InfoTerminal

The Infoterminal for the Project Kitchen - with Timeline of Robotics TBD, work in progress!

Technologies

Built With: This project was built with the assistance of the following libraries and tools:

Back-End

• Node.js - It is used for an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient

Front-End

• Bootstrap - Most popular HTML, CSS, and JS front-end component library

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi
• LED
• (Long) Breadboard
• Pushup button
• Optional Neopixel
• Crankshaft EN 11 Encoder Datasheets

How to connect the components with Raspberry PI? Scheme

Setup

The setup needed to run the Infoterminal.

Raspberry Pi

Installing the operating system images Raspberry Pi

Recommended:

This project is using the Rasbian OS also called Raspberry Pi OS

Firefox

The project works only on Firefox browser

Install process

sudo apt-get install -y firefox-esr

For the auto fullscreen in firefox, install add-on extentions, because the firefox browser does not support auto fullscreen.

Recommended:

For this project we used tazeat

Change Setting in Firefox

To play the sound from the application in Firefox automatically, go to the Setting, on the left side tab the Privacy & Securtiy. Under sub-item called Permission, there will be a checkbox 'automatically playing sound', just uncheck it

NodeJS

To be able to run the node applications nodeJS and need to be installed with the following commands:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Afterwards the packages need to be downloaded with the npm install.

Setup Boot

The configurations for the buttons and the crank need to be set in the configuration file.

Add the configurations for the buttons and the crank in config.txt.

 sudo nano /etc/config.txt

Entering the file, add the GPIO Pins for the buttons and the crank there.

As an example:

gpio=23,24,17,27,22=pu

pu means pushup

Do not forget to save the file.

Autoscript for Raspberry

The goal is that the Firefox browser starts right after the starting Raspbian with GUI (Graphical User Interface) and displays a certain website in kiosk mode.

In order to run the application automatically after boot Raspbian,a script file needs to be setup.

Create a file and add the following commands.

 #!/bin/bash 
export DISPLAY=:0

cd 'PATH' /InfoTerminal/src/ ; node index.js &
cd  'PATH' InfoTerminal/src_contentmanagement/ ; node index.js & 
firefox-esr --new-window http://localhost:8080

exit 0

'PATH' means the location, where the project is saved.

Do not forget to save the file.

There will be a profile called 'autostart' script, which is located at /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart In our Rasberry Pi, we had to create this file.

Adding the Path, where the file is created and edited.

nano /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

/home/pi/Desktop/autostarter

Restart your Raspberry Pi, you will now see the firefox browser in full screen mode.

Connection scheme

Below is a simplified connection scheme for Raspberry Pi