I need to commission some big TVs around my plant that show metrics for a particular line. Ideally, I’d like to automatically rotate through some ignition screens, as well as some web-based dashboards (Tableau). I’d settle for just the tableau dashboards.
So I think I could do this pretty easily with a Vision client on a PC, I would simply drop in the Tableau embed (html) code in JxBrowser then write a script to periodically switch to the next screen. My problem here is I need to get a special windows account created that doesn’t get automatically kicked off after a certain period of time. On top of that, whenever updates get pushed, the PC reboots and I have to manually log back in. There is a kiosk mode in windows 10, but unfortunately it only allows certain apps (not ignition).
I’ve been exploring how to do this with a Raspberry Pi and Vision in this thread, but it appears for now, JxBrowser is not compatible w/ ARM. I’m still working on getting a 64-bit raspi to work with the v8 launcher. http://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/vision-on-arm64/37954/7
I imagine you’ve found a solution by now, but I used chrome kiosk + an auto-tab-rotate extension on a micro PC when 8.0 was in beta. Performance was light years ahead of using Perspective rotate function which required reloading the views on each transition.
Can you share your results thus far? Do we have an official solution with Community edition/8.1 perspective “desktop” client
Consider using an Intel NUC or similar with Linux. It'll run JxBrowser inside Vision and you can set up autologin & auto re-login to launch Vision instead of a desktop.
Hmm, I didn't realize you could use chrome extensions w/ Kiosk mode, I had discounted that option. Perspective desktop doesn't allow iframes just like any other browser, see this thread:
This isn't a bad idea, I see they can be had at Best Buy for $152 at the moment.
In the end pturmel's suggestion from the linked thread above to pursue it on the web application side was the way to go.There is a way to grab URLs from Tableau so they can be embedded. Now, this isn't a universal solution, because not every website allows that, but it works for me for now. I may try the x86 mini PC w/ Linux in the future for sites that simply don't allow iFrames.The Tableau user authentication aspect has been an issue as well, my Raspberry Pi doesn't want to remember the login credentials, and our licensing setup with Tableau doesn't allow anonymous users. Perhaps the Kiosk mode deserves another visit...
Cant remember if I used Tab Rotate or Revolver, but I had to enable manual loading of .crx extensions because the PCs were internet-isolated. Worked like a charm after I sorted it out.
EDIT: on second thought, I may have used F11 full-screen mode instead of kiosk mode... This was on overhead displays with no user access/interaction. I believe Chrome can be launched in full-screen mode with --start-fullscreen argument
I just had a thought, perhaps Inductive Automation should build and sell small dedicated clients that are fully supported for Vision and Perspective. Kind of like thin clients but just for Ignition. I’m thinking something headless (I mean no accessible host OS) that simply has a webpage for config. Supporting all the different varieties of touch screens could be an issue though, although most I think at least kind of work with a simple USB mouse driver, so a calibration utility could solve that.
Hi there. I’m looking at doing exactly this. How would i auto launch a vision project instead than a desktop?? I run all my current displays of raspberry pi’s so am familiar with setting them up to auto launch but as a require some embedded web pages I’ll need to go down the NUC route with Linux. which Linux operating system would you recommend?
You use a custom .xsession and auto-login on the X Display Manager. I was using an RPi 3B+ with one customer where I helped set this up. Stock Raspbian.
I normally use Ubuntu Server or Kubuntu, but most of this is non-distro-specific.
Thanks, looks like it will almost be identical to how I run it now on the raspberry pi’s just not using the legacy client launchers as i need the web browser (jxbrowser) to function correctly
No, it doesn’t. Currently for non interactive displays I have a custom start script where I open various web pages and ignition projects. I then use an endless loop to rotate through them. Now I need to use a touch screen that people interact with with a combination of ignition projects and webpages but I need a method to navigate to them, hence if everything is within one vision project then I can put navigation buttons.