Raspbian Kiosk Maker

Some ansible-powered steps to getting a super-simple information radiator on a raspberry pi.

It works really well when used with Dashing

This is designed for use in a LAN, so security is a bit rubbish.

Steps

Install rasbpian on the pi

I've done this via NOOBS, but a normal image should work.

Leave the system on the default "boot to CLI" setting.

• TODO: have a setup script to do this to an SD card via dd.
• TODO: include mdns / some sort of phone-home script by default
• TODO: allow overriding hostname at provision-time

Install ansible locally

On the co-ordinating machine, ensure ansible is installed:

[sudo] pip install ansible

Define your inventory

See http://www.ansibleworks.com/docs/intro_inventory.html

Ensure all your desired kiosks are in a group called kiosks, and that each host has a "page" variable.

[pi]
raspberry.local page=http://google.com

[pi:vars]
ansible_ssh_user=pi

[kiosks:children]
pi

I recommend saving this in a file local to this setup called inventory, rather than using the global ansible inventory file.

Make sure ansible can control the raspberry pis

Add your SSH key to the pi user, or use the --ask-pass option when running ansible.

Run ansible on the kiosks

ansible-playbook -i inventory kiosk.yml