Raspberry Pi open source kiosk
Software installation notes
Last updated:  2018-10-03 18:51

Advance preparation:

  * Google Drive folder
    - You will need a Google account with Google Drive
    - Create a folder to share with the Raspberry Pi
    - If this is for the EECS department,
          is is better to use a department wide special Google
          account rather than a personal UM Google account

Software:

  * Latest Raspbian release
    - https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
    - these instructions are tested with June 2018 version

Loading software:

Put the Raspbian release image on the micro SD memory card.

Put the Raspberry Pi in the case and set it up with the cable,
keyboard, mouse, and video monitor, and power supply.

Connect the Raspberry Pi to Ethernet.

Once the Raspbian image is on the SD card, install
the card in the Raspberry Pi and power it on.

Initial configuration:

When the Raspberry Pi is booted, configure it.

Go to the "Welcome to Raspberry Pi" pop-up screen and click on "Next".

On the "Set Country" screen:

change "Country" from "United Kingdom" to "United States".
"Language should automatically change to "American English".
change "Timesone" to "Detroit"
click on "Next" when these are done.

On the "Change Password" screen:

PICK A REALLY STRONG PASSWORD AND WRITE IT DOWN!

Unless somebody is watching over your shoulder, uncheck the "Hide Passwords"
box to be sure you get the password and its confirmation correct.

The new password should be at least 10 characters, not all lower-case
letters, and it should not be guessable, including by tactics such as
dictionary searches.  Devices like this get attacked quite agressively
on our networks, so using a strong password is EXTREMELY important!

On the "Select WiFi Network" screen:

Unless you don't have a wired connection, you can choose "Skip".
It is possible to connect a Raspberry Pi, including a Pi Zero W, to the
University of Michigan authenticated "M-Wireless" network, but this
requires a special "/etc/wpa_supplicant" file.
This is a topic for a different set of documentation.

On the "Check for Updates" screen:

It is recommended that you click "Skip"; updates can be installed later.  If you do choose "Next", that is fine but be prepared to wait for a long time.  This might be a good time to get lunch, or a beverage of your choice, or catch up on your email.  This has been known to take as much as six hours (or as little as twenty minutes).

Now click to reboot the system.  After the reboot, on the pop-up information window, click "OK" to get rid of it. 

Bring in the kiosk software:

From a terminal window, on the "pi" account:

cd
git clone https://gitlab.eecs.umich.edu/don/kiosk.git

Now run the installer.  The last step of the installer will be to run all Raspberry Pi operating system updates; this part can take many hours:

cd kiosk
./install-script

Finally set up your "rclone" credentials:

cd
rclone config

(you can also copy /home/pi/.rclone.conf from a system that has already been configured with credentials).

You may need to adjust paths in /home/pi/kiosk/bin/run to match your installation; in particular, change the path in the "remote" variable to reflect the slide source path on Google Drive that you are using.