Archive:Wall of Monitors

 

Wall of Monitors Release status: experimental [box doku]
Description	many monitors showing many things
Author(s)	Heiko, Severin

I saw this at the London hackspace: A pillar with a bunch of computer displays showing all different sorts of things. So I thought: Let's build one for the lab as well! We have a whole bunch of monitors, let's make them do something cool.

Ideas

One SomefruitPi per Monitor

• Many Pis on a network
• Super cheap: OrangePi? [1]
• Problem: Most are VGA based, Pis only do HDMI
  • HDMI VGA converter? Do they work?

One PC, many graphics cards

• Old PCI Multihead cards (e.g. nVidia Quadro NVS280)

Mounting

The displays need to be mounted somehow. Ideally, we would just get a ton of display arms. But they are expensive. Maybe we can just build them ourselves?

• DIY Monitor Stand
• Simple Hinges

Software

• Displays should show a website, or run through multiple websites on sort of a schedule
• Centrally managed
• https://github.com/tiefpunkt/signman
• Currently uses Midori browser, because Chromium is not available on standard Armbian build for the OrangePi One, and Firefox doesn't support kiosk mode out of the box

Hardware

• OrangePi One
• Cheap HDMI->VGA Adapter
• OS: Armbian [2]
  • Getting started: https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/
  • Initial login: root/1234
• Software runs well, just the VGA output is weird

Mounting

• We have some steel piping we'll mount to the wall
• Monitors will get a VESA-to-pipe-clamp mount, which attaches to the steel pipe

Setup

1. Flash SD card
2. Boot up in CLI
   • Login as root, PW 1234
   • Create user "mumalab"
   • Update packages

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

1. • Install browser

apt-get install midori

1. • Prepare mumalab User

su - mumalab 
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tiefpunkt/signman/master/client/signman.sh
crontab -e
> */5 * * * * /home/mumalab/signman.sh

1. Reboot
   • System will boot into graphical interface

reboot