varstore widescreen widescreen.php wlan0.txt writedelay.php
  
  
  These files should be in /home/pi/bin
  
  
  BlackScreen.gif BlackScreen.png boxip geteth0 getip getwlan0 ipbox killphotos runphotos
  
  
  Index.html contains the menu of actions. It calls php scripts which call various bash scripts most of which end up calling feh to send its output to the directly attached screen after setting parameters. A standard call on feh is a variation on the line below where $PIXDELAY is the time of each slide and $pdir is the directory to start from.
  
  DISPLAY=:0.0 XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority feh --no-fehbg --auto-zoom --auto-rotate --fullscreen --recursive --quiet --hide-pointer --slideshow-delay $PIXDELAY "$pdir" &