Building a Custom Perspective Kiosk on Linux Hardware

Ignition
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This thread really helped me out at my plant, so I wanted to contribute something too. We use Standard Ignition (no Edge gateways yet), and we wanted a way of displaying a single Ignition Perspective application on a touch screen HMI and have it do nothing else. We bought some Onlogic and Superlogics industrial iPCs and paired them with some Beelink HMIs. Then we loaded Pop! OS 22.04 onto them because it had the best on-screen keyboard support out of all the linux distros we tried, but we still ran into issues with the osk often freezing when using the perspectiveworkstation.desktop app. Also ran into headaches every time we upgraded the Ignition version, which required downloading the new version of the Perspective Workstation each time onto all HMIs. So, I followed David’s script above to run a simple firefox kiosk pointing to a webpage url and it solved all those issues.

I took it a step further and created an autoinstall.yaml file for this Ubuntu Server setup. (I’ve attached the plain text here since uploading yaml was not allowed, but the text file autoinstall.txt needs to be converted to an autoinstall.yaml file). I used this reference: Autoinstall configuration reference manual. This was the only way I could think of other than creating an entire custom ISO file to have a customizable “Perspective Kiosk OS”. Below are instructions for how to use this to install the OS on a blank 64-bit PC (I didn’t test on Raspberry Pi).

autoinstall.txt (7.3 KB)

Create USB Installation Media:

  1. Download Ubuntu Server 24.04.4 from Download | Ubuntu and Rufus - bootable USB drives for Windows. (I tried using Linux’s dd command, Startup Disk Creator, and Balena-Etcher, but all 3 did not leave space remaining on the USB install media to add the autoinstall.yaml file).
  2. Open Rufus and flash the ubuntu server amd64 ISO onto a USB flash drive (default options okay).
  3. Edit the autoinstall.txt file and save changes to a new autoinstall.yaml file (use VS Code or other text editor):
    1. Add the URL for your desired Ignition Perspective Application. (look for “demo.inductiveautomation” and replace it with your URL)
    2. If using WiFi for the install, the WiFi device will not show on the interactive network screen until the USB finishes installing the WiFi drivers and the network screen is refreshed. In this case it might be helpful to enable a second interactive screen like “storage”, so you can use it to go back and refresh the network screen.
    3. Edit any of the options in there for autoinstall as necessary. Maybe add font packages, change the encrypted password, or choose to have the root user (identity) be configured interactively during install.
  4. Drop the autoinstall.yaml file into the root directory of the USB flash drive. (you should see the folders boot, casper, dists, etc.)
  5. Unmount the USB flash drive and it’s ready to install the “Kiosk OS” onto a new PC.

Install “Kiosk OS” onto a new PC:

  1. Plug in Keyboard, USB Flash Drive, and Network Cable with internet or Android Device with WiFi USB Tethering. If using Android device, get the network settings ready to toggle on USB Tethering.
  2. Power on the PC and enter BIOS or boot options to boot from the USB Flash Drive. Select “Try or Install Ubuntu Server” and press enter.
  3. During initial boot, toggle Android USB Tethering to Enabled, if applicable.
  4. After a few moments there will be a prompt for the network configuration. Select the ethernet port which will connect to your Ignition gateway, then configure it.
    1. Subnet should look like 192.168.0.0/24 using CIDR notation (instead of 255.255.255.0)
    2. Address should be the address of the PC, e.g. 192.168.0.10
    3. Gateway should be the address of the gateway, e.g. 192.168.0.1
    4. Configure DNS 1 and DNS 2 if applicable
    5. Make sure internet is connected and select “Done” at the bottom when ready. (Do not continue without network).
  5. A few moments later, the install will ask for permission to perform destructive action (format the partition). Select “Continue”.
  6. Wait 10-20 minutes for everything to install (depending on internet speed). When complete, the orange banner at the top should say “Installation Successful”.
  7. Select “Reboot Now” at the bottom. It will probably ask you to remove the installation media (USB flash drive) and press enter.
  8. Upon rebooting, wait another 10-20 minutes and everything should be installed. Don’t login and don’t disable USB Tethering during this time. Just let it do its thing and eventually your Ignition application should appear on the screen.
  9. Remove keyboard and Android device once you see your ignition application loaded.

Hope this works for someone else! - Austin

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Industrial PCs vs normal computers