Raspberry Pi Kiosk Carousel

We have a raspberry pi driving a TV in our office to show various web pages. I recently had to rebuild it, and it was kind of a pain trying to find all the information to get it all set back up again. Here's some steps that should work for setting up a web-carousel kiosk on Rasbian Jessie November 2015

1. Install luakit browser and tools

apt-get install xdotool luakit unclutter

2. Get luakit to start automatically when pi boots, disable screensaver/screen blanking

edit /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart to be like the following:

@lxpanel --profile LXDE-pi
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE-pi
#@xscreensaver -no-splash
@xset -dpms
@xset s off
@luakit

3. Create a script for running the kiosk

Create /home/pi/kiosk.sh with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 25
export DISPLAY=':0'
WID=`xdotool search --onlyvisible luakit | head -1`
xdotool key --window $WID F11
xdotool type ":o https://www.website1.com/page1.html"
xdotool key Return
xdotool type ":t https://www.website2.com/page2.html"
xdotool key Return
xdotool type ":t https://www.website3.com/page3.html"
xdotool key Return

while true; do
    sleep 20
    xdotool key Ctrl+Page_Up
    xdotool key r
done

This script waits for 25 seconds (for luakit to start after boot) then starts opening tabs for the various sites you want to cycle through. Finally it sends a Ctrl+Page_Up (go to next tab) and F5 (refresh page) every 20 seconds, to cycle through the tabs indefinitely.

Make sure you mark it executable (chmod 744 /home/pi/kiosk.sh)

4. Edit /etc/rc.local so that kiosk.sh runs at startup

/etc/rc.local should look something like the following:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

# Print the IP address
_IP=$(hostname -I) || true
if [ "$_IP" ]; then
  printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP"
fi

sudo -u pi /home/pi/start.sh&

exit 0

The key line is
sudo -u pi /home/pi/kiosk.sh&
which starts our kiosk as the pi user

Reboot and you're done!