Full screen clock

Full screen clock using the FLTK toolkit.

• Clock (use NTP on the system).
• Open Weather Map integration.

Apart from the primary use this is as much an exercise in getting to know more of FreeBSD.

Design

Front end (client)

The front end is a C++ application using the FLTK ui toolkit and curl. The UI shows time on the top half of the window, and two lines of custom messages on the lower half.

|-----------------|
|                 |
|      22:00      |
|                 |
|-----------------|
| Message line 1  |
|-----------------|
| Message line 2  |
|-----------------|

The time field uses the system time. The messages fields retrieved from the server using a RESTful interface.

Server

The server is a Python application using the flask framework. The server is extendable through plug-ins, and can receive message and icon URLs using a RESTful interface.

Dependencies

Client

• X11
• FLTK
• json-c
• nlohmann-json (JSON for Modern C++: https://github.com/nlohmann/json)
• libcurl
• wget (Makefile dependency)

Server

• Flask
• Flask-restplus
• Request

Makefile targets

• all: Compile client and copy the executable clock to the project root directory.
• test: Compile and run the client tests
• clean: Delete client object files and executable also delete all pre-compiled python files from the server.
• distclean: Clean most files that are not part of the sources.

Installation

Lightweight FreeBSD installation

Install git for cloning this repository:

$ pkg install git

Optionally install nano if you do not know how to quit vi:

$ pkg install nano

Client

Install build and runtime dependencies

$ pkg install xorg-minimal fltk json-c pkgconf urwfonts xset

Building the clock

Get the source from github:

git clone https://github.com/deadbok/fullscreen-clock

Go there:

cd fullscreen-clock

Build it:

make

The output should look something like this:

$ make
make -C src -f BSDmakefile all
c++ -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector -isystem /usr/local/include -fno-strict-aliasing -isystem /usr/local/include -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_THREAD_SAFE -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/json-c  -Wall -I. -I..  -std=c++11 -c app.cpp -o  app.o
c++ -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector -isystem /usr/local/include -fno-strict-aliasing -isystem /usr/local/include -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_THREAD_SAFE -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/json-c  -Wall -I. -I..  -std=c++11 -c config.cpp -o  config.o
c++ -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector -isystem /usr/local/include -fno-strict-aliasing -isystem /usr/local/include -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_THREAD_SAFE -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/json-c  -Wall -I. -I..  -std=c++11 -c main.cpp -o  main.o
c++ -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -O2 -pipe -fstack-protector -isystem /usr/local/include -fno-strict-aliasing -isystem /usr/local/include -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_THREAD_SAFE -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/json-c  -Wall -I. -I..  -std=c++11 -c owm.cpp -o  owm.o
c++ app.o config.o main.o owm.o -L/usr/local/lib -lm -Wl,-rpath,/usr/local/lib -fstack-protector -lfltk_images -lpng -lz -ljpeg -lfltk -lXcursor -lXfixes -lXext -lXft -lfontconfig -lXinerama -lpthread -lm -lX11 -L/usr/local/lib -lcurl -L/usr/local/lib -ljson-c  -o ../clock
echo "Compiling for FreeBSD done."
Compiling for FreeBSD done.

Create the .clockrc configuration file in your home directory. An easy way is copying the included example and editing it afterwards.

$ cp clockrc.example ~/.clockrc
$ nano ~/.clockrc

EeePC 701 specifics

Install the xorg driver fot the Intel 915GM graphics:

pkg install xf86-video-intel

Kiosk mode

To have the system boot into X and start the clock automatically, X is told to start the clock on start. The default shell is told to start X on login. Lastly auto login is enabled for the desired user.

X

Edit the sh startup script:

nano ~/.shrc

and add the following at the end:

XPID=`/usr/bin/pgrep xinit`
if [ -z "$XPID" ]
then
  startx
  logout
fi

This will start X, on login, if not running. To make the default X session start the clock create a file ~/.xinitrc with this content:

#!/bin/sh

xset dpms 0 0 0 &
#xset -dpms &
exec ./fullscreen-clock/clock

Where ./fullscreen-clock/clock is the path to the clock executable. The xset lines disables screensaver blanking and power saving in X, but all is not well yet edit /etc/rc.conf:

nano /etc/rc.conf

and add the following lines:

saver="NO"
blanktime="NO"

Auto login

Edit /etc/gettytab:

nano /etc/gettytab

and add the following lines:

# Autologin console as user "user"
A|Al|Autologin console:\
    :ht:np:sp#115200:al=user

Replace user in the last line with the desired user.

Edit /etc/ttys:

nano /etc/ttys

Replace the line:

ttyv0   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   on  secure

With the line:

ttyv0   "/usr/libexec/getty Al"         xterm   on  secure

Boot splash

This has not worked, and is left as a puzzle to the reader.

/etc/rc.conf beastie_disable="YES"

/boot/loader.conf vesa_load="YES" splash_bmp_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" bitmap_name="/boot/splash.bmp"

boot_mute="YES"

"-mnq" to /boot.config.

Install server

As root:

pkg install py27-Flask py27-flask-restplus py27-pip

as the user runnng the server:

pip install --user requests
pip install --user pillow
pip install --user flask-restplus