Create an Information Radiator in DAKboard

THE TERM “INFORMATION RADIATOR” is a typically obscure tech way of saying “device that displays information on a screen.” This information can range from simple newsfeeds and advertisements to complex service statuses. They are typically used in hotel lobbies to display news, weather, and ads, and in tech offices, where developers need to see the status of their work at a glance.

In this project, we’re going to make our own simple information radiator using DAKboard and a Raspberry Pi. The best type of Pi for this project is any of the Pi 3 models or a Pi Zero W, because they all come with built in Wi-Fi connectivity—but if you have an older model, you can easily add your own Wi-Fi dongle. –LES POUNDER

1 SET UP YOUR SCREEN

DAKboard is a customizable display—available as a physical device, or just as a service—that can show photos, RSS feeds, weather, and calendars [ Image A]. To start using DAKboard, sign up for a free account at https://dakboard.com, then log in. The first screen we encounter is called “Screens,” and here we can manage a number of them. For this tutorial, we’ll edit “My Predefined Screen,” so click it to start editing.

>> The first task is to set the layout of the screen, so try out a few options. Simply click an option and then “Save Changes.” In the top-right of the screen is “View Screen”—open this in a new tab and it displays your screen. There should be a large image on the left and a black space on the right. In the bottom-left is the weather. All of these options will be edited later; for now, just change the layout to “Big Calendar.” The next step is to alter the background image, so click “Background,” and in the new screen click “Source” to choose the source of your images. We’re going to use Instagram as the image source [ Image B], specifically images from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. In “Instagram Settings,” add the user raspberrypifoundation and click “Save Changes.” Now go back to the tab we opened earlier, and click refresh to see images from the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Instagram feed.

>> Moving on, we can set up our calendar. In this example, it is the Magazine Family Calendar, reminding the team when to make the tea, drink beer, and do work [not in that order,though—Ed]. First, we enable the calendar and set it to show seven days’ worth of content at once. In the “Calendars” section, we provide an iCal URL, which in this case is from a Google Calendar we set up for this tutorial.

2 CREATE A CALENDAR

To get the iCal URL for a Google Calendar, open Google Calendar, and then click the three dots next to the calendar. Click “Settings and Sharing,” scroll down to “Access Permissions,” and click “Make this calendar public.” Now scroll down to “Public Address in iCal format,” and copy the URL below it. Paste this URL into the “Calendars” section in DAKboard, and give the calendar an appropriate name. Click on “Save Changes,” then go back to the other tab, and refresh to see the calendar appear.

>> In the next section, we can alter the time and date according to where we are in the world—this is pretty self-explanatory. Next, we configure the “Weather” tab, where can set the source of our weather data to one of three providers. For this tutorial, we’ll set it to OpenWeatherMap, and then set the location to where we live—DAKboard helps you find the nearest location. We set the units to those required—Fahrenheit or Celsius. We lastly set the extended forecast to five

days. Click “Save Changes,” and then go back to the screen tab, and click refresh to see the results.

3 FEED ME

The next step is to add a newsfeed to the screen, and for this we go into “News,” and enable “RSS.” In the “News Feed URL,” we paste the “Top Stories” newsfeed from CNN, which can be found at rss.cnn.com/ress/edition.rss— but feel free to use any RSS feed you want. Click “Save Changes,” and then go back to the other tab, refresh, and watch as the news is displayed in the bottom-right of the screen [ Image C].

>> In the next section, we can set up a to-do list; for this, we’ve used our Todoist account, which was easily linked to DAKboard via a short wizard in this section. Then we chose the correct list to show, in this case our to-do list for today. Click “Save Changes,” then go back to the other tab, and refresh. You can see the list appear at the left of the screen, just under the time and date.

>> With all of the configuration complete, go to “Settings & Defaults,” give the screen a name, and click “Save Changes.” Now write down the “Private URL” link, because we will need this later. Also, do keep this link private….

4 PI LITE

Our Raspberry Pi needs the latest Raspbian Lite release. This gives us the bare operating system and a web browser, ideal for our needs. We also need an Internet connection in order to load the DAKboard screen. On the Raspberry Pi, we open a terminal, and edit a file that enables the web browser to automatically open when the operating system starts. In the terminal, type the following command, and press Return. $ sudo nano /etc/xdg/autostart/RPI-MPC.desktop

>> We are going to create a config file that creates a desktop entry for an application. This opens the Chromium browser when the desktop loads, sets the window size to 1920x1080, and specifies full-screen kiosk mode to prevent anyone exiting the application. It also suppresses error messages and runs in incognito mode. Remember your DAKboard private URL from before? Replace PRIVATE URL FROM DAKBOARD with that address in the following:

[Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=RPi-MPC Comment=Information Radiator NoDisplay=false Exec=chromium-browser PRIVATE URL FROM DAKBOARD --window-size=1920,1080 --start-fullscreen --kiosk --incognito --noerrdialogs --disable-translate --nofirst-run --fast --fast-start --disable-infobars --disablefeatures=TranslateUI --disk-cache-dir=/dev/null NotShowIn=GNOME;KDE;XFCE;

>> If you want to know more about what these command-line arguments do, especially in the Exec= line, have a look at the Raspbian Lite documentation—there are some very handy commands in there.

5 READY TO GO

To save, press Ctrl-O, then press Return, then Ctrl-X to exit. Still in the terminal, our next step is to edit a file that will prevent the display from blanking after five minutes. In the terminal, type:

$ sudo nano /etc/ lightdm/ lightdm.conf

In the file, look for the line:

#server-command=X

Change it to:

server-command=X -s 0 dpms

>> To save, press Ctrl-O, then press Return, then Ctrl-X to exit. Now reboot the Pi, and once it has successfully rebooted to the desktop, it will automatically load our DAKboard screen.

>> There you have it: our own information radiator for the home, office, and data center.