A small wall mount PI Zero with touch screen

It may not be crashing. Once the screen is blanked the app is moved into the background, after a while of not being in the foreground Android may decide that it is no longer needed and close it down. Using tasker to keep it active may fix that. Unfortunately each manufacturer tweaks Android in various ways, mostly to try and maximize battery life, so the only way to know if it will help you is to try it.

You should be able to use Tasker I think to send a key or touch event to the browser periodically? That should resolve the issue I think.

My experience is that (with chrome on a Nexus 7) it is enough to get tasker to keep the screen on when Chrome is running. I think Android uses the screen state to know when to background an app.

That is quite good. How do you supply power to it so it stays flush to the wall?

I created some custom PCBs a few years ago to connect a PiZero to these TFT Screens but could not find a suitable enclosure for then end result. The idea was not to run NR on the Pi but simply control the screen with data from elsewhere.

It really needs a small piece of kiosk code to be able to generate the required display. If you could just edit some YAML like HADashboard that it works with, that would be easy to use.

I'm the "cable guy" so I only install those things wire I have the ability to install wires in some way (power and ethernet). Lots of work but no battery headaches afterwards. But of course not everywhere possible...

Same here...

That indeed might work, but in my case I want to run the Node-RED dashboard:

  • I have spend so much time on developing (ui and non-ui) nodes, which would be an impossible idea for me not to use those for myself. Sure you will understand that...
  • I have seen LOTS of (less technical) users in the last years struggling so much to get Node-RED running. If they need to start learning also other stuff like HA and yaml and... they will most probably not survive it...

@BartButenaers : Are there already example how to run / utilise this device? Can the node-red dashboard easily adopted to the resolution?

Thanks for some hints.
Georg

@JungeG,
no unfortunately I had no time yet to digg deeper into this device...

I may have found my solution, maybe a bit pricey, but my need is to view an AI image and make a quick friend/foe/bogus decision should I get an alert in the middle of the night.

I use the official Raspberry Pi Touchscreen (~$70) and this case which can sit on a desk or be mounted on a wall, although thicker than you might like if wall mounted, -- a bit under 2 inches: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WXK38YM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ~$28.

Using one of my old Pi3B boards and running Chromium browser in "kiosk" mode its done what none of the Android phone solutions (using old out of service phones) could do for me -- display my dashboard for a couple of weeks so far with no failures. I let it "sleep" it wakes up quickly with a touch, and I can "pinch zoom" and scroll on the AI detection image to get a closer look, zooming in for best use of the 800x480 pixel resolution. I've been running it on WiFi so all I need is a power connection.

So far sitting on the night stand has been fine (since its sleeping and dark until I touch it) and a power outlet is nearby. I picked this case specifically because I could use it on a table or mount it on a wall.

I use node-red set to start on boot and launch the Chromium kiosk mode start up script to connect to my dashboard. I could have used a cron job, but where is the fun it that, this is the node-red forum :slight_smile:

3 Likes