Digi-Display: Custom Digital Display Solution

Our solution will allow to create a Digital Display with most computer hardware, even older outdated models. Follow the instructions and after connecting to your already prepared online URL with your display you can connect to any TV / Monitor in your business and display. If you use our managed online solution to create the display materials www.Digi-Display.com you can change text and replace images without any HTML experience. Our company also offers fully managed computers that can be shipped to your office fully prepared to simply plug in and run your display.

Our solution uses the LXDE desktop environment. You can either install using the Lubuntu ISO or you can use NixOS to install.

1. Create bootable USB keys on Windows

2. Install with Lubuntu ISO

3. Format your computer with bootable USB key

4. NixOS Preparation

5. Configure LXDE

Unetbootin to create bootable USB keys from ISO

On windows install the program UNetbootin with Chocolatey.org

choco install unetbootin

Format the USB KEY

• WIN + E
• Right click on drive
• Format Quick and change label

Install with Lubuntu ISO

Open UNetbootin

• Choose Lubuntu LTS
• OR if you have the ISO image on your computer choose and assign the correct USB KEY drive letter
• Click OK to begin !

Format Computer with new bootable USB key

• After UNetbootin is complete you have a USB key that can boot with your hardware
• Insert the USB key into your machine you want to use and turn it on
• Press the key sequence to boot from the USB (You might have to check your BIOS settings)
• This will ERASE all data on this machine
• After the computer is formatted and has booted into Lubuntu OR NixOS you can now configure with Digi-Display

Configure LXDE

You now have LXDE installed on either Lubuntu, and you are now ready to configure to match the requirements to have the screen start automatically and load the digital screen from our servers.

Wi-Fi

Follow the instructions how to connect to your Wi-Fi network https://www.digi-display.com/Pages/faqs

Integrate Display Software

• After you install the Linux system. This will download and prepare our software on the local computer
• open a browser and type:

http://get.digi-display.com

• This will download the init_digiDisplay.sh to ~/Downloads

• open terminal and give execute permissions

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x init_digiDisplay.sh
./init_digiDisplay.sh

This will now install all the files to the ~/Desktop/digiDisplay

Connect

• open ~/Desktop/digiDisplay/config.json
• url: Add the website url
• kiosk: true will make the website full screen false will make it windowed

START SCREEN Manually

• open ~/Desktop/digiDisplay
• ./runDigiDisplay.sh (right click and choose open as program)

Manual Config

Change the computer name now

Firefox suppress crash notification bar. Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar

• Search for 'resume_from_crash' and set to FALSE
• Search for browser.startup.page and set to 0
• Search for services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.startup.page and set to false

Open LXQt Configuration Center

• Session Settings
  • Basic Settings
    • Ask for confirmation to leave session UNCHECK
  • Autostart
    • upgnotifier UNCHECK
    • XScreensaver UNCHECK
    • ADD
      • Name: DigiDisplay
      • Command: /home/USERNAME/Desktop/digiDisplay/runDigiDisplay.sh
      • Wait for system tray CHECK

Start menu

• Leave
  • Reboot

The computer should reboot and automatically start the screen

Prevent screen from going to sleep

Create an autostart script in Session Settings which will ensure the screen stays on

• Link to the file 'disable-dpms.sh'

Disable translations, manually click the translation icon in the address bar and uncheck "always offer to translate"

Change background image

Right-click on the desktop background and choose Desktop Preferences

• Tab: Background
• Wallpaper mode: Zoom the image to fill the entire screen
• Browser for image - ~/Desktop/digiDisplay/screen-loading-image.jpg
• Apply - OK

Hide Desktop Icons

• Right click 'hide desktop icons'

Hide bottom bar

• right click on bottom bar
• Configure panel
• auto-hide

Testing & Troubleshooting

• Ensure download speed is sufficient (Firefox -> Google -> speed test)
  • 1 Mbps is slow and will cause lagging when loading content on the screen
    • Make sure your USB Wi-Fi dongle is connected in USB-3
• Resolution is wrong
  • Start -> Monitor Settings
    • Set Desired Resolution

Virtual Box

If you are testing this on virtual box, you need to install "Guest Additions CD"

• Menu 'Devices' => "Insert Guest Additions CD Images"
• Open Terminal

cd /media/COMPUTERNAME/CDNAME/
sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

You will now have Copy and paste between

• ensure you also check the box in Virtual Box - Details - Settings - General - advanced - BOTH shared clipboard and drag and drop to bidirectional

Remote Management

Tailscale

Using TailScale you can remotely manage your digital signage box

• Open a terminal and type

curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh

After installation you can type

sudo tailscale up

and you will get a link to copy into your browser and login to authenticate the connection with your tailscale

VNC

The program gets installed in the init_digiDisplay.sh

Setup a password

x11vnc -storepasswd

Run one time

x11vnc -usepw -forever -display :0 &
# disown

Auto run at computer startup Add a autostart script to Session options - 'vnc.sh'

SSH

• This gets installed with the init_digiDisplay.sh

Security

To ensure that only SSH connections are received over Tailscale, we are going to add firewall rules. This will ensure that only the tailescale0 network adapter is allowed to receive SSH and VNC traffic, and all other adapters will be blocked (eg Eth0 will NOT receive any SSH at all)

sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw allow in on tailscale0 to any port 22
sudo ufw deny to any port 22
sudo ufw allow in on tailscale0 to any port 5900
sudo ufw deny to any port 5900
sudo ufw status